Sunday was beautiful. It started a bit chilly so we made a fire in the wood stove but by mid-afternoon we were opening windows and putting the screens on the doors to let the beginnings of summer breezes flow through the house, a little late in coming but after hail and snowfall again on Saturday in various parts of the province, this promise of better things to come was welcomed. I washed the car and we puttered in the yard and looking longingly at the water as a sailboat or two drifted by, windswept and exactly where they wanted to be.
Pollen is heavy in the air so hubby is suffering with seasonal allergies and my toe was still aching from having the nail ripped off so we were a good pair. Both of us looked like old farts grunting, bending and getting back up with anything but ease. I stubbed my left thumb fingernail on a rock and tore it back to the skin, what’s with all the ripping and tearing of nails lately! It sure would be nice to live in an apartment without any of these headaches. I could sit on a lounge chair with book or computer, sipping tea and eating seasonal fruit under a big umbrella to shade my delicate skin. Put a little leisure in my life something rare around my house. I wonder if I'd be happy or still find something to whine about?
Sunday is my day off and I had a set goal when I rose. I’m having a wedding shower for my daughter-in-law to be the middle of June and there is a list of improvements needed doing before I host an afternoon bridal tea. You’d think with a list it would be easy to stay on track but as you check off one item you look around and four or five others become glaringly apparent so off I go on another tangent that takes me farther from plan. How did scraping wicker furniture lead to gardening? Weeding was not on the list at all for this weekend but I ended up elbow deep in the warm dirt anyway and I won’t bore you with the bridge to that chore but distractions are everywhere. There is a heck of a lot of work to yard and house maintenance!
The heavy rains washed dirt into our crushed rock pathways so we had to shovel it on to a strainer on top of the wheelbarrow. Hubby did the digging while I pushed them around so the dirt fell through the holes leaving the rocks clean. If you don’t do this then grass grows in the walkway and I have an aversion to that! I like my grass on the lawn where it belongs but it continually tries to outsmart me. Our drive way and parking area is gradually turning green. Paving it right now isn’t an option so I’m going to have to tackle that soon with a pitchfork to loosen the gravel so I can pull the roots out. I can’t use chemicals because of the dogs, I wouldn’t do that anyway so it’s a manual fight for territory. This was terribly hard labour intensive and physically draining but it sure looks great. I wonder how many more years we’ll be able to do this kind of work. I can see about twenty years from now the entire yard will be grass and we’ll have to weedwack our way to the car!
We attached the window boxes and as the screws were going in I’m wondering when I’ll find time to visit a nursery and actually fill them. From the road they look pretty empty; the blue paint against the yellow house is yummy! I wonder what degree of tacky would be registered sticking fake flowers in them. No one would know from the road and I’d look like my green thumb was put to good use. Only I would know the difference and as busy as I am these days, maybe I could live with that kind of fakery. It’s cheating but the end goal is to have a bit of colour around the outside of the house and I really don’t want the upkeep of real plants stressing me out. Window boxes look great most of the time but the rain sometimes drives the dirt up against the window and the plants sometimes fuse with the wooden sill so it is constantly washing and cleaning. Beauty = work! Maybe I’ll leave the boxes empty and tell people I’m going for the minimalist look.
When we hung the front screen door, I noticed the two flanking carriage lamps had oxidized again and flaked the black paint pretty badly. Large chips had fallen off so white showed beneath. You can buy plastic ones but I didn’t have that choice when I bought ours…probably would have opted for the metal ones anyway as I seem to have an aversion to plastic. Unfortunately the black paint only lasts a couple of years before it degrades. Sure I could buy new ones, that don’t need constant maintenance, but the ones we have are perfectly functional so every year I get out the Tremclad metal paint and a sponge brush and give them another coat. You need to scrape off all the loose flakes of paint first, then use a toothbrush to rub away the white oxidized aluminum powder that forms and is the reason the paint won’t stick. Once the surface is prepared then carefully brush on the new paint. I do it while they are on the house so I don’t have to fuss with electric work. They once again look brand new for very little effort and time. Maybe they degrade faster in the salt, sea air so inland this might not happen but it is probably an inexpensive cast aluminum meant to be discarded after a few years of use so the big box store get another sale. The frugal aspect of my personality tries to breathe new life into the inanimate objects I grow attached too, as well as keeping the money in my bank account. It’s faster than driving to the store and doing the electrical work to swap them out. After the paint dries I get out the vinegar and wash the beveled glass and the lights glean once again. I’ve resuscitated them for fifteen years, that’s a lot of savings and they have plenty of life left in them to cover the next couple of decades.
