Making Do…In Other Words, It Was Free

The brick house across the alley and behind us is being renovated. So far, they’ve pulled out and dumped two full semi-trailer length dumpsters full. A third one is now being filled. Among the refuse were several cabinets…

I just couldn’t help myself…

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We need to replace the hanging hardware for the cabinet door on the left. It broke off when it was thrown into the dumpster, but the door itself is fine.

Yes, they are varying sizes in height and width…

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But they were going to be thrown out!

In the dump!

They weren’t broken…or even badly damaged (except for being thrown in the dumpster, which partially broke a drawer and loosened the frame on one of the cabinets).

So at the moment my kitchen looks rather crowded…

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I  have been agonizing over the configuration of the kitchen for a while now. Part of me is still dreaming of this beautiful hoosier cabinet I saw at a furniture store. It had been listed for less than $500 and was perfectly intact – flour sifter, sugar bin, rotating spice jars, the WORKS. At the time I had seen it I had no idea I would be moving, and when we had measured it found it too big for my old kitchen.

My mom had been itching to buy it for me for Christmas, but I said no, since we couldn’t fit it in our house. A month later, when buying this house became a reality, I called the furniture store back, but it was already gone.

Ever since I’ve been tossing about what to do. Do I find a Hoosier cabinet? Or do I install more cabinets on the wall above and below and then add a kitchen island in the middle?

And while that is still up in the air. I’ve lined all of these cabinets and drawers (after thoroughly washing them first) with a nice sturdy wallpaper. It’s so much better than contact paper, and prettier too.

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I need to spray some adhesive and attach the wallpaper which is in there loose right now.

We have some MDF board from a different project left over and I’m going to nag Dave into cutting some pieces to cover the tops of these cabinets. You can see one sort of just sitting there over part of the cabinet top.

My cure to non-matching cabinets is to paint them – so I’ll probably do that this fall or winter. Painting projects are strictly cold weather activities – for when I’m stuck in the house spinning my wheels. Eventually we could cover them with matching granite and an old fashioned backboard like Jim and Sherry put in this side of the kitchen…

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I think I’ll move the red cabinet out of here, along with the glass and white cabinet as well…

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That will leave just the butcher block that holds my heavily used pots and pans.

I’ll work with that configuration for a while and see how I like it.

It is amazing to me what people will throw away. They could have called Habitat for Humanity and donated them for a tax write-off. Instead they just threw them away.

That’s okay for this time, though. I’m happy to take them. Stay tuned, I’ll post pictures of them again once they are all covered and in use.

Big House? Lots of Cleaning

I’ll admit it, I about lost my sanity early last week. I looked around at this big old house and thought, What in the hell am I doing to myself?! It’s a mess, ALL the time, and I’ve got projects and crap to do every second of the day and then some!

Chalk it up to my impending birthday. Or the fact that I usually have a “crisis moment” hit with regularity every few months or so. It is that moment when you think, I’m going in fifty directions at once and getting NOTHING done.

In any case, I sat down and decided to try out the following cleaning schedule:

  • Mondays – OFF (I inevitably have cleanings that day, usually two of them, and besides its the start of the week, who wants to clean on the first day of the new week?!)
  • Tuesdays – Upstairs (except bathroom) dust, declutter, and clean windows if needed.
  • Wednesdays – Front of main level (front entry, parlor, living room, dining room) dust, declutter, and clean windows if needed.
  • Thursdays – Back of main level (homeschool room, utility room, kitchen) dust, declutter and clean windows if needed
  • Fridays – Clean both bathrooms and vacuum and mop all floors
  • Weekend – laundry and projects (outside projects in warm months, inside projects in cold months)

I started on Friday, my birthday, with a thorough cleaning of both bathrooms as well as vacuuming and mopping. I can’t believe how many mop covers I go through on my steam mop – the floors are always so gross! I’m hoping this will change once the fence is built and the dogs come in and out of the back door instead of tracking through the front of the house with their muddy paws, but we will see.

