The Mennobrarian

Adventures in Home Improvement, or, These Things Happen Sometimes

Frost survivors.

In and Around the Home this Week

Well that was a most productive weekend, and I have the sore muscles to prove it. We finally got the garden tilled, the seedlings planted, and the last of the arborvitae in. We have become a living advertisement for my husband's cousin's nursery that sold us those shrubs, as people driving along the busy road stop to ask where they can buy them. As a bonus, I did quite a bit of planting in the flower beds, too. After putting in the vegetable garden, I still had a couple flats of marigolds left over, so those got planted along with some zinnias, and a beautiful echinacea plant which will sprout white flowers. When everything blooms, it should be lovely. Those zinnias and marigolds make a nice cutting garden.

Our initial planting for the vegetable garden consists of four rows of tomatoes in various varieties, hot and sweet peppers, a few herbs, carrots, and a row of sunflowers. I am already sorting seeds for our second planting, though of course that is months away.



In the garden: Our good friends at a nearby nursery gifted us a morning glory vine that will bloom red flowers. It is supposed to grow 6-8 feet, and of course, am thankful, but have no idea where we'll put it.

On the table: Black bean, corn, and cilantro salad, barbeque chicken and burgers, chocolate oatmeal bars, fresh local strawberries.

In the home: My husband is gutting a back room that will end up as our new back door and porch. I am getting us ready for all of the upcoming events that will happen over the next few weeks: A cousin's wedding, our niece's second birthday, visits with family who will be arriving for the wedding.

Just thinking: I like to sing praise to the Lord as much as the next Christian, but where do you draw the line between someone with a "music ministry" and someone who just likes to perform and be praised?

In and Around the Home This Week

Very shortly, there will be seventy trees, each around seven feet tall, delivered to our property for immediate planting. It was an odd weekend.

First, the Deacon arrived with a backhoe. Why is our deacon driving around in a backhoe? Anyway, he tore out this concrete pad we uncovered outside next to the kitchen, which we can see used to be a well, but we don't know what the concrete was for. Then, after that was finished and my husband had left to haul some wood to his parent's farm, the phone call came. It was my mother-in-law's cousin, a nice man who owns a nursery.
"Hello, Monica? I have about half your order of trees. We're going to dig the rest on Monday. Do you know if your husband wants us to drop them off today or should I just store them until Monday?"
"Um...I...don't...know....He's not here right now and I don't know when exactly he is getting back....so....I'd say store them until Monday."
"Okay, just have him give me a call on my cell phone when he gets in."

What? Are you kidding me? He ordered how many trees?

As it turns out, this was a case of my husband working very fast to make something happen that we had discussed the week before. As you know, the road outside of our house is a constant source of anguish for me, as we continuously pick up trash thrown out from car windows, deal with high levels of noise from delivery trucks, and even witness people having nasty traffic altercations with one another, all on a two lane road! Not to mention, we have zero privacy. Well, a couple weeks ago as I was driving home from the library, it occurred to me that some fast growing shrubs planted as a border along the road might help with some of this. Sure enough, as I turned down the road to our house, I noticed many of our neighbors are on the same page and have put in forsythia bushes. Anyway, when I told my husband about the idea, he interpreted it this way: WE NEED TO BUILD A MASSIVE WALL OF FLORA AROUND OUR PROPERTY RIGHT NOW.

So, it was a bit of a surprise, but I am not complaining in the least. We got a very good deal on the shrubs from our cousin, and my husband sees noise reduction as a priority, too. Especially since it is now motorcycle season.

In the Garden: Just ten more days until planting time! Meanwhile, the seedlings are coming along and we are stocking up on lime and other soil additives. It seems like every other day I am erasing and re-penciling in where things will go on the garden plan, while knowing that once we start planting, it will all change anyway.

In and Around the Home this Week

...but mostly around the home this week.


Our fence posts are up, including posts for a new clothesline (not shown in this photo) and the garden area is being prepared. It's not visible, but that's my husband back there on the tractor after turning up the dirt. He's standing on the tractor and sawing off a limb of that mulberry tree. He's always sawing something.

We have "vacancy" signs posted at our bird houses, and are starting to see some interested guests. It will be nice to have a variety of birds rather than just the greedy starlings that nest in our eaves!

And finally, here are the tulips that the hungry mole forgot to eat. Believe me, he ate most of them.

Seedlings for a few items have been started and are germinating in their window containers, and my target date for putting things in the ground is somewhere around the first of next month. Towards the back of the property is where I'll put my wildflower garden, appropriately near the birdhouses. There is still a lot of preparation to be done in the coming weeks; feeding the soil, putting down compost, and spreading grass seed. We have an odd selection of ground covers, currently. Some clover (which I like) punctuated with tufts of weeds, wild onions, and grass-like clumps.

On the table: Fresh pineapple and strawberries, tacos, vegetable salad, banana bread, escarole, and tacos. (Not all at once.)

In the home: Starting laundry,  cleaning, running errands, menu planning and drawing up a shopping list, just everything!

On the nightstand: Ten different garden plans, Mulberry Park by Judy Duarte (cute story with a theme of forgiveness).

Thinking about: All that I am thankful for.

Spring blessings

A sign of spring in our side yard? Nope, a sign of the end of winter is more like it. This nest was a leftover from last year, and a wind finally blew it out of a tree and on to the ground. I hope another bird finds it and reuses it for this Spring.

We have also been blessed with something previously used, but new to us: A pick- up truck to haul our building supplies and other equipment. This is a BIG blessing as, up until now, my husband was using an ancient station wagon with mismatched doors and an attached trailer hitch. It was barely street legal, so my husband mostly drove it around my in-law's farm, on our property, and the roads between the two. Anyway, it is ready to be junked...though, as I've mentioned before, my husband is not prone to throwing things away until they are absolutely useless in every way, shape, and form. So of course he has an idea for that crazy station wagon.

