It's Summer!

Wow, what have I been doing that I haven't posted in nearly two weeks?

I can hardly remember.  A little of this, a little of that...gotta love summertime!

I've met friends for lunch and breakfast.  We've had visits from family, and from friends passing through Kenosha.  The little kids (B6 and Chicklet8) had sports camp two weeks ago, and then VBS last week; this week Bantam12 is at soccer camp, and B16 just left for a month at Honey Rock.  The little kids and I have had two Joseph rehearsals so far, and we've hit numerous yard sales together. They are living on bikes, rollerblades and scooters, and B6 loves shooting basketballs at the neighbor's regulation hoop.  (In fact, at sports camp he received Most Outstanding Player for his age group, and Chicklet received Best Defensive Player  for soccer.  Last year she was Best Offensive Player, so I guess she's a flexible girl!)

Blondechick and I have looked at five possible wedding reception venues and she's had an audition for a music scholarship at Trinity--which she received!  But she's having a tough time making decisions about next year and knowing what she really wants.  She is off her crutches but still going in for physical therapy for her soccer knee injury. B20 is helping around the house, teaching himself Photoshop, reading, playing video games, biking and walking daily, and hoping that a job materializes soon.  I probably better get that plate spinning again....

But there was one big project that stopped me blogging, I guess.  A painter friend had an opening in his busy schedule, and his wife asked if I'd like him to come paint our master bedroom.  I've been talking about it since we moved in, since I hated the "builder white" in our bedroom. It just didn't go with the rest of the rooms on the main level of our house, which are warm shades of olive green, carmel, celery and creamy carmel.  It seemed like the perfect time to act.

But I still had to settle on a color!  When we moved, I gave away our 80's mauve comforter and ordered a comforter and pillow set online that appeared to be the subtle sage green that I wanted. But when it arrived, it was really more gold than green, and the leaves were more brown than sage, with olive accents.  We liked it enough to keep.  But it was tough to choose a green that would coordinate with it.

I ended up buying four sample cans of color to try on the walls, and I tried each color on all four walls because the light was different on each one.  The first was too bright and pea-soupy.  The second was too dark, the third too light, and the fourth didn't even look green, although the sales clerk and I both thought the chips for #2, #3 and #4 all seemed nearly identical.

So I gave up on the paint chips, and mixed my own shade, combining #2 and #3 with a dash of #1, and when it looked the way I wanted, I made my own chip on a paper plate and had the paint store do a color match from it.  The result was not what I expected, once again!  But thank God, it looked good and we liked it.

See?  It's kind of a creamy pale olive.  It's perhaps a shade lighter than I imagined.

We also turned the bed.  We used to have the headboard on the right hand wall.  I had to give up the cedar chest that I've always kept at the foot of our bed, because it stuck out too far into the center of the room, but this way makes the room look bigger, plus it shows off the headboard, which is a family heirloom.  That's a writing desk on the left wall, with the ottoman from the wicker set as a chair.  Maybe this week I'll decide which pictures to hang where!

Now, you can just imagine the cleaning that had to take place before this room could be painted.  I had stuff stashed under the bed, behind the wicker chair and the loveseat, behind the bedroom door...all "to deal with later."  And Later arrived!  I'm still sorting it all out.

I also sold our 4-year-old extra-firm mattress that no longer felt good to Papa Rooster's back.  We bought a Sensor-Pedic mattress that we placed on top of the old one, making our bed extra-tall, but the bedspread didn't quite cover both mattresses and a box spring.  I was pleased to get $150 for it, 48 hours after I posted it on Craigslist. I felt so successful that I listed Chicklet's loft bed, which simply takes up too much room--and a buyer is picking it up tomorrow night.

It's so great to have time and energy to get to stuff like this.  Let the summer continue!