In any case, I was actually rather excited to get to work on Tuesday. I wanted to see how much I could accomplish and it makes me feel good when I see a marked difference in our house. I started with our master bedroom. It looked like this…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERALaundry to be put away, dog bed in disarray, and general clutter added to the mess. It also needed a good dusting. So, I de-cluttered, cleaned the windows and dusted, and now it looks like this…

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and…

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I have so much room in this “outer bedroom” that it has gotten me to thinking about a future bathroom expansion – we could double the size of the bathroom, just by taking a chunk out of this room. Hmmmm…

I doubt I’ll need to wash windows or even dust next Tuesday. And hopefully there won’t be too much clutter now that I’ve emptied out drawers in one of the dressers and moved the contents (quilt supplies) up to the attic. Now I’ll have room to store the towels that are for the bathroom.

The library and my office were looking rather cluttered as well. My desk is a well-known collector of all things paper – and I even had the other half of my desk (un-usable in the space) and a huge six foot section of dry-erase board cluttering up my floor and covering the view of the fireplace…

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and…

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Now the two rooms look loads better…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABy the way, that office chair above only cost $25 at Habitat Restore in Waldo! They have loads more. The chair is light, easy to roll, and has lumbar support. I love it! The wooden chair has now been “retired” into a visitor’s chair.

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We moved the desk and white board up to the attic. I can see my fireplace again! Also, check out this old ladder…

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A company has been renovating the brick house behind us and throwing out all kinds of stuff. One was this old ladder. It looks as if it might have been hand-hewn and it is so sturdy! I need to wash it down with Murphy’s oil soap and I’m trying to decide whether it needs a nice coat of polyurethane or should I paint it to match the walls of the library? (When I paint, that is, which won’t be until fall/winter) What do you think? Send me your opinions!

I also tackled the front bedroom, which wasn’t too bad, but is in dire need of Dave’s participation. The boxes in it are full of electronics gear and Star Wars memorabilia…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYes, there is a cat there on the bed.

I couldn’t do much about the boxes, but I did round up fabric and bedding that didn’t need to be in the room and of course I dusted as well…

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Emily’s room proved only slightly challenging. I didn’t try and tackle it with her until we had returned from Story Time and a cleaning. Even later than that, since she hadn’t finished her homeschool work, which had to come first. It looked like this when we began…

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Emily cannot seem to understand why she needs to clean her own room. My response is always the same, “You made the mess, why should I have to clean it up?” Her answers vary, but in the end, I’m in the room barking orders. “Put that in with the other Legos. No, no, no, don’t just leave that on the floor, do something with it!”

It’s endless and maddening and usually involved her dad and one or both of us losing our tempers at least once.Tuesday was surprisingly different. Emily picked up her Legos, tidied a little bit and together we made the bed…

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And just in case you think that cleaning a mess doesn’t mean making an even bigger initial mess, this is what our upstairs hallway looked like before everything was moved to its respective home…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYikes! It got better once Dave got home to help me carry all the stuff up. But I fear our attic is getting rather cluttered. Kind of like our basement – still, the living areas are more important right now.

I’m not aiming for perfection here. But I’ll be more than happy if I can actually exist in a relatively clean house. It will relieve a great deal of my stress!

As for the remainder of the priorities on my chalkboard wall – well – one thing at a time, right?!

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Green and Blooming

Spring always seems to sneak up on me. I look with anxious eyes for any signs of it, overjoyed at the first bulbs, miserable as the weather continues to swing back and forth, bitter cold and the occasional warm day.

Then, almost by magic, I look around and see green…everywhere. And my heart is happy again. Here are some of the highlights from the last couple of days.

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The picture above might not look like much, but give it a year or two and it will be phenomenal. There are iris, tulips, daylily, and some native blooming plants on each “corner” of the front walkway. I have decided to continue to add perennial bulbs over time, ones that bloom in early spring through late summer, in order to have a constant show of color throughout the year.

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Marge, a librarian from the North Independence Library was kind enough to give me these lovely columbine, which are now fully blooming. She also gave me quite a few lemon balm plants, which I immediately planted in the “greenway” – the patch of dirt between the street and the sidewalk.

