End Of Another Weekend and The Start of a New Month
The weather is in the 90’s, 32°C for those back home. It’s 9:30pm and the air is still; the humidity in the 60’s. The windows are open at either end of the bedroom and occasionally a gentle breeze will brush over your skin and offer a brief moment of ecstasy.
The end of a perfect weekend of nothing. Nothing but time (for a change). The garden is slowly changing hue from one color to the next as the cherry blossom is all but finished and the saturated red’s of the Azalea wake in it’s shadow. This weekend we spent as much time as the humidity would allow in the yard. Slowly dusting off the signs of Autumn and preparing the garden for summer. We weeded all the vegetable beds and already the Asparagus is plentiful. A few pictures from this weekend:
A moment of relaxation on Sunday after we brought the hammock out into the pine grove. Laying under a fountain of pine trees, sun dancing between the branches as the wind gently brushed them from side to side. A welcome breeze under clear blue skies.
The last few weeks have been the usual day-to-day; working and dealing with traffic. Our vacation to Italy is all booked, a cozy terracotta villa in the valleys of Sienna. The vistas look inviting. Cypress trees and mist over the valley as the cool morning air greets the rising sun. A pool to escape the mid-day sun and a cooling stone interior. Can’t wait.
A day trip to Rome; Maranello the Headquarters of Ferrari an hour away. 5 days and then onto Venice for a long, romantic weekend before heading to the UK for a brief stop over on the way back home.
It’s Almost Spring!
After a turbulent week last week this week was a little more settled; looking forward to new things. Summer just around the corner, temperatures in the 20’s, flowers and trees ready to burst open with a crescendo of color.
Last weekend we finished up the nursery and tried to relax as much as possible.
The following week at work flew by all to quickly and before I knew it we headed into this weekend with great verve. Various packages had been arriving all week from England and one that I’d been waiting for with in particular with great trepidation was an extension lead! With this I was FINALLY able to complete my stereo, to have enough UK outlets to power 4 appliances. Perfect, absolutely perfect. After having the stereo shipped in late January I was finally able to listen to a complete system again and we’ve been enjoying it all weekend!
To compliment everything else Gran had sent over a book of selected scores by John Williams for piano, in particular one piece: “Exultate Justi”. After a night of tinkering on the ivories it dawned on me that I no longer had my John Williams score’s and; in particular mood for one, was resigned to the fact they were probably in mum and dad’s attic some 4000 miles away. To get another copy from Gran was perfect.
On top of that the Atlas interconnect cables I’d ordered from Mann Audio (ironically made in Scotland. Mum/Dad, you need to find this factory!) also arrived. Then; as I thought the week couldn’t get any better another package arrived from Grandad. Fortunately with some fore-sight he’d sent me a selection of British fuses, which is brilliant. If one of my appliances blew a fuse I’d be waiting a couple of weeks for supplies before I could get them up and running again this just made the start of the weekend even more complete.
Not even discovering a small leak in the ceiling could dampen the start of the weekend.
Saturday arrived, a little colder than usual. Rain was forecast for Sunday, with even a remote chance of snow. Just as we thought Spring was here mother nature decided to play her April fool’s. Determined to make the most of the weekend I bundled up. With the ground finally thawed I was determined to complete the step’s I’d started last March!
On Sunday morning I did just that. 39 steps and 78 hand-widdled stakes later. Completed with sections of felled trees, there was nothing more satisfying then building something from nature. In time I’ll probably add a stair rail and next I want to plant some shrubs to line the path. Rhodendrum, or perhaps some soft evergreen’s. I still remember the Woodland Gardens of Glendoick and hope that someday I can create something similar to that. My inspiration! That is if deer don’t eat it all first !
This weekend was great. A project complete, some Spring cleaning up in the garden and generally, all round, life is good!
Now we just need to fix that leak in the ceiling and with a flood watch tonight that means ALOT of rain! Should be interesting.
