here is our garden at four weeks.

we planted our cute little garden on the 15th of april, here’s what we are growing:

here is our garden at six weeks.

we ended up losing our one artichoke plant early on and replaced it with another much younger tomato plant to try and stagger the tomato harvest a bit.

here is our garden at seven weeks.

everything is thriving pretty well, although something pesky keeps biting off our squash blossoms. they aren’t even eating them, just leaving them on the ground. which is even more annoying. we are working on fencing in the garden and bought some organic insecticide as well, so hopefully we’ll get that under control soon.

– ryan & gub

i visited barnsley gardens over the weekend while doing a film project with the yacht rock revue. it’s located about an hour and a half north of atlanta in adairsville, ga at the base of the blue ridge mountains. these days, barnsley gardens functions as a resort where you can stay, play golf, quail hunt, or have your wedding. there is also a historic district on the grounds where godfrey barnsley originally built his mansion and gardens featuring flowers from around the world. here you can visit the beautiful 160-year-old heirloom gardens, a museum, and the mansion ruins.

the ruins were really amazing! it felt like you were walking around in what’s left of an old european castle. there were these great vines growing all over the walls, adding to its mystique. i was envious of the event going on while i took photos, having a party in the ruins of an 1840s mansion seemed like the best thing ever. the museum had photos of the estate before it fell to ruins and if you are lucky enough to catch the curator, an oral history of the barnsley family and gardens as well.

barnsley gardens is very beautiful and has a rich history. even if you’re not looking to stay at the resort, the heirloom gardens, ruins, and museum are open to the public and definitely worth the drive for a short getaway from atlanta.

– ryan

barnsley gardens

597 barnsley gardens road
adairsville, ga 30103
770-773-7480

we just discovered a great bbq restaurant called garden produce & country store! on the front page of their website they say “welcome to your neighborhood barbeque.” we wish they were doing business in our neighborhood!

we woke up this morning and decided to go on a ‘bbq adventure!’ the only rule was we had to try a place neither of us had been to before. after doing a bit of research and reading some reviews, we decided to venture out to a tiny place in stone mountain, mostly because of the words in this review. we were not let down!

we are big fans of ‘side of the road’ and ‘hole in the wall’ style restaurants that have great food. this quaint bbq joint totally fit the bill! it can be found on an unassuming canopy road near stone mountain. you’ll know you’re there when you see a couple of red gas pumps and a few cars parked on the side of a house. garden produce was quite small, with only a few tables for seating, but featured a comfortable rustic atmosphere. diners on the patio greeted us with a cheerful, “hello,” as we approached the restaurant.

we both really enjoyed the bbq; it was well worth the drive! ryan got ribs with field peas and baked beans and i got pulled pork with squash casserole and fried okra. the meals came with a delicious slice of corn bread, a pickle and a pineapple wedge. we are pretty picky about our bbq and often don’t like the same style, but we both really loved our meals! the ribs were great, not too smoky but still flavorful, and the pulled pork was excellent as well. plus the prices were very reasonable.

there were plenty of sides to choose from and they all looked great. some of the veggies came from their huge garden, including the field peas and squash. they also offer a homemade pastrami sandwich that sounded amazing! the country store sold seasonal produce and various jarred products, including pickles, jams and relishes.

we’ll definitely be going back again soon!

– ryan & gub

garden produce & country store

567 stephenson road
stone mountain, ga 30087
770-413-0338
gardenproduce@bellsouth.net

we had a really great time being part of the kirkwood tour of homes! we met a lot of nice neighbors and got to show off our cute little house. it turns out one of our neighbors becky writes for various blogs and wrote about our house here and here!

we’ve spent the last couple of months working on house projects and doing the most thorough spring cleaning we’ve done in ages. our friend and neighbor miguel martinez took photos of our house in all its de-cluttered glory. he is a really amazing photographer who works for the mundo hispánico. he took so many great photos we decided to spread them out over a few posts.

this first post covers our front porch, family room, media room, backyard and garden.