Note: I am actively looking for all varieties of mint plants to further fill the greenways in front of our property. If you have any to spare, please let me know and I will come to you! I’m looking for more: chocolate mint, pineapple mint, spearmint, peppermint, lemon balm, catmint (and any others I haven’t mentioned).

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The lovely rosebush that was part and parcel with the property (I think Cranky Puppy planted it) is now blooming happily.

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Our yellow flag water iris, dug up and brought here from the old house (and not yet planted, poor thing) is blooming despite our flagrant abuse. I love all iris for this very reason – the bulbs are hardy enough to survive me and my neglectful ways.

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Just look at those blue potato plants (along with plenty of radishes)! They are growing so well. I’m excited to see them prospering. The soil is quite sandy and mostly fill dirt from the Missouri river. I’m quite curious to see how well our various plants do in it. Amendments will have to wait until I have a serious compost pile going.

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Here are some Yukon Gold potatoes and also beets. The beets are growing rather slowly, I’m not sure why.

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My culinary herb garden is doing well. I was able to add a tiny basil plant to it, as well as some salad burnett, thanks to the KC Seed Savers Exchange last Saturday.

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Although it is not a great picture, (Out of focus much, Christine? Shut up, you!) this is a lovely bush in the backyard with star-shaped flowers. Does anyone know what this is? Drop me an email, I’m very curious!

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Our fence-building is going well. We will have a tall privacy fence to rein in the dogs. It will have three different gates for our convenience. Eventually we will also build a four-foot picket fence around the property. We hope to purchase the 6th city lot before doing this and add it in. This will provide a clear delineation of where our property begins and ends. Sometimes people actually still walk through the long in-ground beds on the side of the house!

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My chives are happily flowering in an old washtub. I need to pick these and put them in white vinegar. They will infuse the vinegar with a lovely onion taste and turn it a lovely rose color. It’s great in vinaigrette.

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This old wheelbarrow might not look like much, but it means the world to me. You see, there are pictures of my father riding in it when he broke his leg as a young child. And again, years later, pictures of me riding in it as a baby. It is rusted, the handle is threatening to fall off entirely, but I was insistent that we move it from Belton to here. It only seemed natural to combine some sweet memories and faded photographs with my love of plants and make it a planter. It holds iris and also some lovely native plants which have just begun to bloom (the little pink blooms).

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I cannot tell you how overjoyed I was to find this poppy growing along the back border of our property. It sits at the edge, a foot away from the paved alley. Dave called out to me yesterday that the poppy was blooming and I just had to take a picture of it. So beautiful! I hope to collect the seeds from the blooms and start a whole mass of plants growing. Once they are established I will be sharing this gorgeous plant with others!

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Good news. This house, just two houses down from us, is being demolished. It caught on fire last November and has been unlivable ever since. It is a bit of an eyesore, and I would love to see the lot bought up by Cranky Puppy and turned into an orchard.

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We have planted about thirty tomato plants this year. Once again I’m determined to replace my need for any commercial tomato sauce or salsa. They are about a foot high now (almost) and seem to be faring okay. We have a line of trees, plus a very tall house, that interferes with a lot of direct sun being on the plants. Tomatoes love warm weather and lots of sun, so, we shall see.

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That bush with the star-shaped flowers? The kids cleared the dead branches out and talked about making it a fort of sorts. I think it will also make an excellent shady area for our hounds once we have finished the dog fence.

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Strawberries and cucumbers – we dug up way too few of the strawberries from our old yard and I’m regretting it. The cucumbers came from Saturday’s seed and plant exchange. I can’t wait to see what they turn out to be!

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Strawberries and kale. The kale is also from the seed and plant exchange. I have plenty of kale seeds, but this might be a different variety, which would be nice.

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It’s a little hard to see in this picture, but there are two horseradish plants on either side. I ended up planting them in a somewhat shady area near the break in the hedge where a house used to be. I planted four plants in all and I hope that they will take over this area. There isn’t anything else on the ground (except for my beloved wild violets) so there’s plenty of room for them to spread out.

