Home Projects and Appointments

We aren't wandering anywhere this week in the motorhome. Instead, we decided to stay home because the weather looks really lousy all week long. We each have haircuts scheduled for today and a dentist appointment for me scheduled for tomorrow.

The venetian blind that we ordered for the smaller window on the side of the bedroom finally came in. So we were able to put that into place and install the brackets. Then I hung up one of my sets of Heritage Lace curtain swags. Not sure if I'm going to do a lower panel on a cafe rod or not.

We will see what it looks like once I get the other curtains up around the big window. Steve has started cutting up the trim wood and shellacking the knots. Then I will get all of the trim wood painted. We are adding the top crown molding and the egg and dart trim to the big window to make it match the same as the original window and doors.

Steve also reattached the rows of coat hooks that we keep behind the door. It's a handy place for bathrobes, jammies or things that we are going to wear again. Out of sight, out of mind.

It stopped drizzling for a while this morning, so we went outside and decided to tear down all of the tomato vines and remove all of the cages. I invested in heavier stronger cages for next year. So these I think we'll get put on Marketplace for someone else to buy in the spring. It was time to empty the rain barrel and put that away for the season. We will remove the rain chain and pick up some new downspout piping and route the water away from the house for the winter.

These are the last of the tomatoes picked off the vines. We will let them ripen and I will process the last of these up into a jar or two of salsa. I dread having to buy store bought tomatoes again for salads, but at least I have lots of jars of processed ones for making into chili, casserole, or sauce.

Steve decided that it was time to do a little rearranging in our yard. Two years ago we put in these two boxwood bushes on each side of the Korean lilac. The Korean lilac is doing well and getting larger each year. This is right in front of the 3 western windows of the She Shed. So he decided it was time to move the two boxwoods up to the front of the house. He got the one out on the right. Boy oh boy did that thing have a lot of roots!

We stuck it up in the front flower bed, to the right of the bird bath. We will do the second bush to the left of the birdbath, but we ran out of time. Steve had to leave and get his haircut.

We still have to clean out the rest of the flower beds of all the dead stalks and blossoms before the winter snows come. The window boxes are still full of geranium blooms, so we will leave those for a bit. Geesh, I feel like winter is coming up fast, so it will be good to get these things done. 

We dug up a bunch of the evening primrose plants to get that bush into place. That stuff grows like crazy and makes kind of a nice ground cover. It blooms almost all summer long, and the leaves turns a nice red in the fall. So we took clumps of it from the front and brought it out to the backyard for around the flagpole in that flower bed.

In the springtime, this bed is full of irises which are beautiful. But the rest of the summer is kind of blah. The rhizomes of the iris have woven into such a heavy mesh underground that it's hard to dig into.  Steve was able to get a bunch of the evening primrose clumps dug down just enough. Hopefully they will take root and take over. They can stay contained in this circle, and the weed eater will keep them at bay from spreading into the lawn.

He took a load of all the dead stuff off into the woods and dumped it. We've had a few things we brought back in the woods sprout up and grow there too. That's okay. I snapped this picture of him coming back with his wheelbarrow. I told him that I just love looking at a man who is working! LOL

Now it was my turn to get ready to leave to go for my haircut. I decided that I've had this long straight hair all throughout the whole covid pandemic. I did chop away at some of it myself one time last year. Also granddaughter Chelsea trimmed the ends for me last summer. But I decided I would go in and get it cut. I have been wearing it up in a bun almost all summer.

Here is my "before" photo:

And here is my "after":

I asked for about 6 inches taken off the bottom, and some nice layers that let my curls bounce back up again,  especially on the top. It's easy to just tousel it up with a little bit of styling product and a few curls on top with the curling iron. I was pleased with the result and Steve said VaVaVaVooom!!

Now you know what I look like! 

 

It's been drizzling all evening so we didn't get the other boxwood bush moved. Maybe tomorrow.  Before or after my dentist appointment. It's just a cleaning, so won't take long. I think we are done with outdoor chores for the day.

I tossed some frozen pasties from The Pasty Oven 

into the microwave to thaw. 

Next, they go into the oven on 400 to bake them 

with a flakey crust and steaming filling. 

I think tonight is going to be a lazy evening, with maybe watching some HGTV shows, maybe doing a little sewing or weaving. I think we are winding down from a couple whirlwind weeks of camping.

