First I destroyed the room:
Then I painted, rearranged a bit, and put it back together:
First bookcase, with first box of books:
I love seeing people's bookcases. Show me yours! I know, mine screams "nerd," but I have a bunch of cookbooks in addition to the sci-fi. I am a nerd who cooks.
Yesterday I planted my first plants. I got real excited and bought a bag of hyacinths at Costco before we even closed on the house, and they've been waiting patiently in the garage. I buried the wire that daisy-chains the three ground rods together, then stuck some junk posts on top so I (hopefully) won't dig through the wires one day. That was a good start to a flower bed, so I buried some more posts, worked a bunch of storebought dirt into the soil, and added the most finished compost I have.
I hope they don't die.
I also declared war on the caltrop plants. We keep dragging the wicked little seeds in and then stepping on them. I know that pulling out all the current hateful weeds won't really help, but it's a start. There are a LOT of them in the yard - I've filled up three more trash bags.
It's like the circle of life. When I was 12 or so, my mom, her best friend, the BF's son (who was also my BF), and I all went on a two week road trip to New Mexico. I have no idea why the adults wanted to go to NM, but of course M and I had a blast. We all piled in a minivan with WAY more luggage than any four people need and went to all the tourist crap we could find. Then M and I saw tumbleweeds. We had to have them. Tumbleweeds instantly became the coolest things we'd ever seen in our whole lives. With the perseverance of 12 year olds, we began a very successful whining campaign - except that our mothers made us ride home with them. Of course we'd each selected the biggest tumbleweed we could find - mine was nearly a yard across, and M's was just as big.
Back then, I was even worse at planning than I am now. I think I wanted my mom to mail it home to me, or maybe to tie it on top of the van and drive a thousand miles home that way. Instead, she stuffed it into a black plastic garbage sack, handed it to me, and said "have fun!" I spent the next two days sitting on a suitcase in the back cargo area with that fucking tumbleweed poking me nonstop. But I am nothing if not stubborn, and M and I couldn't possibly back down and throw the damn things away, so it came home with me.
I don't think either of us ever touched those tumbleweeds again.
Anyway, here I am, shoving tumbleweeds in black plastic bags again.
we're still digging like crazy trying to level the area in front of our future barn. we keep digging up things.
ReplyDeletemy man found a few odd things and tossed them, and then he found some porcelan piece that i kept and added to the "found on our land" collection i have going. then i dug up some wierd little medicine bottle with old german on it.
i said "we really should check this stuff thru the castle antiquity collection - they put this stuff on display!"
and then i said "geez, i bet funder doesn't have to dig up old junk on her property.....
well...
maybe some old tposts?"
my man laughed at the thought of you perhaps finding an old tpost underground.
that could happen!
~lytha
At first, I thought the first picture was my house! Then I realised!!!! Whew!
ReplyDeleteThank goodness you posted other photos!
What a transformation on the room!
ReplyDeleteIf you find a solution to the weed problem, let me know. I hate chemicals, so I've tried pulling and burning, but I'm losing the war. They are overwhelming.
We've got those tumble weeds here, too, along with another type that isn't quite so dense nor pointy. The trick with weeds is to get rid of what you can, then nurture the heck out of the grass plants that you WANT: water and mow, water and mow--the healthier your grass is, the less opportunistic weeds can thrive--then you make it even harder for them by mowing them down, before they can mature and go to seed. (Don't know how this would work in arid/desert climates, however...)
ReplyDeleteLytha - LOL, I wish I could find t posts! They'd be useful at least. Nothing but boring crap like soda (not beer!) cans, rotten gross nasty fabric, and tiny pieces of plastic. My junk could be all of thirty years old, wheee.
ReplyDeletere: the evil tumbleweeds - I don't want to poison them, because, you know, we have to drink the water. And likewise, I don't want to go nuts planting a lovely lawn. I'm not sure what I want to do with the yard long-term - maybe some drip irrigation and hardy shrubs, raised vegetable beds, and lots of pretty gravel footpaths.
No matter what I do, I'm going to be pulling out caltrop plants for YEARS. Sigh. It's a shame, too. They're kind of pretty. Pretty wears off fast when you step on your third caltrop of the night though.
Interesting. I've never seen "tumbleweed" but it looks vicious.
ReplyDeletePutting your "house" in order always creates a calm.. enjoy your new home.
Haha, some people make good livings selling tumbleweeds mail-order to us non-deserty folk. I remember seeing something about it on a tv program about entrepreneurs.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I've ever seen one in person.
*eyes bookcases*
I think you need to post a bigger picture of the bookcase, with legible titles. I only recognize some of the books, and I am desperately curious about the others.
ReplyDeleteI could put up pictures of my bookcases... do you want the one that makes me look smart, the one that makes me look 12, the one that makes me look like a lit snob, the sci-fi one, or the one that is confused and is not sure if it's a bookcase or a media cabinet?
(Books make me happy. I ride so I can't spend all my money on books...)
Ha Ha - when I was about 8 my grandparents took my sister and I on a cross country road trip to California and back. I can't imagine travelling most of the way back with a tumbleweed in my lap!
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting thing Jason and I have found was when we hit a gas line while we were digging fence post holes. YES we had called Tennessee one call! It was a freaking LIVE gas line with lots of pressure, I am lucky to be here typing this today!
Weeds, bah. Build a chicken tractor, and run your hens over the weeds (and over, and over, and over). I'm amazed to find that this process actually WORKS and I have--for the first time in my life--a lawn that is mostly lawn (not moss + weeds). Fascinating.
ReplyDeleteWeird stuff: so far, we've found a carbourator (sp?) , a car jack (still works), and miles of "buried" barbed wire. In the pasture. Because, you know, everybody drives into a pasture, jacks up the car, drops out the carbourator, and then leaves all that stuff behind. The barbed wire at least makes sense--decades ago, our farm was part of a much larger dairy operation.
Books. Ahhhh. We have *relatively* few books because we have moved so often since childhood. Now that we have remained in place for more than a year, we are filling up bookcases FAST. Storytelling books, trail books, horse books, computer books, cook books. And about 50 million Korean-language manga. My family defines the word "eclectic" if nothing else.
My bookcase makes me look like a nerd for the most part. I have a lot of tech books, application books, and website books, but I also have a lot of flower books and horse books (of course)!
ReplyDeleteThe house is looking good! :)
Funder--When you talk about "lovely lawn," I realized that I'm talking 13 acres of irrigated pasture grass and a tractor! Sorry.
ReplyDeleteEvensong - rub it in why doncha! :p
ReplyDeleteI used to have a LOT more books, really eclectic stuff. History, biographies of cool people, pop science, some leftover textbooks. But we started moving and I started selling / donating books and now we don't have much left except our favorite sci-fi, some cookbooks, and some embroidery books.
No horse books, oddly.