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Last but not least, some rosemary from Cranky Puppy in honor of my birthday. Hooray! I love rosemary. The smell is divine and it is great in baking as well as chicken and fish dishes. Now that I have this amazing and wonderful house with lots and lots of windows, I plan to bring in all of my rosemary each year for the winter. Give me a few years and I figure I’ll never have to buy another plant again. How cool is that?!

Stay tuned… tomorrow I will report on my first day of my new cleaning regimen. I’ve gotten one of the rooms done so far, our big double bedroom, and now I’m off to work on the library and office. My bedroom looks GREAT!

They’re So…Shiny!

My eldest has been reminding me that moving in takes time…and lots of adjustment. It has been a tough week – I guess I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed by…everything.

Here’s a snapshot of my blackboard wall I wrote all of my priorities on…

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le sigh….

Hit “play” on Bedouin Soundclash’ Brutal Hearts and walk with me a moment.

I’ll be 43 tomorrow. Forty-three…years…old. I didn’t have a problem with 30…I didn’t have a problem with 40…but for some reason the big ole 43 is kind of bugging me. Perhaps its due to the grandma comments I get far too often. Maybe they would go away if I would just follow cultural norms and dye my hair a naturally accepted color (gray and white not being natural, apparently).

In any case, it has been a trying week.

It got loads better today, however. Because today was the day I got to use an Angie’s List coupon my mom had bought for me for a total house window cleaning.

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They didn’t have my house in mind when they issued that coupon, believe me. We have thirty, count them, thirty windows and the grime on the outsides of them was driving me nuts.

Due to the limitations of the coupon, I asked them to simply focus on the outsides of all the windows. The insides I could handle, but get up on a ladder forty feet in the air to clean the upper level? Not a chance!

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So Green Team Window Cleaning arrived at about noon or so. I was just fixing lunch when they arrived. There were three of them, all impossibly packed into a little car with three ladders of varying sizes stacked on top.

Emily was fascinated. She couldn’t stop talking to them. Here she is holding a “helicopter” from one of our trees…

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When I found out that they also cleaned gutters I asked them to give me a quote on the ones that surrounded the front of the house above the wraparound porch.

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Just $55 for what amounted to nearly an hour of cleaning and spraying out of the gutters. Apparently they were in pretty bad shape, half full of debris.

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And let me tell you my windows are so doggone SHINY!

I’ve got a bit of work to do on the inside, but that is totally do-able (unlike the outside which absolutely terrified me).

For their professional and friendly attitudes alone, I would recommend Green Team. But here is a couple of more reasons to like them…

  • Eco-friendly cleaning products
  • Prompt and efficient
  • Awesome with kids (Emily kept running around and they were so darned patient with her)
  • Reasonable pricing (I’m guessing here, but it seemed like a heck of a good deal).

Thanks to all three of them – they were awesome and I felt totally pampered. What a great early birthday present!

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Movin’ Right Along

I’m busy with work and other things this week, but I do have a couple of little projects I’m working on…

Blackboard Wall

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I wavered back and forth on the wall that faces my desk. I need a visual notes area for a timeline, character lineages and more for a couple of stories I’m getting back to work on.

I had a whiteboard that I could have had cut to size, but I’ve had problems with the dry-erase markers actually, you know, erasing after the board has sat for too long. Temporary notes are okay, but long-term? It becomes permanent.

So…chalkboard paint. I’ve painted one layer, and it quite obviously needs a second. And if painting a wall with BLACK chalkboard paint seems extreme…well, you don’t know me very well!

Porch Flowers

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I have four ultra-light pots that have seen better days. I think they are composed of foamboard. In any case, I decided a coat of paint, the exterior trim paint on the house, would be a good color to paint them.

They need drainage holes, so I’ll probably get Dave to drill them for me tomorrow when he is home from work. Then I’ll dig up a few of the wild violet plants out of the yard for instant color and add flower seeds to the potting mix for color later in the season.

I think they will look quite nice on the front wraparound porch.