Day 46 - Scavenger Hunt Surprise

Yesterday, we were going about our putzing around doing some housework. You know, a little of this a little of that. Suddenly we saw some faces at our back door with a little tap tap tap sound on the glass.

What???

Oh my goodness! What a surprise!

It was our two grandchildren Chelsea and Clayton, along with a playmate Maddi, and their teacher from the Oconto Non-Profit Child Care Center.

 I was so choked up, even as I am typing this now, I am crying!

The kids were missing us, and they had decided to surprise us and put together a creative and thoughtful task to do at our house.  (the daycare center director who knows us, had called ahead to our daughter to make sure this was okay to surprise us)

They stood back six feet from the door and set down a paper bag and set down the instructions on the walkway. Then they told us to go back in the house and not look out the windows???

It was a 
"Social Distancing Scavenger Hunt"!!!

Here is a close up of their list:

They came here to hide things in our backyard!  Then they left another sheet instructing us that we have to take a picture of each thing we find.

We obliged and hid our eyes and didn't look out the windows.  Once they were done doing their little activity in our backyard, they came back onto the walkway by the pergola.

We opened the door to talk with them, at a distance while we stood in the open doorway.  I had just finished sewing three new masks with cute little woodland creatures that I gave to each of them to keep. Nolan helped tie them onto each kid.

They were so excited to have 

masks of their own 

to wear back to the daycare.

I also left a little bag on the walkway, at a safe distance, with some granola bars and chewing gum snacks.

We chatted for a little while, but my arms ached so badly because I just wanted to hug them. I mean I could feel a physical ache in my arms as well as in my heart. We had to be happy with what we could get, even if it wasn't actual touching and hugging. We were so blessed to even be thought of and missed.

Sadly, the kids got back in the vehicle with their teacher and headed back to the daycare.

Steve and I gathered up our little bag, and put on our gloves and read the list of items to look for in our backyard.

It was a lot of fun! Some things they put out in pretty obvious places, and other things were hidden really well.  It took us a while. They are good at this.

I just knew it was Clayton who had put this plastic cup out in the fence surrounding the apple tree. The tree is a special one that they gave us as a housewarming present last year. I just knew it had to be him, he would be the only one that would walk through the squishy ground to get way out there and stick the cup in the fence!

Bit by bit we found all the items except for the "2 pine cones". We looked high and low all over for any type of unusual pine cones. We finally gave up and just collected four little ones from our own trees and said good enough. That was the last item on the list.

Then we took pictures of everything and contacted the daycare to send the pics and show the kids that we did it. Chelsea then confessed that there were NEVER any pinecones! She said that they couldn't find any to take along and she forgot to cross it off the list before they attached the list to the bag!!

So the joke was on them, 

because we actually

 did find some pine cones!!

Thank you Oconto Area Non-profit Child Care Center!!!

You have no idea how this warmed up this lonely grandmother's and grandfather's hearts!!

~~~~~~~~

Speaking of mushy ground, here is how our backyard looked about a week ago.

We had a lot of water from runoff from snow melting, as well as quite a few rainy days. We have a very high water table the last few years around the Great Lakes, and we are located close to the bay waters of the Green Bay one mile away.

The water in our yard is so deep we actually have ducks and geese swimming around in the water. I kid you not!

Well, my last blog I mentioned how Steve was carefully working his way back and forth along our fence line to unclog some drainage piping that was buried there.  Our neighbor said it used to drain out from our yard into the curb via a small outlet, but it hasn't been working now for a few years and must be plugged up.

Steve got the line free of mud by shoving a sturdy rubber hose with the water blasting at full force. A couple feet at a time, and he would let it drain back out. He was finally able to run water completely through it all the way out to the curb. From there it runs down the street and off into the marsh. It does not go into the city storm sewer.

Now that he got the interior of the pipe freed up of mud, he was able to start draining some of the standing water in our yard. He had an extra old sump pump and a lot of hose. He was able to set the pump out in the middle of the deepest puddle and drape the cord up high along the fence line back to the grounded GFCI outlet in the garage.

He located the hose over to the drainage line where there is a sunken 5 gallon bucket as a chamber where he could set a pump into it if he needed to.

From there it drains out 

another hundred feet 

underground and then pours

out the opening 

in the curb.

At first it was a lot of sand, mud, and silt that came out of that opening. Now it's finally clear water being pumped through from the pond and out to the curb.

Just look at this happy little boy, in his rubber boots, sloshing up and down in the gutter. He was like a happy kid who was playing with toy boats or sticks in a little stream of water, making it go.

After two days of his creative pumping... moving the hose from here and there, he was able to drain our yard down to this!

Let us hope we have a normal spring and summer this year and have a regular yard without the backed up water ponds that we had last year for most of the summer.  This will help with the mosquito population and let us have a nice lawn without getting our lawnmower stuck (again).

This was all deep water 

across to the greener grass

the day before~ 

All of our neighbors around us said last summer was the worst in a very long time for standing water in the yards. It's not normally like that in our neighborhood.  Maybe this is a start to a good thing?