Some pictures of us relaxing on Sunday.
Operation Nursery and Possibly the most Saturated Weekend on Record
I had grand plans this weekend. Hire a dumpster; have a bit of a pre-Spring clean out. Head to Lowes, buy a ton of materials and deck out the nursery. Greg; who is beyond human in giving of himself to others, was all set for helping out on the trim-work. I’m just super-happy he was able to help out. It’s like the feeling you get when you know a little bit about how to do something, like taking an engine to pieces. You read the Haynes manuals but just having a mechanic with you and to help out just makes you so much happier, and Greg does stuff way quicker than I could even hope for! I was stoked, the stars were in alignment and we were all set for the weekend.
And then came the rain.
Greg joked: “You must feel like you’re in England…”. I reminisced a little, smiled, and figured it’ll only last a day or two. It rained! Not just the drizzle kind or the light rain, but horizontal slashing rain. Continuously. For hours and as it turned out for the entire weekend. So much so that the rain had started to create a mini-stream across the garden. Gravity etching a route across the lawn and down the side of the hill. I’d already diverted the stream from a previous rainstorm along side the drive instead of over it.
I was finding that the rain was lifting the blacktop and blowing the drive out. Now, instead, it cuts around in a ditch I’ve dug and drops over the rocks down the hill. It looks really impressive in heavy rain; we have a mini-waterfall running.
Saturday morning I thought I was going to wake up to an above ground swimming pool; our two tonne dumpster filled with rain water. Fortunately it wasn’t too bad and even though it was still raining hard I wasn’t going to waste the precious two weeks I have the dumpster for. I set out Saturday morning and emptied out half the garage of junk, the shed at the back of the garden was next. I cleared that out. At some point I want to add shelves into it. It’s not too shabby. Maybe 10″ square. Store all my tools in there, make it somewhat of a “man-cave”. Kind of like the garden sheds on old allotments back home in Blighty.
After clearing out the shed I dumped all the old materials that were stashed behind it. Old mailboxes that’d been smashed by years of snow ploughs, old guttering, fencing. Just junk! It all went. By now I was soaked, 2 hours in heavy rain will do that to you so I figured what the heck and decided to rip out two trees that had bugged me last summer. Trees I didn’t want there, but the roots were so set fast it was impossible to remove them.
I suppose you can’t really call them trees. One was a shrub, I think it ‘may’ have been a poison oak bush, with all the rain, gloves and fully clothed, any oil; even if it was poison oak, shouldn’t make it to my skin. With the ground drenched and the soil almost turned to liquid because of it, it didn’t take too much to excavate the root ball either. The other tree is a common variety over here. Seeded by passing birds over-head. It’s a nuisance tree. Kind of like bramble bushes. The root system spreads and shoots new trunks from it so several ‘trees’ are actually growing from one root system. With all the rain that root system came out pretty easily as well. I’m pretty confident for both bushes I took out over 90% of the roots so hopefully those things won’t spring back in a couple of months.
As the rain continued to hammer down, the stream now turning into a brook and gushing over the embankment, I created a dyke to funnel the water into a waterfall over the rocks and down into the gully I’d etched for the water to course before hitting the larger ‘waterfall’ on the lower hill that would send it crashing downhill. If it wasn’t for the drab overhead skies and the constant rain I would have taken more time to appreciate it.
Almost as soon as I’d finished this Greg showed up. It was 11am, perfect! I got showered, changed and we measured up our future nursery. I think I’ve definitely gone into ‘hunter-gatherer’ mode or something because right now I’m all about prepping the house. The spring clean up, cleansing ourselves of all the junk in the house. It felt good to throw half that stuff into the dumpster.
