Uninspired, but busy! The story of our landscaping…

The title says it all. Despite being pretty busy these days, I am feeling a bit uninspired and didn’t want to just bore you with drivel. But now it’s been a week, so I guess… bore away! ;) No, no – I’ll try harder! (Also, our landscaping is totally uninspired and very busy...)

So busy, you say? Yes… A bit. In all my house buying posts, I think I mentioned that the house we bought needed a bit of work. I mean – not so much a fixer upper as “well cared for” in real estate parlance – i.e., nothing has been updated in YEARS. We did a bit, but then ran short on time, money, stamina and stopped for a bit. But as it got warmer outside we realized that “well cared for” did not extend to our yard. Nothing had been done there – even basic upkeep – in a LONG, LONG time. We have this small fenced in area behind the house, but then our yard extends much further beyond the fence (not like miles – like our yard is maybe 2 or 2.5x as big as the small fenced part) and that was crazy overgrown. Just unusable. In the front, we have a big oak right in front of the house surrounded by ivy – crazy ivy everywhere! As we can’t seem to grow grass (apparently oaks suck up a lot of water? Who knew?), the ivy was ground cover. But now one had kept it in check – it extended into the back and even into the “woods” behind us. Then to the side (still in the front), we have another little “forest” (ok, not really – it’s small. But so overgrown you can’t walk through it. I tried raking it in the spring and 10 bags later you couldn’t tell I’d done anything.)

We needed to get to work. My husband started pulling out the overgrowth in front of the house (azalea bushes that hadn’t been trimmed back in this millennium and other overgrowth). As he did, he found a huge stump a few feet from the house – old and rotten and just never removed. He took load after load to the dump. This was getting old…

So we decided to rent a dumpster. We had SO MUCH undergrowth to attack, but also there were several trees that needed to come down. Dead and dying ones. Ones that abutted the house ruining our roof, whose roots were headed into the foundation. Ones that should have been trimmed back years ago! The dumpster arrived last Monday and work commenced. My husband started pulling out brush and cutting down trees while I was at work and my Mom stayed with us to watch the baby. In a couple of days, the dumpster was pretty full. We called to see about replacing it (and this is where it gets hairy). Due to miscommunication, we thought the replacement was included in our contract – but really, it was a whole new dumpster. It arrived Thursday morning and was half full by the end of the day. As we thought the replacements were included, I suggested that maybe we should get a new one on Friday in case they couldn’t deliver on the weekends. We ordered one. But that evening, my husband thought through his conversation with the dumpster company. Had they actually said it was included? Well, no. And it didn’t really make sense to include it… I mean, they were expensive to get out to us. He called them back. Not included. This was a whole new dumpster / new contract / new fee. Crap! We cancelled the 3rd one coming and the guy was really nice and gave us a bit of a discount (about 20%). So now we are filling the hell out of this thing.

Now I don’t like to think of myself as a “girly” girl, but really – I’m not exactly great with the Great Outdoors. Each day I’ve been helping us clear things out I’ve attired myself in long pants tucked into my socks (just to make sure I look as dorky as possible), a shirt, a hat (God knows what creepy crawlies are out there!) and more bug spray than you can imagine! Then I’ve gone about tripping over myself as I haul away branches and wheel barrows – stopping to think, I look like a bad tv show / movie about idiots in the woods as the branches manage to catch on the fence as I pass and then hit me in the face.

But the progress has been amazing. We managed to create a huge clearing beyond our fence (that might once day house a swing set or maybe a little patio. Or, per my husband, a pit bbq…) on Thursday. On Friday morning we looked out and saw four large bucks standing in! Of course we weren’t on top of getting pictures, but man, it was really cool! My husband said he also saw a lone Indian crying out there and maybe the Lorax…

Once all the bigger stuff was gone we moved on to the mind numbingly repetitive / boring part… Cutting back the brush, raking out all the leaves, getting all the small crap into the dumpster. Kill me now. While I worked on this, my husband started attacking the stumps (so his work was more back breakingly hard than mind numbingly boring). I’ve suggested we paint the remainder of the larger ones and make them into little tables for a play area for my daughter (I think I saw that on a home improvement show once… something like that…).

