A new adventure

Now that we have finished up most of the remodel, and I am making inroads on the garden attack of the Weeds of the Overwhelming Variety, it should come as no surprise that we have not had enough chaos in the house in the last few weeks. This is expected to be remedied in the near future by the addition of a puppy. We looked around and researched breeds and have decided that an English Springer Spaniel will fit our requirements nicely.

These requirements being: good family dog, will play nicely with wee humans, will be of the hunter/retriever variety, and is large enough that Nate cannot injure it if he runs into in the dark hallway and small enough so that even when it is full grown it will look like I am walking it and not vice versa.

We are lucky enough to have two breeders for English Springers just a short drive away, and so were able to find a litter that will be old enough to take home yet this summer. This weekend we went to visit the puppies at the breeder. They are about 4wks old, and do not stop moving.

The whelping box is divided into two parts, one with a heat lamp, and the other with water and mom. This ideally will give mom a break when she starts weaning them. I'm not sure how long this 'break' will last seeing as they are getting quite adept at climbing over the partition.

The puppies have just started exploring around, and are not content with their side of the box.

They also like shoelaces.

And they are just now big enough to see over the edge of mom's water bowl.

Finally one stood still long enough for me to get a good picture.

One more month until we find out who will get to come home with us. That also means one month to get the house and garden puppy-proof. Oof.

Weeds, weeds and more weeds!

At my other house, I thought having a bit of garden was great. A few flowers, some veg and herbs, a back patio with fire pit, and look how nice my backyard is. This was also the initial thought I had had when moving to my Small Town. I have a much much bigger backyard, that came with much much more garden. 2300 square feet of garden to be exact. This means A LOT of area for growing of the above mentioned items.

You saw the nice flowers in my last post, but alas, this is not the way the entire yard and gardens look. Oh no, not at all. The rest of the garden seems to have been taken over by Weeds of the Overwhelming Variety. For the last few weeks I have been pulling weeds and pulling weeds and pulling more weeds. I have been trying to get them out by the roots so that they Will Not Return. I am not sure how well this will go, or if the Weeds of the Overwhelming Variety will win. I have now worn a pathway from my driveway to the local compost site with the pickup truck. I hope that they can make the weeds and their seeds die a painful death.

Here is what the 2300 square feet of garden started out looking like. You may not see them, but in these pictures are full-grown peony bushes, coneflowers, raspberry bushes, and a yucca. I know they are there, I saw them last year when I started out weeding. I then stopped, as I realized that I was probably pulling just as many flowers as weeds, so decided to wait things out and see what popped up.

In an effort to combat the return of the Weeds of the Overwhelming Variety, I measured the garden space (hence the knowledge that there are 2300 square feet) and ordered some mulch. Actually, more than some mulch. A Lot of Mulch. A giant amount of mulch. So much so, that when I called around for prices, the mulch people all asked if I were a commercial property. One woman even said she felt sorry for me that there was so much garden to reclaim. The end amount of mulch currently sitting in my driveway is 13 cubic yards. Not cubic feet, but yards.

This is enough mulch to fill a smaller sized dump truck, and creates a pile larger than our pickup. Now the plan is to shovel the mulch into a wheelbarrow, cart it to the other end of the yard, and pitchfork it into place. I figure if I put down about 4" of mulch it should help. It has to, I can't justify using that much weedkiller in one yard.

Flower Power

I decided to take a bit of a break from working on the house projects to play in my gardens. They are immense. In fact, there is more garden here than the size of my entire previous lot, I think. This makes for a lot of weeds, but also makes for a lot of flowers. Part of last summer I spent trying to identify what exactly I had in my gardens. Mostly weeds, but a few nice flowering plants.

Here are some that have bloomed quite nicely this year.