Master Bedroom Blessing

Well, it's a COLD snowy day here in Wisconsin. The snow arrived a couple days ago, but the cold is the worst it's been since we moved here: The high for today is expected to reach a whoppin' 1 degree. The low last night was -14 degrees! And they cancelled school, without a snowflake in the forecast--simply on account of the cold. I only remember that happening maybe once, in Ohio, when I was a schoolchild, but they say it happens regularly here in WI.

Right now it is -10, with a windchill of -30, but let's warm things up a bit with pictures from last summer, shall we? You have to squint your eyes a bit to see the green leaves, but they're there!


If you happened to read the post on organizing your blogging, you saw my confession that I occasionally wrote posts ahead, only to lose them in my old drafts, and that's what happened to these photos of our master bedroom.


The reason I took them, though, was to show what a "beyond all that I could ask or imagine" kind of answer to prayer our new house is! We had a number of basic requirements we had to focus on, like number of bedrooms and room for an office for Papa Rooster, but we never thought twice about what kind of a master bedroom we would like. It had to have decent closet space for PR--he has a businessman's wardrobe, both casual and formal, plus lots of priestly garb--but other than that, we didn't care, if everything else about a house was right. It was the least of our concerns.

So what a blessing to get what B13 calls "the nicest room in the whole house." Isn't it lovely? In the second picture you can see the tray ceiling which gives it such a spacious air. I knew immediately that we had to get some kind of seating for that area in front of the bay window, but it had to be small and light. I looked everywhere before settling on this indoor wicker set from Pier One.

Then I was delighted to find a reasonably priced, washable comforter set (at JC Penney's online) that included a bunch of extra pillows and shams, so I could put some of them on the furniture and tie everything together. Perfect for non-crafty me!

We have used this extra little sitting area repeatedly since we moved in, since it's the only room on the main level that you can close off behind a door--perfect for private conversations with friends, counsellees, or one of our teens. I also use it for reading aloud time with Chicklet6 and Bantam3, so we don't bother the two Bantams reading silently on the couches in the living room.

I didn't take any pictures of the other side of the room because it's just two doors--to the master bath and to the walk-in closet--with a dresser in between.

And the master bathroom itself is so much more than we could have imagined! First off, it's truly private, unlike in our old house, where the bathroom was shared by all three bedrooms on the second floor.

And there is a large wooden storage cabinet in it, with plenty of extra room after we put away all our toiletries...so we put all of Papa Rooster's t-shirts, underwear and socks in there, since that's where he dresses. (Such a considerate man, not to wake me up!) I put Great-Aunt Dorothy's coat tree in there too (yes, it's that spacious) and gave him an over-the-door hook for items on hangers, and now he has a full-fledged dressing room in the bathroom. Clothes stay in the bathroom or the closet, and rarely do they dis-grace the bed or sitting area.

And there's something else we've never had before...a jacuzzi bathtub! I've only used it once, when we first moved in, just to see if the jets worked after two years of disuse. Mostly, I'm a shower person.

But I tell ya, since we're holing up today to stay warm...

Speaking of Movies...

Look what Papa Rooster did with one of his days of Christmas vacation!


One of our neighbors gave us these seats which he got from an old school. (He had used them in his basement for home theater seating until he upgraded to the really cushy wide ones that recline.) These have the little lift-up table thingies and everything--perfect for mid-movie snacks.


Papa Rooster isn't usually the weekend handyman type, so this was quite a project for him to take on. He did a fabulous job--he even laid the carpeting himself!


And now we have seating for the whole Henhouse family, plus guests! Bring on the movie nights!

(No, that's not an abstract art in the window--just colorful fleece pillows we shoved up there for wintertime insulation.)

***

Now tonight, we are seating my parents, brother, sister-in-law and all our kiddos to watch sports! (--besides the Olympics, not such a common Henhouse activity). My dad is a lifelong Buckeye fan, and my brother has completely converted my Florida-born sis-in-law so that she's more passionate than I am about Ohio State. But let's face it, football just isn't a big interest of mine. Sorry, Dad.

