Backyard Espresso in Palm Springs

Happy Spring!

We've had a few weeks of glorious weather in Portland, but it seems that the rain is settling back in for a bit. I call this time of the year "Fake Spring" since it suddenly is like 75 degrees and sunny for a week and you think/hope winters over but it's not. There's another month of rain ahead. Usually, this happens in May-ish, but it was a bit early this year. Luckily this wasn't my first time in 2024 experiencing warmer weather since Charlie and I were just in Palm Springs visiting our friends Joshua and Jeremy (👋). We hung out at their house, watched movies, hung out in the pool, and took a tram ride up to the San Jacinto Peak which was beautiful and terrifying.

This spring we've officially started the backyard beautification project. The first thing we did was order the Hay chairs we'd been talking about buying for the yard for about a year. They were finally on sale so we jumped at the chance to get them.

We've known for a while that our goal was to eliminate the grass from our property which meant doing some landscaping in the backyard similar to what we've done in our front yard with wood chips and rocks. In the end, we decided on a rock path that leads to a large circular area for sitting/hanging out in. I'm calling it the conversation penis after my friend Kaya sent the following photo to me after sending it to a group chat:

We rented a sod cutter to remove the top layer of grass for the rock area. At first, Charlie had said "I think I'm just going to dig it out with a shovel." to which I replied "Girl. You could rent a tool for $85 and have it done in 20 minutes. Do you want to spend 2 days digging and destroying your back? Not on my watch!"

Getting all the rocks in was about 3 days of shoveling and wheelbarrowing them from the street to the backyard. It's a layer of under gravel and then the nice gravel on top of that so it was double the work I thought it was going to be. It was exhausting and I hated it but seeing it all done and starting to get an idea of how the backyard's going to look is exciting. The next step is to chip the remaining area and then plant lots of things in the chips sometime next year once the cardboard underneath the chips is given the chance to decompose.

In other news, our new house numbers finally came. A while back I ordered a custom plate with our last names on it to replace the shitty house numbers we had on our old siding. It was custom made so it took about 3 months to finally show up. It's cute as shit though.

I bought a used Breville espresso machine on offer up a few years back because I was trying to save money after realizing I was buying like 4 lattes a week at $7 a pop. Buying that machine led me down a path of reading/watching a shit load of coffee content and trying to learn as much as I could about all things espresso. I'd been thinking about getting a nicer machine and over the several months I spent researching I also knew the crown jewel espresso machine I wanted was a yellow Linea Micra by La Marzocco. It was beautiful, but basically the price of a well-loved used car. After thinking long and hard on it I decided I didn't want to spend so much money and opted to buy a much more reasonably priced machine from an espresso store here in Portland.

I had that machine for a few days but just kept thinking "This is nice and all, but it's not that stunning La Marzocco machine. I wish I would've bought one of those." So now...

What was once just a means to save money has become a thing I've sunk a shit load of money into. Oh well, making coffee is my favorite thing to do and sometimes I just stare at this espresso machine and say out loud to myself "God that thing is pretty." It was worth it. For my birthday this year I want to do a home coffee shop pop-up called "Cafe Joseph" and invite friends over and make everybody coffee drinks with a menu, branded cups, etc. I'm pumped about that. For now, the espresso setup lives on our countertop but my friend Cameron (who built our kitchen cabinetry) is building me an espresso cabinet where this thing will live and be the crown jewel of the kitchen. Of course, you'll see that here on the blog as soon as it's done!

I'm pumped for the backyard project to be wrapped up soon and to be sitting in the sun in my Danish outdoor chairs drinking an iced latte. We have two chairs so come join me!

joseph

PS: we really like that new Dua Lipa album. Check it out!