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Buildin’ Fences

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Hooray! We are finally starting on the fence! I’m so excited! I’m hoping we will have a significant amount of it done by the end of this weekend. Who knows, though, since it IS Mother’s Day weekend. And next weekend is my birthday weekend.

What? A birthday weekend? Whoever heard of such a thing?

Shut up, you! It’s my birthday next Friday and I have a cleaning scheduled for that day. That means I’m just going to have to take my birthday straight out of the weekend!

In any case, we still have a number of holes we have to hand-dig, a few badly dug holes we will need to fix, and hundreds of pounds of cement to move. Pity us! (Or come and help us, I sure wouldn’t mind and I would undoubtedly feed you)

Buildin’ Community

“What are you guys doing out here?” – is the common refrain we hear, followed (or preceded) by, “Are those chickens/bees?

We have a lot of people stopping and asking those questions, and I have to admit that I enjoy it. It’s fun to point out the pond or fence in progress, to discuss the chickens and/or bees, and detail what plants are going where.

Recently, the older sister of Emily’s new friend Ysanne (prounounced YA-SAWN) stopped by and we showed her the in-ground beds and explained that we primarily grow plants we can eat. “Will you be growing apples?” She asked, a look of excitement on her face.

“Yes, but they won’t be productive for up to eight or nine years from now.” I explained. Her face fell in disappointment. “That’s why I’m planting them now!”

What I have found interesting about all of these different interactions – from twenty-six-year-old Erica, to our Latino neighbor on the other side of the alley, to the kids down the street – to a one they all show interest, and true genuine excitement over our activities.

This is such a marked difference from the suburbs, where ripping out grass for a fruit orchard and in-ground beds is considered odd at best and downright unacceptable at worst. I’m so used to neighbors with pursed lips and tight shoulders shaking their heads at our enthusiasm I don’t know what to do with myself! No wet blankets! No “you’re going to drive down property values.”

The neighbor kids help us without a thought to payment – the payment is in the act of participating. The adults nod with approval and a wistful smile – memories of childhood visits to family farms not far from their thoughts.

And it is really, really nice.

I kind of feel appreciated and approved of, all at once. I don’t absolutely need that, but it sure is nice to get it once in a while!

As always though, my hope is that will not just be us and a quiet handful of others, but an entire street full of gardens. A place where we swap seeds, trade planting tips, and inspire and learn from each other. I think that we are off to a good start – I look forward to the years to come. What will they bring?!

Break On Through to the Other Side

My husband and I must have been cats in a previous life. We seem to have retained the curiosity. This was manifested this morning as Dave finished cutting a shelf for our main level hall closet. As I admired his work and planned on what I would use the shelf for, my eyes were drawn to the left wall.

Sherry and Jim did a lot of work on this house before we moved in. One of the biggest projects they completed was turning what was essentially a bedroom or office on the main floor into what we call the new kitchen. It entailed removing (and covering over) a second doorway into the main floor bathroom and covering over a closet. The closet was now completely walled off and was essentially an empty space just waiting to be re-discovered.

We have enough projects, especially with my mad digging in the yard, creating a complex pond when we really need to be focusing on building a dog fence.

That said, we were dying of curiosity. So…we grabbed a mallet and took a couple of swings…

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Lathe and plaster…so different from drywall…

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Quickly the hole grew (as did the choking plaster dust)…

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Finally, the other side appeared…

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We were able to slip through, but knew this board had to go…

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We filled three boxes full of wood pieces. We’ll use those for the “fire pit” we hope to build later this year…

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And we filled three totes full of this very heavy plaster…

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And now? Well, we have at least 15 square feet of additional storage space…

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And now we know what is on the other side of the closet wall!

Break on through,

break on through,

Break on through to the other side!

Working on the Pond – Day Two

My throat is so sore, spring allergies have struck again, and on Tuesday I was pretty lethargic. I recover pretty quickly from allergies – but for 2-3 days life is not fun – I feel as if I’ve been hit by a Mack truck.

Despite this, I managed about an hour and a half on the pond project before we left for Story Time, lunch with friends, and errands. The neighbor kids showed up just after five p.m. to help again with the project, and we can now see the outlines of the project clearly.