Our Hero and Mrs. A joined us for the first half, but we rode him out of town when he revealed that he was rooting for Texas, the Big Twelve team. (He is such a loyal Cornhusker fan that he has worn red socks every day since I first met him back at Wheaton College.) Sorry, Mrs. A.

And if I'm rambling now, it's because I'm trying to write and watch a football game at the same time, and things don't look so great for Ohio State. Sorry, everyone.

Project: Completed--and Sleepovers for All!

Remember those pictures I promised, of our completed basement project--a guest bedroom, bathroom, and a storage room carved out of what began as a huge unfinished storage area? ("Before" pictures here.)

Finally, after working through all my camera issues--(my camera is fine, but my psyche has issues with learning new cameras, new uploading procedures AND new photo software)--here they are.

First off, my pumpkin-colored bathroom!


Bold, no? Yes! For me, that is. I got the idea from a page in a Restoration Hardware magazine. I am thrilled that the color came out pretty nearly as expected!


The harvest gold towels are a nice contrast, and the oil rubbed bronze fixtures
look pretty classy, I think--an idea from the same picture.


But no one will be fooled for long...


...if they but open the door to the utility closet!

Next we have the guest room, from the doorway...

...looking on around to the right...


...and then back toward the door. There's a small closet there on the left, then the doorway through which you can see the doorway to the bathroom. On the right is a little cabinet that will have a door (it's being custom-made) with a locking latch on it. The shelves extend another 18 inches to the left behind the wall, and the bottom shelf lifts up for storage down to the floor. My plan is to keep Christmas and birthday gifts stashed away in there, under lock and key!

And finally, we left ourselves an L-shaped storage hallway wrapping around the side and back of the bedroom. Here's the view into the storage room (from the family room)--and nearly all those boxes along the left wall are not going to be there much longer, I hope. (I am still unpacking! Several of them contain framed pictures, since we haven't hung any yet...always our last thing to do.)


Notice the leftover carpet that I was able to use in the storage area, which is so much more inviting to walk on than concrete.

And if you walked all the way in and looked to the left, here is the view:

Again, the boxes to the left are mostly not permanently in position--more stuff to be unpacked eventually. (What does one do with all the cassette tapes one has accumulated since the 80's?? Before I can toss them all, I must go through and pull out any really meaningful teaching tapes, and rescue the handful that are of me or Papa Rooster speaking.)

I hope you have enjoyed this tour, and that perhaps some of you--you lucky ones, you--will eventually get to try out our guest suite for yourselves!

***

In other news, this weekend all the kids and I are driving back to the former area of residence for a performance of Seussical by a newly-launched county associated with our theater group. (And of course I'm hoping: that will be us in a year!) A number of friends from our old theater group have leads in it and we love the show, so it's going to be so fun.

Then, we all have sleepovers planned--even me. On Saturday I'm having breakfast with my hosting girlfriend, then going to a baby shower for one of my readers and frequent commentors, Taryn! I am looking forward to laughing with her and other ladies from our former church, as I know we will. Then I'll pick up all my kids and we'll hang with some other old friends and see what else we can fit in before heading home by bedtime.

Papa Rooster is having an old friend over for a sleepover, too--in the new guest room, of course!--so he's not feeling too left out.

More Dominoes Falling Fast...

Welcome to our basement storage room.

This was the original view into it, from the basement family room.

Looking left, after stepping through that doorway, here's how much extra room there was in there:

Enough room for a guest room and maybe a tiny bathroom, don't you think? That's what we thought.

We searched all summer (on and off), fruitlessly, for a plumber. Finally, our hero, Mr. A, found us one. And the first domino fell.

Did you see those two white pipes sticking out of the ground? And the other one near the wall? Plumbing!

With that stubbed in, Mr. A could begin building walls. Yes, the same Mr. A who is our realtor, our church's worship leader, Papa Rooster's running mate in college and his current partner in ministry--is also a painter and master carpenter!