Anyway, the hard labor continues. The real problem with it all that my husband noted is that the place was SO overgrown before that despite a week of hard work, no one would look at yard and think – wow, that looks amazing! Or even really good. We’ve just barely gotten it up to the clean slate of what it “should” look like now. On the “amazing” front… I can’t even pick out paint colors (When I was at my old job, we painted the condo bedrooms. I got the intern (marketing) to pick out the colors for me because I was too lame to figure it out for myself. And my husband is color blind.). I don’t think I’m going to do well with trees…

So if you have any suggestions for plantings that do well without a ton of sun and oak trees soaking up all the moisture (is there a grass that will survive this?), let me know! Or any great (and super cheap) design ideas? Or ways to get cheap materials? We have space – not great space, but space. And maybe even some skill (the “we” here refers entirely to my husband). But creativity and vision… it’s always something, isn’t it?

Visiting friends and redoing a bathroom – all in all, just your average holiday weekend

The trip up to NJ also meant that we’d be home / near a number of my other friends who we so rarely see. So lest there be a moment to sit, I started making plans to see them – and their babies!

Saturday we visited a friend about 15 minutes away from my Mom. She’s got a 3 year old girl and a baby just younger than our munchkin. It was so funny to see the munchkin with the littler one – we’ve never had to tell her “gentle!” and try to correct her around a smaller child. She’s always the smaller child! Their older daughter had just woken up from her nap and was still a little bit cranky, but honestly adorable! Her Mom worried a lot about her, as the 3 year old has Down’s Syndrome. I know that she must present a lot of difficult challenges for her parents, but I have to say, she always just warms our hearts so much! She’s the type of kid who you look at and think – yes, I want to have children! (Her Mom admits she gets away with a lot more than she should by being adorable.)

Unfortunately the little girl was recently diagnosed with Celiac Disease, which requires a gluten free diet. As this is a genetic disease, her Mom and sister must both now be tested. My friend is really a bit down about this as life seems to be piling on the challenges for her. It makes me sad that she really seems to see the challenges far more clearly than the joys. I don’t want to seem insensitive here – there have been many challenges – brain surgery in her 20s, then her father passed away very young, her first child has Down’s, then she was diagnosed as pre-diabetic, etc. But on the other hand, she has these two beautiful daughters who have the potential to bring so much joy! So my hope/prayer for her – more than her test results on Celiac – is that she’s able to find the joy in her life.

The next day, again, lest we sit for a moment!, we headed into NYC to visit some friends from college. One has a 3 year old and a 1 year old – it was so fun to watch our munchkin interact with her (I really need to find a playgroup for this kid!). The other doesn’t have kids, but really enjoys being an auntie to the little ones! The trip into the city was a pain (the car to the train to the subway to –where the heck is their apartment!?), but it was a pretty relaxing afternoon with them. Then we, of course, JUST MISSED the train home (they seem to bunch them 3 together then a long wait for the next one) and had to wait an hour. Oh well.

The one thing I forgot to mention in all this mess is… in the middle, my husband was somehow pulled into another major home improvement project at my Mom’s! This was probably actually a smaller project by the standards established on his prior visits – only ripping down one wall to replace some plumbing fixtures… It started with the simple request to replace the showerhead in the upstairs bathroom – something my Mom could probably due herself, but isn’t entirely confident to do, I guess. These were the sorts of things my Dad handled. So in the talk about this one, she noted that the cold water pressure was so bad downstairs, that shower was unusable. So my husband offered to take a look at it. Why? I’m not sure… Turns out the pipe was clogged – he guessed probably at the fixture, but maybe it was deeper into her plumbing. If it was deeper into the plumbing, he couldn’t help. But… if she wanted… he could pull down the bathroom wall to take a look there. Well, of course, she wanted! He told her if he couldn’t fix it, it might leave a mess, but maybe it would save her some labor costs on a plumber. And, anyway, this would insure the plumber went in through the wall, not the shower (a far more expensive fix with tiling).

Luckily, it was the easier repair – only the fixture had to be replaced. He was able to get the shower running again, re-dry walled it and put the paneling back up. It doesn’t match exactly in the corner, but if you’re not looking closely, you can’t even tell he was in there (and he’s said the corner is an easy fix – for NEXT TIME!).

So yes, a busy visit. As always!