~~~~~~~~

Steve was busy with another project in the back yard this week. He had been cutting down some dead trees and odds and ends throughout our woods. He made quite a nice little pile of firewood. Our neighbor will take that because he uses it to heat his house. We might keep some for campfires.

Steve took all the brush and branches and hooked them with a tow strap to the back of the Tracker. He dragged them across the back part of our yard out to the edge of the gravel road that borders the backside of our property.

Even though it is gravel, it is still a city street, and the city does come down it with the tree chipper. They will take care of the branches for us. That is a free service to City residents, courtesy of our property taxes.

It sure beats having to drag the branches all of the way out to the front yard, at the other end of the property, by the street in front of the house.  This is at the back end of the Big Backyard.  The dogs sure like ramming around and playing back here. 

~~~~~~~~

I got out my paintbrush today and spruced up some more parts on the pergola.  Now the columns have a second coat of paint and the two back boards are now red. These are for the red lattice to attach on to.

Steve and I cut two panels of treated wood lattice that was left over from a garden structure we took down when we bought the house last year.

These two pieces go on the left and right of the back side that faces the backyard. Will make a nice backdrop for the white grids that are on the front sides. I started painting up the first piece, and I will work on it a little bit each day. It seems like I get a sore "tennis elbow" if I do too much painting in one day.


I already painted this cute white little plant stand that is going to go on the front porch, as well as this red base from a bird bath that Steve found in the woods. I'm going to set a pretty flower pot on top of it in our flower garden..

It's been a long day, and we got quite a few little projects done. Besides a bunch of flowerbed cleanup, I sewed up 10 assorted face masks for the neighbors. Then I made a creative supper of beef stew from leftover pot roast from yesterday.

I think now it's time to play a couple hands of cribbage with my hubby before I hop in the tub and relax these aching bones from all of my gardening and painting today.

It's That Time of Year to Say Goodbye to the Yard

In comes the frost 

and out goes the flowers.

The temps in Wisconsin have finally gotten down below the 32 degree mark at night. That of course means one thing. All of our flowers are done for.  We covered them up the first few nights of low temps to get a bit more life out of the blooms.  But now it is time.

They're full of wilting heads and shriveling leaves hanging down off of the window boxes. It looks kind of sad.  The flower gardens are all withering stalks of mushy vegetation and brown curled up drying leaves.

Sunday was crisp and cold, and the winds of Saturday had also died down.  Steve and I grabbed our work gloves, the wheel barrow, the little red wagon and a pile of large garbage leaf bags. The dogs ran around the back yard, barking their fool heads off at the neighbors who were also getting their yard work done.  (they think the neighbors are "burrrglurrz" and need to warn us of their presence).  After a few minutes of that noise, we put them inside to watch us from the windows instead.

They watched us pull out the flowers from the window boxes... which really gave us a lot of enjoyment this summer.  The flowers had grown so tall, they could be seen nicely from inside of the house as well as outside.  This is the side windowbox by the family room... where the dogs can look out from their little ottomans.

The front box had a few less blooms, but the greenery was still in pretty good shape.  Oh well, they all had to go! There was snow in the forecast.  I want these boxes put away for the winter, after Steve worked so hard to build them last spring.

Steve pulled up the clumps of plants and they were so pot bound that it pulled out all of the soil in a perfect rectangle shape!  He had to actually break it up into sections to put it into the bags, after I dug off the pieces of styrofoam.  We had added those to the bottom to work as lightweight drainage instead of gravel.  We didn't want the styrofoam to go into the mulch recycling program at the city refuse yard.

After we pulled off the boxes and stored them away in the garage, I had to wipe off all the leaf and blossom marks they left on the windows. I wasn't going to do ALL the windows of the house, just the ones that I could reach.

It made me smile to think of old Mr. George Kopf Sr., who used to do the windows on the house too.  I was given a picture of him working on the same section of the house 45 years before.  That was when it was three separate sash windows, which had been replaced with the more modern one years later.  Someday if I find three old sash windows, I would like to restore them back to original too. 