Here are a few pictures to help clarify what we are doing…

A view from the bottom of the pond looking back up

A view from the bottom of the pond looking back up

The two lower pools will be the deepest and be the main homes for fish.

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The upper pond with a large tree root running through it.

We are considering leaving this tree root (part of Tinker Peninsula) in place and simply running the pond liner underneath it. I’m not particularly concerned about the tree it belongs to, since we will eventually be cutting down several trees, but the root could make an interesting half-submerged water feature.

Everywhere we dig is filled with bricks! There were at least two houses on these lots of land, and when the city tore them down, they just dug a hole, shoved the house into it and covered it with fill dirt from the Missouri River.

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This is just a small representation of what we have pulled out of the ground. We have also been finding “treasure” on a regular basis. Anthony found the remains of a hot water faucet and then there have been odd bits of glass and other artifacts. The “bridge” has at least temporarily become the “museum” as we continue to excavate.

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Perhaps this is the time to admit that I have never thought of myself as particularly friendly towards other people’s children. I think that, for most of my adult life, they have been as alien to me as their adult versions. And typical of modern kids, they haven’t been particularly respectful or obedient in the way I grew up believing kids should be.

That said, I really like these kids that Emily has befriended. And not just because they are helping me dig a pond. I like their curiosity, their energy, and their sense of adventure…

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Anthony is ten years old, and the hardest worker of all. He also helps keep the other kids moving and making progress. He’s really a great kid.

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David is Anthony’s younger brother. He’s eight years old. A little more reserved from Anthony, he has quietly worked alongside us and still isn’t sure if he’s completely comfortable when the adults are around. However, he is definitely willing to work hard!

Their older sister didn’t come by for the second day of digging. And another friend, Maria, had to go home before I took these pictures. Even Maria helped out – moving bricks out of the piles of dirt we were making at the head of the future waterfall.

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In the end it was “dirty clean” fun for all of us. Even Dave pitched in and dug for a while. A day or two more of digging and I think we will be ready to plot out where to dig a trench for the electrical line (one that will go to the old pond and one that will go to this new one and provide ample electrical outlets), purchase pond liner and start scouting for a good waterfall pump. We already have plenty of water iris, but we will need some good pea gravel and will need to move some limestone rocks out of the basement (there’s a couple huge ones!) for the waterfall feature.

I told the boys that if we end up on a water garden tour they have to come by and help us with the tour – and take credit for all of their hard work!

 

A Source of Inspiration

I hurt today. I mean I really, really REALLY hurt today.

That said…it was worth it.

And while my body is reminding me that I am NOT 23, instead I’m nearly 43 (you may all wish me happy birthday on the 17th of May), I will share with you yesterday’s activities.

It started off innocently enough. I was going to check on the new beehive and see if the bees were still there and if we now had two, possibly three hives. After that I was going to begin to plant some of the multitudes of plants we had dug up from our old house.

I checked on the beehive. It had bees in it, although later that day they swarmed again, abandoning the hive. As I walked back towards the garden, my eyes riveted on this…

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A large portion of tree root protruding out of the ground. It practically screamed bridge at me.

Since we first put in a pre-formed pond in the backyard of our old house I have dreamed of a more natural looking pond, with a waterfall. Chalk it up to too many water garden tours, but once we moved, I had been actively seeking the perfect place for a winding “creek” with waterfall at the top and a pool of water deep enough for goldfish to swim in and frogs to play in.

Looking at that tree root, I could suddenly see the outline of it with intense clarity. I grabbed a shovel, ignoring the cries of the bagged plants at my feet and headed over to a spot between the lilac bush and tree and dug in.

With Emily helping, we managed to flesh out the basic structure, although it will take quite a bit more digging before it is ready. The property is on a slight decline – a total of six feet difference in height from the street at the front of the house down to the alley way behind the house. I will build up the dirt at the top of the whole thing so that we can have a waterfall cascading over limestone rocks into a pool at the top…

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(Look to the far right, that’s where it all begins)

With a small peninsula jutting out (using another tree root) and water going underneath a section of it…

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Emily is standing on the “peninsula.” Directly in front of her is a deep hole that extends under and behind her.