This shot shows the bathroom on the deep left, the storage room on the right (which will be L-shaped and entered from the same door in the first picture), and the guest room, which is in the center of the picture. That little opening on the far guest room wall will be a cupboard opening into the guest room.

From another angle, here's "before":

And "after":

And here's the new hole in our family room wall:

Guest room entrance straight ahead; bathroom on your left!

Here's the entrance to the storage room--same doorway as the first picture--which wraps on around to the left (and I will be unpacking those boxes onto shelves very soon, I hope):

And here's that same wall, from another angle...

...and Mr. A, Electrician!

We just call him Our Hero.

Believe it or not, these rooms are now almost done. The dominoes are falling so fast I haven't even been able to take pictures! The drywall went up last Friday and Saturday (and you can't really show interesting pictures of that anyway). Then it was sanded, finished, primed and painted on Monday (imagine blinding white walls). On Tuesday the tile was laid in the bathroom and on Wednesday, Mr. A finished the second coat of paint on the bathroom walls moments before the tile guy arrived (early) to do the grout.

Today the plumber will put in the toilet and sink and we'll have a working bathroom! Mr. A will put up trim and other finishing pieces. Tomorrow the carpet goes into the bedroom, and then the furniture--and then my parents arrive for the weekend.

What serendipity!

I am not sure if there will be doors yet, though. Must ask Our Hero tomorrow.

I am so excited. (Can you tell I'm excited?) Stay tuned for pictures of the finished rooms!

One Domino Down...

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was looking forward to accomplishing a big project that weekend, and I am finally posting pictures of it!

This is our basement family room, BEFORE. Note the angled walls behind it--this is right underneath the eat-in kitchen's dining area, which is the same shape.


Also in the basement family room, this wall has been covered with boxes ever since we moved in. And about 1/3 of them are still there.


But the rest were finally able to be unpacked after we purchased THESE!:

I wish it had been as simple as that, though. I had to wait many weeks till Papa Rooster had a Sunday off from preaching, and then he spent a whole precious Saturday driving an hour to IKEA and an hour back, and assembling all nine shelves with Bantams 17 & 13.

Once that was done, though, I was finally able to unpack not only books, but VHS's, DVD's, VHS-C and DVR cassettes (maybe we'll finally watch and label all the footage we've taken over the years!), homeschool curriculum and empty binders. What a great feeling! And it looks good too, don't you think?

There's another series of dominos that have begun falling into place--fast and furious this week. I am so excited. Pictures soon!

Works for Me: Intercom

When we moved into our new house last May, with hardwood floors and a high ceiling in the living room, one of my first thoughts was how we were going to keep this house from being too NOISY.

Our last house, despite low ceilings and carpet, was bad enough. And not so much because of the kids, but because of MY voice. With kids' bedrooms in the basement and upstairs, I was constantly yelling up one stairway and down the other any time I needed kids--or even just one child--to come.

"In this house," I told Papa Rooster, "I want an intercom system installed."

"Installed?" he asked. "I'm sure it's all wireless now." And by golly it is!

I was thinking of my aunt's house, when I was little. There was a box on the wall in the kitchen, one in the basement and one upstairs. The wiring had been put in when the house was built.

But now, did you know that you can go to Radio Shack and buy three intercom box-thingies, plug them in in three different rooms, and with the push of a button, you can talk to each other?

Buy six box-thingies, and you can have one in each teenager's bedroom, one in the basement family room, one in your husband's office, and one in Grand Central Station the kitchen. And you can keep tossing the salad while you call everyone for dinner!

Visitors to our home always say, "Wow, what a great idea! We need to get those!" When it's time to leave, more than one dad thinks it's fun to call all his kids on the intercom. (It's also surprisingly great entertainment for certain teenage boys.) And it builds family togetherness, because no, you can't select which unit to call; if you speak, everyone hears.