Daffodils
(much earlier than this, but they fit nicely in this post)
Bachelor's Buttons (aka Cornflower)

Bleeding Heart

Bearded Iris (Purple)

Johnny-Jump-Ups
(which I didn't know were perennials here)

Peonies
(I have both pink and white, but only have the pink in the picture)

Climbing Roses

Giant Allium

Lots of Stripping

For the last few weeks, I've been working on the stair project. As it was my idea to take the carpet off the stairs, it's my job to get them looking nice. I started out stripping the glue off with wood stripper. Normally it only takes a few minutes for the finish to get soft. This glue is so thick that it takes a minimum of 4 hours for the stripper to work. And even then I think I'm going to have to go over everything again.

The challenge in this project is to keep the stairs usable at all times, as we really do want to use our new upstairs. I'm stripping both the treads and the risers to hopefully get them to a stainable condition.

Here is the pile of old finish and glue from just 3 of the stair steps. I can't imagine how much I'll have at the end.


Meanwhile, Nate has been working on stripping and refinishing the window trim in our bedroom. He'd like to have curtains back on again, rather than multiple layers of poly film. I can't imagine why.

As he was working away, he discovered that the name of the manufacturer was still stamped on the bottom of the sill. Kind of neat to find it still there after all of these years. I guess you don't look at the bottom of a window sill that often.

A sign of spring!

Today we a great day to be outside, nice weather, nice temperature, and things are very green. Additionally, it is always interesting to see what the other creatures in our yard are doing with such nice weather. We have several families of birds located near us, which makes me a bit nervous, seeing as there are quite a few neighborhood cats around. I guess it will be survival of the fittest.

Today our entertainment was provided by a young robin just out of the nest. He couldn't fly yet, but hopped all over our yard. We were able to get some fairly close up pictures, as apparently his mother hasn't told him to stay away from strangers.

First, he hopped around the yard.

Checked out the compost heap.

Then, he investigated our fire pit.

And then finally decided to see what was in our garage.

He checked out the lawn mower, the bicycles, and the random pieces of plywood before leaving. This made me a bit nervous, as I didnt' want to accidentally shut him in with no food.

Sweaters Galore!

Here's a picture of all of the sweaters that I have in my possession that have been knit by my grandmother over the years. My mom is making a scrapbook of all of the sweaters that they can find that she's knit up for various people, so I got mine together to take a picture.

I guess I have a ways to go to catch up.

House update: We are now the proud owners of yet another new toilet, as when the original toilet was being retro-fitted with a new handle, someone tightened it too much and cracked the tank. Oh well, this one is much more water efficient.

Our "new" den and the stairs revealed

Finally, with all of the major activities getting finished upstairs, we were able to finally get the den primed and painted. It went from a rather sickly pea green to a nice denim blue. We actually managed to get everything painted in one coat, so now we have a leftover gallon of blue paint.

Anyone want something painted denim blue?

This also allowed us to move the first floor furniture back into its proper places, in effect doubling the size of our rooms. All in just 20 minutes!

I also decided to start pulling the carpeting off of our staircase. It was shiny, shimmery blue and very dirty from this project. It also the only installed carpeting left in the house. Things started off well. I pulled the carpet up from the landing and found the maple hardwood flooring still intact and in decent shape. It should only need a bit of sanding and some new finish to look nice again.Then I pulled the carpet off the stairs. And pulled, and pulled some more. Then pulled the carpet padding off also. And what did I find?? Staples, lots and lots of staples. I think whomever put in this carpet used the entire store's supply of staples. Who needs this many staples to hold down a piece of carpet?!? I mean really. Leave some for someone else. I also found glue on the stair treads. A few different types in fact. This will need to be either stripped with wood stripper, or sanded, or both. We will see how this project goes.

At least the risers are still in good shape, and are actually rather pretty. They will need ridding of their staples, but should also be pretty salvageable.

In another interesting bit, we found out that someone had also put at least 10 screws in the tread of each stair step, in effect permanently making the stairs squeaky. Nate removed all the screws one night, and the stairs creaked and groaned for a half an hour while they settled back into place to match up with the house again. So even though the stairs should be louder without the carpet, they are actually quieter due to less squeaking.