The “creek” will then meander down, around the lilac bush (also behind Emily) and empty into a large pool with an island…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe island was Emily’s idea. I resisted at first, then I doubled the bottom pond and made it work. Kids have the greatest ideas, really they do!

By the end of the day we had attracted the neighbor kids. Anthony, the 10-year-old said, “You guys have the coolest ideas for your yard. You’re going to have the best yard in town!”

I grinned, but I had ulterior motives. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist coming over and helping us dig. Sure enough, an hour later and the kids had multiplied…

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And they were all pitching in!

Dave was rather shocked when he got home. I hadn’t told him what I was up to and he wasn’t quite sure what to think. I think he will come ’round though. And this pond is going to look so freaking cool!

Water garden tour, here we come!

Epic Bee Swarm!!!!

A huge round of thanks to our daughter’s friend Anthony for noticing there was a bee swarm in progress AND to Cranky Puppy for pointing out that some of them had coalesced into a reachable group just a few yards away.

There are some great photos from this epic bee swarm which happened less than an hour ago. Check them all out on my Facebook page. We won’t know for sure for a week or more, but we may have just brought our total number of hives to THREE (from down to one at the end of this winter).

Stay tuned for updates!

 

Retirement…Yeah…NO

On Wednesday afternoon, after returning from a particularly grueling cleaning – five and a half hours (which I totally misquoted and was paid little for) – I let out the dogs for a chance at relief.

The owner of the 8-plex across the street waved hello and pointed to the side yard. “I see you have been busy getting the garden ready. Are you guys retired? You must be, I can’t imagine how you would have time for so much otherwise!”

I had to laugh and shake my head. “I wish I were retired! Or just independently wealthy, then I might have time for all of the things I want to do!”

Hose Guide/Tippy Pots Coming This Way

So you may remember that I wanted to put in a combination hose guide and tippy pot at the ends of the beds. Here is the start of it…

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After comparing prices on different “poles” at Home Depot, I went with PVC. I purchased ten pieces of ten foot PVC and the guys at HD taped them at both ends, then cut them into thirds (3’4″ lengths). Putting them in the ground was easy – I just pounded them with a rubber mallet until they were about 6-8″ deep. I can now add the tippy pots, slowly, as I acquire them. Although I may wait until I’ve spray-painted the PVC a less glaringly white color.

Eventually it will look something like this…

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I am determined to be on the Urban Farm tour in 2015 and I hope everyone will take the opportunity to come see me then!

Chick…Chick…Chicken Class

I taught a Keeping Backyard Chickens class at the North Kansas City Library yesterday. Amy, the adult programming coordinator was quite excited, we had record numbers of sign-ups! And thanks to that positive response, she is reconsidering having the Keeping Backyard Bees class.

So we may be adding that to the calendar for this year, possibly in the fall. Stay tuned for updates on that, and don’t forget, you can always check on upcoming classes by clicking on the Classes tab and searching through the posted calendar.

Keeping Busy – And Having Fun

I pulled up this photo last night and said, “This pretty much describes how busy we are…”

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The plant and other things obscure all of the words, but it says, “No Parking, No Stopping, No Standing, No Kidding.”

We are very busy, but now that the weather is nice, I’m determined to do family-and otherwise-activities. Recently Dave and I had a date night in Lawrence and saw That One Guy at The Granada. I’ve never seen a crowd so happy and free and I danced with abandon. It left me with pulsing eardrums, but it was a fantastic experience.

This Saturday is the Chalk Walk, which I have wanted to go to, but never done. Dave will be at the Parkville Brewfest and Emily and I will make a day of it, first at the Chalk Walk and later window-shopping in downtown Parkville.

Sunday will be filled with digging up plants at our old house and transplanting them here. We have so much to dig up – strawberries, herbs, plum tree, peony. And don’t even get me started on the fence post holes that still need to be dug, and the pond we need to put into the dog yard – like I said, no parking, no standing, no stopping, NO KIDDING!