In our home, besides dinner and chore announcements, Mom uses it to give a wake-up call to any sleepyheads, to solve small mysteries such as "Who is Bantam3 with?" and to give the 15 minute warning before it's time to leave. Papa Rooster in the basement uses it to let Mom in the kitchen know that they are starting the movie now...(do other moms try to get "just a few more things done" while everyone else assembles?). And after the novelty wore off, the kids use it for information only now; e.g. "Mom, did you do laundry today?"

Works great for us!

For more tips from other Works for Me Wednesday participants, visit Rocks in My Dryer.

Labor Day Labors

The last day of summer...what shall we do with it?

Our kids invited their friends over.

Mama Hen decided to trim the wild and woolly bushes in the front of our house, which you may remember was vacant for the past two summers. It took 3.5 hours, instead of the hour or two she expected, what with having to stop and saw off so many branches that were too thick for the electric shears.

Papa Rooster thought it was a good day to buy a snowblower.

"A snowblower!" Mama Hen cried, garden saw in hand. "Why do we need a snowblower? We have two strong teenage sons, and you're not old and decrepit yet, even if you did just have another birthday. And we can always just drive over it till it melts."

"We live in Wisconsin, now, dear, near Lake Michigan," Papa Rooster patiently explained. "Kenosha has one of the highest average snowfalls in the nation and can get many inches, overnight, of really WET snow. We have a huge driveway. Even Jan says we need a snowblower, and a good one."

"Oh, all right then," Mama Hen acquiesced. "If Jan says we need one."

(Jan is a frugal Nebraska farmboy at heart, who would be the first to cry, "Put those boys to work!")

"But first," she said, with a gleam in her eye, "Why don't you do that budget spreadsheet we've been talking about for weeks, and tell me where the money is going to come from?"

Papa Rooster nodded, and it was his turn to accept reluctantly but without protest--in a word, acquiesce. "Good idea."

Several hours later, the friends were gone. The bushes were trimmed, the budget was established, and the snowblower (Consumer-Reports-researched and on sale for Labor Day) was residing in its new home in the Henhouse garage. Papa Rooster cleaned up some further banking business on the computer; Bantam17 gathered up branches and clippings, and Blondechick fried bacon for BLT sandwiches. Bantam13 set the table, Bantam9 retrieved the two youngest Chicks from a neighbor's house, and Mama Hen chopped up more veggies for the pasta salad.

They sat down to the last supper of the summer with special prayers for those starting in public school and those beginning homeschool tomorrow. Friends came over afterwards to watch the first session of a teen conference on DVD and left early, in deference to our teens who are getting up at 5 a.m. Things were quiet in the Nest by 10:15 p.m.

It was a well-labored Labor Day.

(And though we may have 21 days of summer left, officially, some of us--ahem--are already excitedly anticipating that first snowfall!!)

Last Week

Last week I posted mostly about my formerly-homeschooled teenagers' adjustment to public summer school...but I didn't mention what the rest of us were up to!

To kick things off, since the ground was soft from rain and it wasn't too hot (yet), on Monday and Tuesday Bantam13 and I weeded and mulched ALL the landscaping across the front of our house. It was a huge job I had been dreading doing alone.

But like an answer to an unprayed prayer, B13 broke a second-story window the week before, by throwing a tiny rubber bouncy ball at it as he was casually showing off for the neighborhood girls who had stopped by on their bicycles for a sidewalk chat. Being short on cash, he was eager to settle for a work-it-off arrangement.

An unexpected benefit was that we had quite a few nice hours of conversation while we worked. It's not often that I can get B13 in a situation where he'll talk much! He still has more hours to put in, as we haven't touched the beds on the side of the house, but every time I drive up to our house, I am proud of our handiwork. It sure did look bad when we bought the place.

As you may remember, this house was vacant for nearly two years before we bought it. Besides the weeds, another eyesore has been the many windows that look like this:


I don't know about you, but there's almost nothing in the housecleaning line that's more depressing to me than really dirty windows. I've been chafing at the bit to get to these, once I had the inside of the house in reasonable order.

