Sunday, June 08, 2014

Weekend's end, recap

Sunday night. After about seven p.m., thoughts turn to work. Right now, though, those thoughts are being eclipsed by an urgent need for acetaminophen.

While not a whole lot else got done, the bushes and the hydrangea are in the ground. During that process, I realized I probably need several more bags of dirt in the front bed, to replace the volume previously taken up by juniper roots. Sigh.

It also came to light that the handy-dandy extension hose with the cool cutoff switch at the business end...leaks. Another sigh. When the real hose is attached and being used, it isn't an issue. But to walk back past that connector to turn off the faucet...

I'm just not in the mood to spend more money. Frankly, there is enough of the actual hose (that I did buy this year - and it does not leak) that I can attach it directly to the faucet and still reach all corners of the patio easily. Since the faucet is no longer hiding behind massive juniper bushes, it's accessible.

Sort of...the border on the front bed consists of a loose, two high stack of bricks that look a bit like a piece of pie with the pointy end eaten. They aren't exactly snug to one another, and the top row is a bit...iffy. The bed is four feet deep, just wide enough that I have to take a step into the bed to reach the valve. There are two 12" paving stones laid in front of the faucet, so there is a place to put a foot, but the border bricks aren't really stable enough for me to stand on to take that step...so I do a modified version of the splits to reach from the ground in front of the bed to the stone.

There must be a better way, and given how much I hate messing around with stuff like this, I will find that way.

Before putting in the bushes, I did stand in the dirt to reach the front windows. The painters last summer helpfully painted those windows shut. I ran the box cutter around three sides (the windows swing out from the bottom), clearing the paint. Of course, since the couch, a chair and an end table are in front of those windows (and the pull for the curtains is in the corner behind the end table/lamp - that will change when I get new curtains sometime in the future) I haven't yet been able to test to see if it worked. Given the way things are going, I bet not.

This is all following what I call my "domino theory" of home improvement. No project, no matter how small or how simple seeming, will bring to light two or more other things that must be done before being able to complete that project. For example, my friend Pam wanted to have her carpets cleaned, as she has given away her cat (YAY! This particular feline's dander was giving me fits...in addition to my daily dose of claritin, I had to take a benadryl in order to visit...can we say loopy?). As part of the carpet cleaning:

1. The living room and dining room were painted. She had intended to do this at some point, and it made more sense to do so before the carpet cleaning (for which she had an expiring coupon, hence the haste).
2. The ugly wallpaper in the foyer was stripped, for the same reason.
3. A steam cleaner was rented for cleaning the last of the cat schmutz out of the furniture.

All because Stanley Steemer was running a sale.

The weather the rest of the week is my kind of nice. Highs in the mid-sixties to mid-seventies. Maybe some showers Tues/Wed. I should be able to haul out the rest of the yard waste, plus a load of recycling and the rolled up outdoor carpet that's been hanging around since fall. The slender wire trellis that did a lousy job of holding up the clematis I'll keep - the lower two sections can be cut off, the whole thing bent a bit and it will serve to hold up the hydrangea in a couple of years, even in the urn.

Oh - and the previous owners left a full size shepherd's hook hanging in the parking bay. Hauled upstairs and hosed off, it now sits in the front bed next to the electric meter. A decent sized basket of pansies will hide the meter box nicely.

Yeah, yeah, pictures...sometime. I still need the baskets, the begonias and some ground cover. And more dirt. And mulch.

As I said a while ago, target date is the 4th of July.

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