With Greg working the numbers in the nursery like some crazy relative of Albert Einstein. 12′ of this, 6′ of 4″x1″. This and that, myself, my brain just racing to keep up with it all. Greg does this everyday, it’s natural, it was instinctual. Amazed, I just nodded, vaguely comprehending everything we needed. Complete faith that whatever we had on that list the numbers were spot-on. List ready we headed to Lowes. Awesome! My favorite place. About an hour later we we’re set. Caulk, Wood, Brad Nails (O! Yeah! we used nail guns!), Wainscoting, Snap-Line (well that was for me. Greg has one and it’s the coolest idea. Take a piece of string loaded with colored chalk, hold it tight, twang/’snap’ the line for a quick straight line over a long distance. Awesome!).
Materials set we loaded his truck up and headed home. After we unloaded and set the garage up as the workshop, the original plan was to use the deck, but with all the rain the garage really was the only option. We setup the table-saw, ran the compressor hose outside the house and up through the nursery window. Greg has an amazing array of tools, kind of makes sense; he is a carpenter, but to see those tools. Every time it’s great, an ‘I need one those’ moments a million times over. The clamps, the power-tools, the nail-guns. I think, if I wasn’t a programmer, I’d want to do something my hands. Use all these tools.
We quickly set about ripping out all the old ‘trim’. Sorry; before I go any further some quick translating for folks in the UK. ‘Trim’ is a term used to describe the woodwork, which typically comprises of the following: ‘Baseboard’ or translated; ‘Skirting Board’, ‘Crown Moulding’, that’s ‘Coving’. We also had chair-rail and some wainscoting. Wainscoting is hard to describe, but it’s very ‘New England’, the Wiki places it with Victorian Architecture, and in some houses it’s very intrinsic. For us. Well, we kinda’ just like it!
After throwing all the old trim to the ground (later to the dumpster), we set about ’snapping’-lines and generally outlining layout on the walls. Then began a day of more measuring, cutting, trying pieces out and my favorite part. Nailing them to the wall. With a nail gun! Marvelous invention!
As the day progressed the room slowly started to take shape. I had some incidents with the hammer, missing a couple of times and truly embracing the old saying ‘blood, sweat, and (almost) tears’.
We eventually called it a day and all sat down for some pizza before wrapping it up for the night.
Sunday. Still more rain. We’d all planned to meet up early. 8am (really 9am, we ‘Spring’ forward an hour this weekend), Jen cooked us all breakfast. Bacon, eggs, sausage and set us out right for the day.
We headed down to the garage to set up ’shop’ again, but on the way down I noticed, with all that rain, the lower part of the garage had partially flooded. With all this water the water table must have risen, or something, because the pump room (where the water-well is) was all backed up, flooded and pouring over the floor. I moved everything that was easily saturated and left the plastic boxes in place and noted that it wasn’t ‘too’ bad, prayed (and still praying) for a let-up in the rain, and that maybe we should drink bottled water for the rest of the week. Bacteria is my biggest concern with Jen being pregnant. Bad bacteria is not good! With our drinking water coming from a well, and, like most American homes, having in-ground septic tanks, that it might be a good idea to avoid well-water for a week. I’m not saying that we’re drinking poop! (a septic tank is usually a chunk of concrete designed to hold around 2000 gallons of sewage). Yeah! this is making me cringe too, but that’s what you get for living in the wilds. No mains sewage or city water. Septic and well water.
Anyway, suffice it to say, with all this excess water gushing around I’m gonna’ play it safe.
After prepping the garage a little we were back in business. Measuring, cutting, more incidents with the hammer. Lets just say, at the end of this weekend, I may as well have just stuck my hand on a belt-sander. They feel rough! There is skin missing, little cuts all over the place and dried caulk all over them.
It’s totally worth it. We wrapped it up mid-afternoon and by then the nursery was looking amazing. Crown molding complete, baseboard, most of the wainscoting all set. Next week I’m gonna’ spend my evenings filling the nail holes, caulking and sanding before we have a little paint-party and really finish it all up. We just need to complete behind the radiator and under the window, it’s going to looks awesome and I can’t wait! Thank you Greg.
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