We cleared out the pots of flowers as well.  On each side of the garage door this year I had planted these new pedestal planters I got from Craigslist.  These geraniums and spikes grew like crazy and I added some ivy.  Whew... did they ever get pot bound!  The roots were even growing out the bottom holes of the planters and dangling 6 inches below the pots! 

Up in the front, the same story--- The two cement planters on the stoop were pot bound so tight that there wasn't any dirt left in the pots!   Guess next year I should plant fewer plants per pot?

Even though we had frost, there were a few brave clematis blooms poking out their pretty heads yet for a bit of sunshine.  Now I clipped those plants back to about 3 feet tall so they could have some old growth stalks to help support the new shoots next year.   This is a new plant I bought this year that took off and grew quite well.  I love the delicate pale blooms with the pretty purple thin lines of accents.   I hope it survives the winter? 

The vintage old purple ones are as tall as the top of the windows on the front porch.   I love these clematis because they give shade from the southern facing sunshine into the front porch, plus you can see the purple blooms from inside the windows. It keeps growing back bigger and bigger each year. 

This is the same original old plant that appears in photos from 1947 that the Kopf family shared with us.  This is George Kopf Jr., the son of the man who appears in the old photo above.  You can see the clematis plant to the left corner in the pic below of his 8th grade graduation.  We "re-created" his childhood photo when he came to visit the house in August.  

It was time to hoist up my little Dutch girl and boy into the red wagon and haul them off to the garage.  They are very heavy cement and take a lot of "oomph" to move them. I suppose they could winter outside, but I would like the paint to last and not have to redo them every year.  I nabbed them cheap from a rummage sale last fall, (I think 10 bucks) and they graced my front flower bed all summer long.  Now they can sleep in the wagon all winter... hibernation?

While we were working on the flower beds, pulling up clumps of coleus and begonias, this little guy was hiding out by the downspout in the corner.  We know he lives under our front porch.  As long as he doesn't nibble on my tomato plants in the summer, I don't mind him hiding out.  He is almost grown now. His mom used to live under the front porch as well, and I have a feeling he was born here.   Once in a while the dogs give him a good chase, but he easily flings himself through the fence spindles and gets away to a safer spot.

AHHHHHH my precious hydrangeas!   These are started from small slips and shoots from my friend Charlotte back in our old town of Oconto.  They have multiplied and flourished well here in Chilton.  I dug up some last spring to move to another spot in the yard and they have survived as well.  Next spring we are going to share some with Steve's brother Pete who is landscaping his new yard at his newly built house.  For now, the creamy white blooms have all gone rusty brown. I snipped off some of the heads and sprayed them with clear acrylic spray to preserve them in a vase in the house.  The rest of the plants we snipped off about 3 feet tall with the electric hedgetrimmer for the winter.

Steve started to load up the back of the Tracker after I spread a tarp down on the floor.  We put in all of the coleus plants we pulled up. It's easier to clean them up in the fall than in spring dealing with mushy old vegetation. I learned the hard way last spring when I breathed in some of the rotting old leaves and got soooo sick! I ended up pneumonia in both lungs and it took three separate courses of antibiotics to rid myself of the illness.  So this year, all the vegetation gets pulled in the fall so I am not messing with moldy old leaves next spring.

We chopped off the hosta plants at ground level and bagged up the large flat leaves, as well as the blossoms and clippings from the rest of the yard. We had six big bags to haul besides all of the loose stuff in the Tracker. Whew!

Our city has a big refuse area to bring yard waste.  They let you pile the loose stuff in one area and then the tree branches in another. They grind it all up and make piles of mulch for next year.  It is used in the local parks and also available to the residents to take for their own gardens and yards.  How nice is that?   (someone tossed SILK flowers in the pile... we pulled them down to the side to separate them from the real stuff... geesh)

These are all of the rows of tree branches that are collected in large rows as people unload them.  The city crews run these through a chipper device to make wood chips for next spring.

After we were done with all of that, it was time to come home and relax in our chairs and take a break!   I grabbed ice water and Steve did a glass of his favorite limeade as we got comfy in our livingroom.  Whew... what a day.

But --- But --- But ---

That didn't last long!  

Steve found something on Craigslist and we had to jump back up and head out to go get something for my "early birthday present".  Here we go with another project???

More on that in my next blog!