One year and counting

It's our anniversary. It's hard to believe that already a year has passed since we first moved into our little home.

A lot has changed since then.

• August: It was a full house with two renters (our friends) sharing the basement suite putting us up at a 6 person household. In various iterations, we've had a full house for almost the entire year.
• November: I was elected to the Dunbar Residents Association and have been trying to find a way to bring a different perspective on housing to my official neighbourhood. 
• December: Brendon and I got hitched in a very low key ceremony in Hawaii. Over the holidays we successfully celebrated our union with friends and family and then made a baby....
• April: I was officially diagnosed with rhinorrhea - basically my nose muscles have swollen up as a result of pregnancy making me a very noisy sleeper. See snoring video below
• May: We finished our landscaping of the backyard and laid out vegetable beds out front. It has become a veritable jungle of fresh vegetables that is overflowing with goodies on a daily basis.
• June: We decided that we are going to try for a home birth - body, brain and baby willing. Hoping to do this as naturally as possible and part of what will relax me is being able to do this in the comfort of my own home.

Today, I woke up to the sound of my snoring. Brendon had recorded me in the middle of the night to try and impress upon me what a loud snorer I had become. This is one of the downfalls of living in a small space - there is nowhere for Brendon to go to escape my noisy sleep. I figure though that it's just training for the baby. Sorry hun.

Then, I googled my name to see if an article I had interviewed for would show up in today's paper. For those of you that read the National Post, check out Saturday's edition. You know it's a slow news cycle when a pregnant couple and their small house get on the front page. While I'm not totally thrilled with the wide angles depiction of my ever growing body, the article is an interesting exploration of whether or not size matters. 

Growing revolution

It's been just over six months since this munchkin first started growing in my belly. And as my body has expanded to accommodate the little baby, so too has our home become the incubator of another type of growth.

A couple of weeks ago after a long and rewarding process, Brendon and I finished our landscaping. We struggled with what to fill our garden with but in the end settled on a combination of fruiting plants and trees intermixed with flowers and shrubs. We may have bitten off more than we can chew between the espalier pear tree, plum tree, apple tree, rhubarb, blueberries and strawberries...especially since Brendon and I have yet to successfully keep a house plant alive....

But as much as our backyard is a source of great pride, I'm even more excited to tell you about our guerrilla gardening project that appears to have taken off.

In front of Barb and Rogers house is a sidewalk. In front of the sidewalk is about 12 feet of manicured lawn owned by the City. At the end of the lawn is the neighbourhood street. This lawn gets some of the best sun - the kind of sun you need to grow great vegetables. So with the leadership of my inlaws, Roger built us two beds and filled them with soil, Barbara planted and cared for dozens of seedlings and I helped plant them all in May.

What started as our own little ghetto project has taken on a life of its own as two additional homes have joined in on the fun. First our neighbours Simon, Kelly and their little girl Avalon set up two beds and are already harvesting vegetables from it. Secondly, our neighbours across the street showed us all up by building 4 beautiful beds overlaid on river stone. Can't wait to see who's next.

Oh...if you are in the neighbourhood and need some lettuce, please help yourself. we're swimming in it right now.

Tiny package for small home

Avocados are one of my favourite fruits and this week they've taken on an even more special meaning. They represent the size of the little baby I'm carrying inside. Yes, we're pregnant - 16 weeks along now! For those who are doing the math this basically means that we had a great celebration over New Year's and wasted no time between our wedding and the new pro-creation stage. 


Both Brendon and I are really excited and we can't wait to welcome the little muchkin into our lives and our small home. Our mind is racing with things we need to figure out over the next few months like, "Where will be put the baby...and it's stuff?" and "Can we have a home birth?", but for now we're trying to focus on the same things that everyone seems to be occupied with these days (no, not hockey) - gardening. 


While earlier posts would have you believe that we were complete disasters at this, we've had some recent successes that make me hope that I do in fact have a nurturing side. (I always knew Brendon did.) That grass that we planted back in October - while still shabby, is starting to fill in. 


This shot from above makes you realize that there is still much to be desired but...

When you take a look at it lying down on your stomach... it looks fabulous!

I've started growing sunflowers in our bay window and too my glee, they've begun to sprout!

Brendon finished our first landscaped scene, he planted baboo intermixed with some beautiful black grasses, and then build a rock garden in front of the planter box. This is on our laneway side and so is our first contribution to beautifying the road.

Lastly, I took a trip to a suburban gardener last weekend. Mike, a retired man and passionate gardener started using his front and back yard to grow perrenials. He sells them from his home four times a year. I loved the concept of someone using their own garden is such an innovative way and couldn't resist getting out to see him. I wasn't disappointed and left with 2 blueberry plants, some rubharb and a bunch of grasses. 

Guilt

I grew up Catholic so I’m familiar with guilt. But over the last two decades I’ve managed to un-school myself from living up to an unrealistic ideal. Unfortunately its been creeping back up recently for something I had not predicted – our landscaping.

We started this process back in November when we seeded the grass. I should remind you that only in Vancouver can you plant things as Winter is coming and still expect them to grow. While we don’t have a luscious green garden, we do have the beginnings of a lawn - be it patchy and balding... But other than that we have nothing. No shrubs, no trees, no rooftop garden, no grasses, no fruiting plants and no flowers. As a result we also don’t have birds or bees or any of the other fabulous critters that make up a healthy eco-system, not to mention an inspiring melodic backdrop while sipping coffee.

Instead we have a big wide patio full of paving stones and a wide stone path taking over even more potential green space. We also have a lot of (very high quality) dirt. This is my nightmare. I knew that we would lose green space when we build the house but I thought that we’d replace it quickly enough that nature would be reintroduced on the ground floor as well as on our roof.

