Trying to get a head start

You know it's finally spring when Costco has the spring bulb packages for sale. Actually a mix of bulbs and dormant perrenial plants. I couldn't help myself, I had to buy some this year even though my purchase last year was a failure. The double-decker coneflowers that I planted in the front never came up. I think the plants went bad sitting inside while I waited for the weather to warm up sufficiently. Obviously I waited too long, and I think the hallway was probably too warm. I overcompensated last year by seeding regular purple cone flowers over the top of my plants and some of those did come up so I'll still have some this year. I really want some white cone flowers, and almost bought some at Costco last night, but I held off. Partially because I didn't want the other plants in the mixed selection bag, and because I have a neighbor/friend who has a really big white coneflower and said I could have some. Free plants are best. I really hope that starting this year I might have enough established plants to start offering something in trade. Everything looks so barren still, but I know it's filling out. And, I should be getting some of that third-year growth spirt on some of the plants.

It may seem crazy but one of my new plants is a seedum. Normally I wouldn't buy these because they are so easy to divide and get from someone else's yard (like my mother's) but this one is new and exciting. It's a new variety called Elsie's Gold and is really similar to the Autumn Joy, but has variegated leaves. I think I'll plant all the little plants in the package, and once they come up and look established, I'll give away half of them. I don't need 10 plants, but 5 or so will help fill in some gaps (like the one left after the plant theft of '09). I love how low maintenance they are and they're one of the few things in the front left standing after the first freeze. This winter's super early hard freeze actually did bad things to everything including the autumn joy seedum, but that is rare.

With the mild winter we have been having on the west coast - which is only fair after the 93+ of snow last year - I've already been out and pruned and started weeding the yard. There were still some frozen patches, I though they were just rocks at first, but I got a good head start. Of course when I say "I" I mean that I was out there, but had some help from my family last weekend too.

2010 Plans for the outdoors:

Font

Put in gravel pathway across front yard.

Plant more groundcover along front path and driveway.

Till parking strip, remove lots-o-rocks, replant w/ ? (the vinca vine is doing okay, but I"m impatient. If it was all filled in I think I'd be happy but there is still too much room for the weeds.

Back

Finish fence on south side of yard.

Rototill the entire back yard.

Install patio, pathway, planting beds according to plan.

Seed lawn area w/ drought tolerant no-mow grass. (You stil have to mow it 1-2 times a year to eliminate the seed heads in mid-summer.)

Plant vegetable garden.

Ambitious

Build chicken coop.

Build garden fence.

Remove concrete back steps / re orient and re build wood steps.

Build fence on n. side of yard.

Spring hasn't even started yet, but I look at my list of plans and feel overwhelmed, and behind schedule.

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christmas at work

This year was the third annual Christmas Sweater day at work.

Why christmas sweaters? Well I say why not. The first year Ian and I decided we should wear Christmas sweaters that year. We put it on our Outlook calendars and when December rolled around e-mailed a few other people at work inviting them to join the festivities. Last year saw an even bigger turn out, and this past Friday was our biggest success. Part of the success was due to us pressuring people to wear the extra shirts, sweaters and christmas ties that we just happen to have in the office.

My outfit this year included my $1 sequin Christmas Kitty t-shirt from the thrift store up the street from my house.


Ian created his christmas masterpiece from a deconstructed santa slipper, american flag and (not visible) a toy gun in santa's other hand - all on camo.

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Dinner Chairs

Two weeks ago we had a Christmas dinner for some donors at the theatre. They bought the dinner at the auction during the opening Gala. The theme was Victorian Christmas, but all that really meant was that the house the dinner was hosted in is old, and decorated for Christmas. Oh, and that I had to wear a Victorian maid's dress to serve the dinner. I mean, the dresses haven't been used since My Fair Lady almost 5 years ago, and why not.


Before

Of course there wasn't enough to do already, so I decided to re-cover the dining room chairs before the guests arrived. I know I should have given myself more time, but I was overly optimistic. Recovering a dining chair isn't hard, but for some reason it isn't fast. First you have to remove the seat from the chair. Holding a chair upside down while supporting the seat, and removing the screws is just awkward. Last time i recovered my dining chairs (the afternoon before a family Thanksgiving dinner) I learned that it isn't a good idea to remove all the seats and then try to match the seat with each chair. They're old, the screw holes, don't all match up the same. This time I also knew I might not get them all done in time and nothing is worse than having a major donor walk in on a room of disassembled furniture.