So last week, with the boys' help taking screens in and out, I washed all the windows on the main level of our house, sprayed off the dirty siding around them, cleaned the screens and the sills. (There were piles of SAND in every sill that faced Lake Michigan! I had no idea that the wind would carry sand this far--we're two miles from the lake.)

Here you can see the difference--the two on the left are clean, the two on the right are still dirty:


You can just imagine my current level of satisfaction, now that my windows are all CLEAN!

And speaking of the rewards of our labors, remember the lettuce seeds I planted a few weeks ago? Well, I waited to thin them until they were big enough that we could eat the thinnings:


Ahhhh, there's nothing like just-picked baby lettuces! (I love saying "lettuces," since there are several varieties there. I feel like Beatrix Potter. Remember Peter Rabbit in Mr. McGregor's garden? "First he ate some lettuces, and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes; and then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley.")

Among our accomplishments for the week was finally driving along the lake to look for the nearest beach to our house. Lo and behold, there is a lovely, semi-private beach within biking distance! I took the kids over one afternoon, to reward ourselves for all our hard work, at home and at summer school, and we had the beach to ourselves, practically. That's our 15-passenger van, the only car in the parking lot, behind Bantam3:







I let Blondechick15 invite her new BFF's...hard to believe, but it seems, for now, like they genuinely are "just friends." The boy on the left lives across the street from us, and that's his best friend on the right. They'll both be sophomores at the public high school with Blondechick in the fall, and they've assured her they'll "watch her back" there.


They're really nice boys, but as you can imagine, this friendship has required a good bit of discussion to manage. "You trust ____, don't you?" Blondechick asked me once. "As much as I trust any 15 year old boy--sure!" I responded. But that's another post...

On the topic of the neighborhood kids, though, we had quite a nice time with a group of them one evening last week. It was Bantam9's initiative to invite them all in to play Catch Phrase, a game our kids love and which we've found to be fun for all ages old enough to read. Papa Rooster and I played too, which made a couple of the 9-15-year-olds nervous at first, but they loosened up as we got into the game. It was fun to get to know them all better.

And in other summer school news, Bantam17's bike was stolen on Friday! He was bummed but he handled the situation with a maturity that surprised me. He reported the theft to the office, who noted its exact location so they could watch security films to hopefully catch the thief. When I picked him up, he seemed disturbed but not visibly upset, and was very thankful to his sister who had waited with him. Because of his autism, I expected angry, frustrated complaining at the violation of his personal belongings and the change in his routine, maybe even a sense of injustice that it was his bike and not Blondechick's which had been stolen. Could it be the meds he's on, or is it maturity kicking in? Maybe he had just had enough time to cool down before I got there. Still, I was so pleased.

We went back to the beach on Sunday afternoon and it was a little more crowded, but still delightful. Papa Rooster took many photos, which I shall save for another post.

And at church on Sunday, we had two new families, each with four kids. What an encouragement! One of them promised they'd be back regularly; the wife's mother is at an AMIA church in Denver, and "this is just what we've been looking for," they said. (And the mom in Denver found out about us through my blog!)

Thank you, Lord, that Your favor rests upon us. May You be the one who establishes the works of our hands.

May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us;
establish the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands.
Psalm 90:17

Indoor Progress

As promised...pictures!

Here's the way the schoolroom/office looked for many weeks:


(Too many boxes there containing "J's Office Misc"!)

And now...



Ahh, much better--though still much to be done.

See the little table by the window? I found it at a charity resale shop for a great price. It was exactly what I wanted--not too big, but big enough to seat six if needed. Ideally, I didn't want all 4 chairs, since I planned to use it in the corner, and already have two other chairs in the room, and this table came with 2--perfect! It has been wonderful for my two preschoolers to be able to do puzzles or color while I'm making a meal, rather than having to put everything away every mealtime. And they'll hang out there while I'm on the computer or at my desk, just as I'd hoped!