An exciting moment of the day was finding an old silver, five cent coin from 1911 while digging in the garden. I looked it up and it’s worth between four to six dollars, don’t quit the day job hubby! Not a bad investment if you have a few thousand of them. I’ve dug in that patch of soil for years and never spotted it before. In past years, I’ve unearthed blue willow pottery fragments and broken bits of colours glass; it really makes me reflect on the generations of people who lived in our home before us.
Pollen is heavy in the air so hubby is suffering with seasonal allergies and my toe was still aching from having the nail ripped off so we were a good pair. Both of us looked like old farts grunting, bending and getting back up with anything but ease. I stubbed my left thumb fingernail on a rock and tore it back to the skin, what’s with all the ripping and tearing of nails lately! It sure would be nice to live in an apartment without any of these headaches. I could sit on a lounge chair with book or computer, sipping tea and eating seasonal fruit under a big umbrella to shade my delicate skin. Put a little leisure in my life something rare around my house. I wonder if I'd be happy or still find something to whine about?
Sunday is my day off and I had a set goal when I rose. I’m having a wedding shower for my daughter-in-law to be the middle of June and there is a list of improvements needed doing before I host an afternoon bridal tea. You’d think with a list it would be easy to stay on track but as you check off one item you look around and four or five others become glaringly apparent so off I go on another tangent that takes me farther from plan. How did scraping wicker furniture lead to gardening? Weeding was not on the list at all for this weekend but I ended up elbow deep in the warm dirt anyway and I won’t bore you with the bridge to that chore but distractions are everywhere. There is a heck of a lot of work to yard and house maintenance!
The heavy rains washed dirt into our crushed rock pathways so we had to shovel it on to a strainer on top of the wheelbarrow. Hubby did the digging while I pushed them around so the dirt fell through the holes leaving the rocks clean. If you don’t do this then grass grows in the walkway and I have an aversion to that! I like my grass on the lawn where it belongs but it continually tries to outsmart me. Our drive way and parking area is gradually turning green. Paving it right now isn’t an option so I’m going to have to tackle that soon with a pitchfork to loosen the gravel so I can pull the roots out. I can’t use chemicals because of the dogs, I wouldn’t do that anyway so it’s a manual fight for territory. This was terribly hard labour intensive and physically draining but it sure looks great. I wonder how many more years we’ll be able to do this kind of work. I can see about twenty years from now the entire yard will be grass and we’ll have to weedwack our way to the car!
We attached the window boxes and as the screws were going in I’m wondering when I’ll find time to visit a nursery and actually fill them. From the road they look pretty empty; the blue paint against the yellow house is yummy! I wonder what degree of tacky would be registered sticking fake flowers in them. No one would know from the road and I’d look like my green thumb was put to good use. Only I would know the difference and as busy as I am these days, maybe I could live with that kind of fakery. It’s cheating but the end goal is to have a bit of colour around the outside of the house and I really don’t want the upkeep of real plants stressing me out. Window boxes look great most of the time but the rain sometimes drives the dirt up against the window and the plants sometimes fuse with the wooden sill so it is constantly washing and cleaning. Beauty = work! Maybe I’ll leave the boxes empty and tell people I’m going for the minimalist look.
When we hung the front screen door, I noticed the two flanking carriage lamps had oxidized again and flaked the black paint pretty badly. Large chips had fallen off so white showed beneath. You can buy plastic ones but I didn’t have that choice when I bought ours…probably would have opted for the metal ones anyway as I seem to have an aversion to plastic. Unfortunately the black paint only lasts a couple of years before it degrades. Sure I could buy new ones, that don’t need constant maintenance, but the ones we have are perfectly functional so every year I get out the Tremclad metal paint and a sponge brush and give them another coat. You need to scrape off all the loose flakes of paint first, then use a toothbrush to rub away the white oxidized aluminum powder that forms and is the reason the paint won’t stick. Once the surface is prepared then carefully brush on the new paint. I do it while they are on the house so I don’t have to fuss with electric work. They once again look brand new for very little effort and time. Maybe they degrade faster in the salt, sea air so inland this might not happen but it is probably an inexpensive cast aluminum meant to be discarded after a few years of use so the big box store get another sale. The frugal aspect of my personality tries to breathe new life into the inanimate objects I grow attached too, as well as keeping the money in my bank account. It’s faster than driving to the store and doing the electrical work to swap them out. After the paint dries I get out the vinegar and wash the beveled glass and the lights glean once again. I’ve resuscitated them for fifteen years, that’s a lot of savings and they have plenty of life left in them to cover the next couple of decades.
An exciting moment of the day was finding an old silver, five cent coin from 1911 while digging in the garden. I looked it up and it’s worth between four to six dollars, don’t quit the day job hubby! Not a bad investment if you have a few thousand of them. I’ve dug in that patch of soil for years and never spotted it before. In past years, I’ve unearthed blue willow pottery fragments and broken bits of colours glass; it really makes me reflect on the generations of people who lived in our home before us.
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