My guilt is probably compounded by the fact that at the David Suzuki Foundation we do a lot of research on the value that nature provides for people like us living is cities. Access to nature, whether though sitting in a garden, walking through a park or even just being able to see greenery from a window has profound impacts on our health. Greener environments:

• Nurture psychologically and physically healthier populations,
• Reduce stress levels and improve well-being overall,
• Enhance recovery from surgery,
• Enable higher levels of physical activity,
•  Improve immune system functioning,
• Reduce rates of childhood obesity,
• Help diabetics achieve healthier blood glucose levels,
• Improve independent living skills in seniors, and
• Facilitate pollinators like birds and bees that are responsible for 1/3 of the food we see in the fridge. 

…and that’s just to name a few.

So I have good reason to feel guilty! But now especially, as the crocuses begin to bloom in Vancouver, Brendon and I have got to figure out how we can bring nature back to this beautiful piece of land. We miss it and we owe it to ourselves and Mother Nature to bring it back. 

Winter and Family

We’ve just come through the season of family. Every second year Brendon and I make the trek out East to Ottawa to spend time with my family. I come from a big crew - three younger sisters plus mom and dad. This year we were able to get three of the daughters together while the one remaining spent her fourth Christmas in Taiwan. We rented a cabin in Quebec about an hour away from Ottawa and miles away from the frantic energy that literally consumes many holiday festivities. With only one relatively small sister fight (somehow pulling hair is still a choice weapon at 33) the whole experience can be considered a great success.

With our souls’ a little replenished from our immersion in nature and family, we took off to Val David in the Laurentians to visit friends. As many of our closest peeps have begun to have kids it’s amazing how quickly and often our conversations begin to turn towards family, and not just of the nuclear sort but the importance and conundrum of grandparents.

Some of our friends with children have moved across the country to buy homes close to their parents. Others make the weekend trips to visit family regularly so their kids get to grow-up with grandparents. But one of our friends did what we did...though in typical Quebec-country style.

Monique and Ian have built a home in his parent’s backyard which consists of a couple of acres of beautiful boreal forest. Their two children now have a short nature walk to their grandparent’s house. Their own home is a beautiful combination of modern architecture and rustic cottage appeal. They’ve salvaged and bargained for everything inside the home. From the kitchen cabinets made from the drawers of an old dresser to the interior siding of the living room covered in the wood from an old barn. It’s inspiring seeing other couples making similar choices to ourselves, choosing not only to build their own eco-friendly homes but to do so near family as well.

I wish we could say we had pictures to share, but we got so distracted by our excitement that we forgot to take even one. I’m hoping Ian and Monique will see this post and send us lovely photos so we can share. Instead, here are four of our wedding photos hot off the presses!

Brendon and Akua get hitched.

Well, we did it. Last week we took off to Hawaii and tied the knot. Not quite in time to substantiate the amazing article written about us (as a married couple) in BC Business Magazine. But at least in time to give ourselves the best Christmas present ever - the title of husband and wife. :-)

You might imagine that being married to a photographer would have some perks - like photos. But sadly, I have none to share with you just yet. What I will tell you is that we did it our way. By ourselves, on the beautiful island of Kona. We did it on a deserted beach standing on a lava shelf. Sea turtles lay sprinkled lay in the sand around us warming themselves as the last few rays of sun set on the ocean horizon.

I was given a book soon afterwards by a colleague with advice for married couples. Here is a picture of one of my favourite pieces of advice for Newlyweds. It's from a girly magazine - written in 1949.

Not the most positive or life affirming advice but interesting nonetheless. Any thoughts for newlyweds living in a small home?

The grass is greener in Gregor's Vancouver

Gregor Robertson is hot! Yes, I'm talking about the Mayor of Vancouver and you're right - sex symbols and politics don't often go together. But man that guy is dreamy...

We are getting closer to our municipal elections and both parties (Vision Vancouver and the NPA) are hitting the campaign trail hard. I was at a debate tonight where the candidates talked out the Occupy movements, transportation issues and affordable housing. All of the topics brought out some great conversations and I can't help but share my bias that I found the one on affordable housing solutions the most interesting. So much so that (despite my soccer mom attire) I posed a question to the candidates. I asked them about their vision for innovative ownership models to help the working class break into the housing market. So often people talk about the housing form as the solution - row houses, basement suites, tiny condos, laneway houses... but if there is anything this build has taught us, it's that figuring our a creative ownership agreement is critical.

We had to look to Europe to develop ours between the inlaws and ourselves. In the UK you'll find rent-to-own schemes, shared equity models and land trust housing just to name a few. Anton wasn't able to give much of an answer. She reverted back to talking about the housing form and didn't want to touch financing. Gregor dove in and referred to an innovative project involving Habitat for Humanity as well as pointing to other cities where we can get inspiration. With housing prices so divorced from our salaries we really need to get creative about ownership and challenge the traditional mechanisms we currently have in place to finance, price and sell homes in the city.

And in other news. We have experienced our first landscaping failure.  Because we live in Vancouver we don't get the blanket of white stuff that covers our backyard and we can still plant things throughout the Fall...or so I thought. About four weeks ago I rented a grass seeder and a roller, bought some seed and got to work. It took me all weekend (with some help) to get the project done and when it was over I was pretty happy. Right away, one of the first things I noticed was the number of birds in our backyard. It was amazing. For a moment I felt like Snow White surrounded by her forest friends. Then I realized the truth. I had just laid out an incredible feast and the birds had hit the jackpot. One of my big mistakes was that I didn't cover the seed with a shallow layer of dirt so not only weren't the seeds protected from the birds, they got cold and never germinated. So, there has been no progress. We still have a dirt pile. This landscaping thing is hard.