photos – Page 3 – New England's Narrow Road

Before and After, New Siding, Home Makeover

My new yellow house fixer-upper — My new house, as it looked before I moved in.

I haven’t been good at keeping photos coming of my new home makeover, but here is the final picture (below) and you can see the changes that have been made to the foreclosure I bought this past summer.

The old, dark yellow clapboard was rotted and gross – as you can see in the photo above that was taken in May this year. Since I couldn’t afford to have the entire back of the house sided just yet, I opted to keep the yellow color but chose a lighter shade for the new siding. The left side wall had never been painted to match the rest of the house, so now it does match.

Instead of adding green shutters (the old ones were crumbling), I chose neutral white, which may look a bit dull in comparison, but will, in the end, look nice once I have the gardens planted along the front. I’m trying to look at the big picture and I know it will take years to accomplish, but for now I know that my house won’t rot away beneath me.

As you can see, our 2 feet of snow has pretty much melted away! Yay…

The new siding job – removing the old from the front and both sides – and replacing the front door and 4 windows in the front, took 2 weeks. The guys lost one day to power outages and the freak snow storm, but they were here rain or shine otherwise and I am completely happy with their work. I would recommend “Branchas Siding” (now called ProVision Exteriors), to anyone.

after house renovations completed — The “after” photo of my home renovations.

My House Make-Over: Off With The Old Clapboards (newenglandsnarrowroad.wordpress.com)
My First Look at The New Siding! (newenglandsnarrowroad.wordpress.com)

Finding Fall Mushrooms

I bought a great mushroom book. It’s written by David L. Spahr and has awesome photos, descriptions and information concerning “Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms of New England and Eastern Canada”.

Even though his photos are great and his explanations of what to look for almost convince me I could find these for my dinner, he warns that many mushrooms have look-a-likes that can be poisonous and I think I have found some of those poisonous ones in my yard.

But all I want to do is identify the ones I see around here, so the book is very helpful. I only buy mushrooms from the grocery store and they have recently begun to offer some new varieties like the Shiitake, Crimini and Black Trumpet which I am planning to try.

mushroom on a tree — Some sort of mushroom

I don’t know what the one in the picture above is. It looks a bit like a deformed “Chicken of the Woods” but I don’t know.

white mushrooms — Little White Mushrooms

I think that the ones pictured here are Coprinus atramentarius. The author talks about the “Shaggy Mane” mushroom and has a photo of others that look similar and I think those are like mine. He says that within a day or 2 they will be “black, inky goop”, so I’ll have to go back out into the woods to see if that’s what happened.

Finish Knitting the Maine Cables Hat – Part 4

Here we are on the last steps of knitting the Maine Cables Hat. Your cables should be done and now we are decreasing and finishing the top.

by Pam 10/17/202610/28/2026

5 Free Textured Knit Scarf Patterns

Welcome the winter season with a new scarf, knit by you! These five free patterns have excellent directions and tutorials to get you started.

by Pam 10/14/2026

Knitting the Cables on the Maine Cables Hat – Part 3

Part three of the knitting pattern Maine Cables Hat is all about making the cables. I can suggest an excellent cable needle that will make the knitting easier.

by Pam 10/12/2026

My New Breville Juicer

My business has been doing well and I decided it was time to do something nice for myself.

Now that I am getting a bit older… ahem… I am trying to eat better foods and do more to keep myself healthy. I thought that the kids might like a juicer too, so I splurged and bought a juicer.

I scoured Amazon, reading all the comments on many different juicers and eventually decided that this one was affordable and had also had great reviews.
So far, I love it. My problem is in finding decent fruit (haven’t done the veggie drinks yet) to use for my drinks.
I love the apple and carrot combo and even my daughter thought it was good (after turning her nose up when hearing “carrots”).

I also love the pineapple (I cut up a fresh one), and strawberry combo.
It’s very easy to use, and must be cleaned right after use. The little mesh basket has it’s own cleaning brush and the entire thing is easy to clean, but I wouldn’t want to try it once the fruit is dried on.
I also bought a book with recipes, but haven’t tried too many of them yet.

juice drink — Apple & Carrot Juice - YUM

Does Snow Kill Black Flies?

Today it’s snowing and I am hoping that this cold day has caught the nasty black flies off-guard and will kill them off.

Yes, it’s April (almost May) in New Hampshire and that means we can start getting a good arm work out whenever we go outdoors. It’s known as the NH wave.

Already the biting bugs are plentiful and making any outdoor chores unpleasant.

You might wonder why I have two eggs in my intro picture and it’s because I had to watch my neighbor’s chickens last week while they were away and I get paid in eggs. It has nothing to do with the rest of my post, but I like to include photos. So now I have lots of eggs, bugs everywhere and a rambling post.

At least the snow has quit falling.

I worked on this picture of a cool looking moth yesterday. I had a customer ask me for something special and this is part of the order I fulfilled. The moth was in my driveway last year.