I started by cutting the fabric for the first chair, and then using that as a template to cut the fabric for the other chairs. Then, I stapled the fabric to the first chair and reattached the seat. Luckily it looked great. The repeat on the fabric even ended up in the center of the seat - totally by accident. I removed the seat from the second chair and started attaching the fabric, and then ran out of staples. It's okay, I brought a box of extra staples. Oh, but they don't fit. Apparently the new shiny Craftsman staple gun takes different staples than my old silver Swingline. I tried not to panic as I drove home (six blocks - so ridiculous) to get more staples, different staple gun? I didn't know what I was going to do, but I had a half recovered chair and three more to go and the guests were due to arrive in 45 minutes. When I got home I realized I didn't have any other boxes of staples, I didn't know where the other staple gun was and even my crazy idea of using the staples still in the pocket of my cargo pants (from last summer when we did the roof) didn't work because they didn't fit either. This let to my last ditch idea of using the hammer stapler, you know, the one we used on the roof, last summer, to staple the tar paper down? That one. So I drive back to Michael's (the host of the dinner) and proceed to use a roofing stapler to recover two more chairs before I ran out of time.

The lights were dimmed, I'm sure people didn't even notice that two of the chairs had the old fabric and the other three the new. The good news is that Michael loved the new fabric and I promised to come back and finish the other chairs. And I just found my silver staple gun so I can use that box of extra staples to finish the job.


After

The dinner was a success, they loved the food and hopefully we can sell the next dinner for even more money. Come on people, a personal chef, waitstaff, and we did the dishes. Next project - break into Michael's house and fix his dishwasher.

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Happy Birthday Selje

December 6, 2009

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Daily Chores (FAIL)

My experiment in daily chores failed - miserably. Some of the things on my list NEVER got done. I never cleaned the sink, I never cleaned the bathtub or bathroom sink. I never mopped or washed clothes (do towels count?). I guess this plan just doesn't work for me. New plan: this month I will attempt to do the same tasks, but on the weekends. I know the theory is to do a little every day, but I just can't do that. And then on Sat/Sun when I do have a little time, I only think about the 1 "little" think I'm supposed to do. I'm not saying this will work either, but it's worth a try. During the week I will try to mitgate the clutter problem by putting things away (where is away though?) and maybe keeping up with the dishes. When we eventually get a dishwasher installed, I might just do a little dance of excitement in the kitchen during the first load of dishes.

Things I did to this week:
I did finish the installation of the new porch light. It was only about 90 minutes more of work, and probably 20 min of fruitless wrangling before I caved in and got the ladder from the garage to make the final connection of the mounting plate to the ceiling bracket. 17" pendant lights are kind of heavy and my one arm can not hold it above chest height for very long.

I cleaned off one bookshelf in the living room. The two bookshelves flanking the fireplace have been a dumping ground of papers and magazines and action figures and cabinet hardware for the last two years. I took every off, organized some magazines in cardboard holders. I figured if I waited until I got around to covering the magazine holders in nice paper or fabric it would never get done. They don't look bad the way the are, although the big dissapointment is the depth of the shelves doesn't allow me to put the magazines behind the doors - so they're on the top shelf right now. I plan on having the other side done before christmas and maybe I'll even get the doors back on! Lars, I expect you to be impressed when you see them 'cause your dissapointment was a motivating factor.

I went to Miller's Hardware and spent 22 cents to buy a screw. Somehow I lost one when I was mounting the drapes in the dining room so for over a year three windows have had drapery panels, one was blank. Except for the sad brackets (one with only 1 screw).

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Garlic planting

This spring when we were shopping for annual vegetable seeds I grabbed a head of garlic that was by the register. I thought I'd give it a go. Apparently around here garlic really needs to be planted in the fall (like right now) to get a head start on the growing season. That head of garlic I grabbed in the spring was planted, but wasn't doing very well when it was accidentally tilled this summer. After my experiment with this Sunset vegetable garden plan (it looked like a good idea) we're going back to raised beds in the garden. In fact they are the same raised beds I built 4 years ago. I went back to the old house and disasembled them this summer. They look so big in this backyard. I'll probably need to make new ones in a few years as these are already starting to rot out (they were made from 20+ year-old fence panels). This year we're also going to start the garlic in the fall. I don't know the exact varieties. The bulbs are purple, there are two different kinds, and they are a hardneck variety. That means we'll get the garlic scapes in the spring and I can make more of that pesto. Remember, I'm still excited that anything will grow for me.

UPDATE: I started this post a month ago, planning on getting some pictures when I planted the garlic. Well it's in, no pictures, and I still haven't found mulch for the bed which means they've probably already frozen and died. We've had several severe freezes and a few light snows. It might snow more this weekend too.

I started installing the new porch light but now it's been 2 weeks and I'm not done yet. Of course that means we've gone 2 weeks with NO porch light - and i'm one of those people who leave them on all night. For me, dark houses make an unfriendly neighborhood and that can lead to an unsafe neighborhood. I guess it's time to stop procrastinating and take that trip through the knee wall in the attic (I have to install a new junction box in the porch ceiling). I took some pictures of the porch project so maybe I'll finish and get those up this weekend.

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Shopping for me

I've been thinking about buying something for myself like a new pair of shoes, or a new dress but I just can't decide. What about a new porch light instead! And it's on sale.

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