What's new as of 4.19

We had a busy weekend. Mowed the lawn for the first time (the benefit of letting the grass grow so long is that when you mow, it actually looks like you have a real lawn and not a bunch of patches of grass) and cleaned out the garage. I didn't take a before picture, but it was really getting out of hand. There was a three-foot-wide walkway through the rubble, and the walkway was starting to get covered. This made navigating the garage at night a peril-wrought journey, and that's not counting other dangers, like spiders.

We emptied out the contents, which we discovered was mostly trash (boxes, styrofoam, other assorted packaging materials) and put it back together, and now we have an enviably organized garage. Without doors. You can't win 'em all.

The bathroom upstairs is also looking a lot better, after a few rounds of bleach-based cleaner and the removal of those curtains. I don't know what it is about removing curtains from houses, but it really makes a difference. I remember when my parents first bought the house I grew up in, and we pulled down the Carter-era burlap-sack-resembling curtains in the living room. Dust streamed down from above our heads, illuminated by the afternoon sun. And the room was transformed without the curtains. I'm going to put a few rugs down on the floor, and I'm thinking about pulling up the carpet on the window ledge and planking over it (so it looks kind of farmhouse-y). The wallpaper isn't horrible, and there's no reason to start fooling with it because we're probably years away from redoing that bathroom.

I'm hoping to make some real headway on the guest room this week. De-clutter, maybe get a chair for the corner and get the bed made up. It'd be really awesome to walk in there and have it look like a peaceful bedroom. Having a whole house to decorate is an awful lot of fun. Unlike our tiny house in Pasadena, this isn't done in a week. I love it.

Moving outside

The past week or so, we've been chipping away at finishing the rock wall. A few more stones here, a shovel of dirt there...

I got rid of the rest of the leaves and rubble yesterday, so it was finally ready for a picture just after sundown (hence the blur). We also planted honeysuckle bushes on Sunday (rather an appropriate Easter activity). You can see those in the bed. The plan is to put dahlias in front of those, then calibrochoa (aka million bells) to hang down over the wall. Sadly, everything will be annuals (the honeysuckle is deciduous, so it'll lose its leaves for the winter) but we'll have some nice summer color. Landscaping is hard work.

I also am chipping away at the leaves that are everywhere. I cleaned out and carted a few wheelbarrow loads to the back 40 yesterday. The raspberries were almost buried in leaves, and I doubt that's really all that good for their growth. I am very excited about HAVING raspberries, though. Hopefully they will be easy to get berries from. The berries are in this picture, just left of center. And yes, the backyard does still look pretty awful, but it's improving. Slowly. And we're going to mow the lawn this weekend, which I'm sure the neighbors will appreciate.

What's new as of 4.5

Hi...sorry for the silence. We haven't really been up to much around the house, so there hasn't been as much to say. Plus we had a string of beautiful sunny days, which makes being on the computer unappealing to me. As you'll see from the video, we rebuilt a rock wall around what will be a flowerbed next to the pool.

On Saturday morning, we went and picked up some dirt from people who responded to my craigslist ad for topsoil. It took us 45 minutes to load into the trailer, and Todd another 45 to unload (my arms were shot by that point, and I couldn't really move, so I supervised. I swear every time I walk past the pile it looks smaller. We will probably need more, which neither of us is looking forward to.

We're still trying to figure out what to do with the pool, so if anyone has any brilliant pool-cleaning tips they've been withholding, please share. Our neighbor said that it had been fully drained before, and we're quickly approaching the point where we might do that, with summer around the bend and all. (Previously, we had thought it would "float" or lift out of the ground on its pipes, then crack, which would be catastrophically bad, but if it's been drained before, maybe it'd be ok.)

The yard is the overwhelming thing at this point. It seems like we keep working at it in little pieces, and it's not really changing. It was such a mess when we got it that we knew it would take a lot to bring around, but I wish things were changing faster. And in order to clean up one mess, we have to make another, which is also frustrating. Example: to rebuild the wall, I had to scatter all the rocks out so I could see them. Since I didn't use all of them, I now have a pile of scattered rocks in the yard. Lovely.

We have been formulating some plans for the rest of the yard, though. Next time, I'll update you on that. I have a diagram and EVERYTHING.