Here's another "before" pic:


I don't have an "after" from the exact spot, but here's our living room now:


We've been a little concerned that this living room isn't big enough, especially for hosting groups (in fact, we almost didn't look at this house, for that reason!). But if we push the couches back so just the front edges are on the rug, and fill in with chairs all around, we think it will work for moderately-sized groups.

And here's a close-up of the rug that Papa Rooster and I spent a long time choosing:


It helped a lot with the noise level in that room...though we hated to cover up our beautiful floors!


We were also worried, initially, about whether our extra-large dining room table would fit comfortably in the eat-in kitchen area:



No problem!

Oh, and though we thought we'd paint everything a unifying neutral color after we moved in, our inherited color scheme has really grown on us. So we'll keep it awhile.

Pink and green kitchen...



...and all!

Gettin' There

I get to cross one enormous project off my list!


I decided to use rock around the pathstones, instead of mulch, to make it more permanently (ha!) weed-free.


And that little plant in the bed on the left is a start of rhubarb! I was so glad I went back to the big home improvement store for the rocks and noticed that rhubarb plant on the shelf. I never planted any at our old house because our neighbor let us pick his. I love low-maintenance, fruit-bearing perennials!

While there, I also purchased seeds for a couple varieties of lettuce, but they were all out of cherry or grape tomato plants. So I got an acorn squash plant instead. Yum!

So here's another project (not the balance beam!):


Another raised bed, I had assumed, though it did seem like an awkward spot to put a vegetable garden, as the view out the master bedroom seating area, plus it's in shade all afternoon. Unsure what to put in there, I was just going to have the boys hack it down until later.

In an unrelated mystery (I thought), piles of sand kept appearing on the patio, though we have no sandbox. Finally I asked Chicklet5 where they were coming from. Bantam3 did that, she explained. Yes, but where is he getting the sand from?


To my surprise, she took me around to the far side of the awkwardly-placed "raised bed" and pointed to where Bantam3 had dug out a cleared area--in the sandbox!

So Bantam9 and Chicklet5 are chipping away at that task--with the promise of $$ for Bantam9 and candy for Chicklet. (I have to divulge that I paid my big boys to help with the first job too--they're not that altruistic! But for pay, their attitudes were great.)

Yeah, we're gettin' there....

Outdoor Priorities

Saturday Papa Rooster and I drove back to the old homestead to pick up our camper/trailer--the final leg of our move. While Papa Rooster dealt with two flat tires, I dug up young raspberry plants and took a few starts of some other perennials from my old flower beds--Shasta daisies, yellow sundrops, a bearded iris, purple-flowered nepeta, bleeding heart and columbine.

I was happy to have them, but dismayed to realize that I now had to spend significant hours gardening here at the new house! I've been getting nowhere fast, it seems, on the inside of the house.

It was easy to find room in my flower beds for the transplants, but the intended raspberry bed was a different story. Our house was vacant for two summers before we bought it, so the weeds had taken over the raised beds the former owners left us. I discussed the situation with my dad on Father's Day, hoping for an easy, organic solution (since I want to grow food in those beds), but he said, "Sorry, honey, but there's only one answer to that problem that I know of: Boys."


So there's Bantam13. He and Bantam17, working alongside me, were indeed the best solution! This shot was taken after we'd already started weeding the bed he's sitting in. There's a second bed behind him that hasn't been touched yet, so you can see what we were dealing with.

Two and a half hours later...


Those are big beds too--16 ft long by almost 4 feet wide.

Yesterday I bought 12 bags of topsoil and 20 bags of the mulch that was on sale...and put half of that down in this bed where I finally planted my raspberries.


I laid the mulch down thick, because I don't want to weed raspberries again for a good long time!

Now I'm just praying that most of them make it, after all our hard work. If they do, it will still probably be two years before we get many berries.

So today's project is spreading the rest of the topsoil and mulch in the other bed, and laying landscape fabric and mulch down under and around the stepstones. I think I'll plant some lettuces and a cherry or grape tomato plant in the other bed, but that's as ambitious as I feel right now. My main goal is to keep the weeds at bay....