– ryan & gub

the second part of our tour of home series features our office, bedrooms, and bathroom, which includes our vintage snow globe collection.

again, all of the photos were taken by our friend miguel martinez!

– ryan & gub

we have been going to a family friend’s beach cottage at holden beach, nc since 1997. it is definitely one of our favorite places to visit! the cottage has belonged to our friend’s family for several generations. it still has a lot of the rustic antiques from when it was originally furnished. it is such a cozy, quiet little place. we love it; especially in off season.

ry and I were lucky enough to celebrate mom and jim’s 25th wedding anniversary at the cottage the first week of april. we enjoyed an amazing week of lounging, reading, cooking, eating seafood & goofing off at the beach. ryan even got a kite and some new sunglasses. yay!

holden beach is located midway between wilmington, nc and myrtle beach, sc — about 40 minutes from each. the town is situated on an atlantic coastal barrier island, facing south onto the long bay region of brunswick county.

holden beach also has an amazing turtle watch program. the site has a story about conjoined twin loggerheads hatching there in 2009!

check out the holden beach town hall web site!

– ryan & gub

what exactly is sea foam? we all know the shade of green, but what exactly is that stuff sitting on the beach as waves pull back to the sea?

basically, sea foam is impurities in the ocean such as salt, chemicals, dead plants or other material that are churned up by the currents and carried to the shore by waves. the bubbles stick together and create the foam you see on the beach.

– ryan

we noticed our horseshoe pits were looking rough recently, so we decided to give them a face-lift. we started by getting rid of the weeds and adding more sand. that alone made a huge difference. then we spray painted the poles bright colors, we went with blue and red, and topped it all off by adding our bottle cap collection.

we’ve been saving bottle caps for years, although we never really found the right use for them. gub has fond memories of her grandparents general store where they threw caps from soda bottles out front for gravel. the rusty gravel must have made an impression on her, we’ve been saving bottle caps since i’ve known her.

we’re excited to find a new use for our bottle caps! it’s gratifying to reuse something that could easily be thrown away. we plan on filling our pits a good bit more, our collection seemed a lot bigger inside the house. we are going to ask our local bartender to save bottle caps for us to help the cause.

– ryan

gub and i were able to get away for a few days and went to holden beach, nc. we took an afternoon and visited a few nearby lighthouses, which was a blast!. first we went to oak island lighthouse on caswell beach and then took a ferry to bald head island to explore old baldy lighthouse. the ferry departed from this cute little town called southport, nc, where a bunch of dawson’s creek episodes were filmed. the whole area had a new england feel, especially caswell beach and southport.

you could see what’s left of price’s creek lighthouse from the ferry ride, although that’s as close as we can could get. we weren’t able to see the inside of oak island lighthouse either, it required reservations, but we were able to climb to the top of old baldy lighthouse for a great view of bald head island!

we were very excited to learn bald head island and old baldy lighthouse were used for the beach scenes in weekend at bernies! we have since re-watched and confirmed that the beach scenes were in fact filmed there.

– ryan & gub

we celebrated easter by spending a fun morning drinking coffee and dyeing easter eggs in our new yellow kitchen. there will be a blog post on the kitchen re-do later, but here are the steps we took to create our colorful and recyclable eggs:

– hard boil eggs
– set up easter egg dye kit (we used a cheap grocery store paas kit)
– add stencils and resists to the eggs*
– stir dye bath and carefully place egg in the dye
– leave egg in the dye for 5 to 10 minutes (lighter colors take longer)
– remove from dye and remove stencil or resist
– place eggs in basket or nest (we used shredded paper scraps for our grass!)

*we created leaf stencils by picking small leaves from our yard and placing them on the egg. we then tightly wrapped panty hose around the egg and secured with a rubber band. small, thin leaves with few veins work best for the stencils. we also used electrical tape to add stripes and lines to the eggs.

yay easter!

deviled eggs for dinner!

– ryan & gub