Yes, its true. This is the house that Qwikster built. We bought a very old home, 100 years old, in a mountain community outside of Los Gatos. Back in the day this area was reserved for city folks from San Francisco who wanted to rent a weekend cabin “in the mountains”. A few famous writers chose to call this place home, John Steinbeck owned land within walking distance. I don’t doubt for a second why he chose to call this place home. Its peaceful and wild and yet just minutes away from civilization. Huge, massive grizzly bears used to roam these hills. Now we have an occasional kitty cat and I am hoping we don’t see a big one anytime soon…

Stuff is happening. Solar panels are in. Windows are in, waiting on doors. Deck is started, waiting on wire mesh for the railing. Retaining wall is started, waiting on steps. Some plants are in. This next month we will see a lot of changes – fenced in garden area, siding, doors, 2 decks, new shed, more yardwork…

It’s all about deer resistant plants around here. We have already planted tons of lavender (ask me about sleeping in a lavender field in Provence)  and rosemary. Here we have rose stone, sweet pea butterfly, and society garlic. Everything a deer dislikes. Some mornings we wake up to 8+ deer on our lawn… We also have some native grasses coming in and olive trees. Our veggie garden area is bigger than we thought, so excited to get that started.

 Our lower deck is in. Redwood with soon to be cattle wire railing which has been hard to find.

New windows! We had very flimsy single paned windows before that made me nervous being the helicopter parent that I am. Now we are insulated and safe. A huge relief!

We picked out a pretty stone for our retaining walls and stairs. The walls are Camaroon blocks and the stairs will be Camaroon flagstone. Brendan liked the look of very little mortar and after seeing it, I love the natural look, too!

Mountain Girl Winery may not have any mountain girls right now, but that doesn’t stop the winemaking process!

I sanitized, filled, and corked twenty-nine bottles which are now standing in the cellar. Tomorrow they get turned on their sides and sit for at least a month before they are ready for drinking.

Siphoning wine is not as tiresome as it sounds, though the wine doesn’t taste perfect yet. It requires some oxygenization in the bottle to be truly ready for drinking.

The bottles are not full because you need some space for the cork.

I rented this big heavy contrivance – the corker, from Fermentation Solutions, free of charge. It squashed the corks then pushed them down into the bottle. I am sure it made the job much easier. I only mangled one cork, which was lucky because I had 30, for 29 bottles.