As I've mentioned before, many of our household items are stored in a bedroom in our house to keep them safe and clean while we do the construction. This summer, much of that room we are using to store our things will be demolished and rebuilt, which means we won't be able to keep all of our belongings there as we do now.

"Is there anything in that room that's really valuable?" my husband asked.
"Well, yes. It's everything we own, so, uh, it's all extremely valuable, since it's like, all we have," I answered.
"Because that room isn't going to be weather tight when I take out that wall, so we'll need to move everything someplace else."

Oh dear, what to do? We already have every other room in our small house tied up with construction materials, so where are we going to put our stuff? Well. My husband thought it would make good use of the station wagon if we simply parked it out back, used it to store our things, and then, (here's the best part) put a car cover over it so it won't offend my eyes!

Nice try. There's actually practical reasons why that wouldn't work, either, but he gets a "c" for creativity.

Anyway, we were humbled by God's blessing of this truck, it will be such a big help. It actually belonged to my husband's late Grandfather, whose widow so wanted us to have it that she turned down a much higher offer for it to accept our much lower one. We were so thankful.

It's always the little blessing that get me the most, that make me wonder

In and Around the Home this Week

Standing in line at the store a few days ago, I noticed all of the cash registers had a note taped to them that tried to explain the recent surge in food prices to their customers. Although I have certainly noticed an increase in the price of eggs, milk, and a few other items, our grocery bill is actually getting smaller as each month goes by. There are only a few things I can think of that might account for this. We buy relatively few convenience foods, (that's not to say we don't buy any, as I like to conserve time and energy as well as money). We do purchase a lot of produce, and eat meatless a few times a week. Neither of us are milk drinkers, and so I only buy powdered milk or very small amounts for cooking. My meal planning has a lot to do with what's on sale or what was previously bought on sale-- and so it is now what's on hand in the "pantry".  But frankly, with just two adults it is a lot easier to shrink your grocery bill. Personally, I am hopeful that these rising grocery costs might translate into a good opportunity for people to grow their own food or buy directly from farmers, while giving everyone a better sense of where their food comes from.

We are making big plans for the construction once the warmer weather starts. Right now, fence posts are going in the ground, and plans are being made for some kitchen work at the end of the week. This will mean some crock pot meals and maybe even going out to eat one night. It will be inconvenient for sure, but the result will be walls, a ceiling, and other things that make a room a room! Anyway, our big project for the spring/summer will involve building over an outdoor deck in order to make a larger bedroom, and constructing a new back door and porch at the end of our hallway which currently ends with a wall.

I

When appliances attack 2

On Saturday, my dryer started regurgitating its own parts. As a result, the normal howling noise it makes was elevated to a high pitched constant squeak that sent the dogs scurrying and put me in bed with a severe headache by early afternoon.

Then, the appliance repairman arrived, bright and early, while I was till clutching my coffee. After shooing him into the kitchen, I presented him with some sort of seal that came loose from the dryer innards and came out in the wash, literally. He looked alarmed.

I told him about the loud and constant noises the dryer makes while running, and then how we had replaced a stove part the company sent us on the one stove burner that won't light, which resulted in the burner working exactly once before giving up the ghost. The repairman walked over to the stove, turned on the burner, and it instantly ignited, just to make a fool out of me. Meanwhile, we had turned on the dryer to demonstrate the auditory assault we live with on wash days. Wouldn't you know that dryer would not make a peep? I was suddenly placed in the bizarre position of having to convince the repairman that my appliances really are broken, and then trying to figure out a way to make them act as they did before he got there. Fortunately, it didn't take long for the appliances to show their true colors, and while Mr. Fixit carefully diagnosed the stove, I ran into the bathroom to grab a few wet towels to throw in the dryer hoping to mimic a wet load of laundry. After about fifteen minutes, the dryer started screaming.
"Hhmph. Rear bearing sleeve," he mumbled, and turned back to the stove.

Hearing the repairman give my dryer's illness an actual name was a huge relief. He knew what was wrong with it, and knew the cure. I exhaled.

After inserting some sort of chip in the stove which fixed the burner, the nice man told me he would need to order a new seal to replace the one that the dryer spit out, and that since he would have to take the dryer all apart to insert the new one, he would come back next week to both replace the part and fix the howling. Hearing that he could solve our woes and seeing the sun on the horizon made me feel bold enough to make a non-standard request. As some of my readers may recall, I posted a while back about how all my appliances beep noisily and continuously, even though it may not be convenient for me to get to them and turn them off right at that moment. The washer and dryer are a big offender on this one. I asked him nicely (okay, I begged him and offered a cash incentive) if he could deprogram the washer and dryer so they would not beep maniacally at the end of a cycle. Like a good repairman, he explained that because they are electronically programmed at the factory, that there is no way it can be done, and even if it could, it would void the warranty which you do not want to do. But he did do something amazing.

He reached down, pressed a button, and told me I could just turn off the beeping sound.

Yes, just turn it off, by pushing this little button I see every day but have never touched. And for some reason, I missed the meaning of this button when reading the owner's manuals.

Yes, I felt like an idiot.

When appliances attack

We Inherited Junk, Part 2

"What's that big black wire that's hanging down out front by the tree, the one coming down from the thing that's stuck on the other thing and in a big pile?"

 It was the best I could describe it.

My husband asked me to show it to him, and then he informed me that it had been there for a long while. It is a long, black cable that used to be attached to an eave on the front of  the house, which my husband disconnected because it was in the way. It gives you cable television. We don't have television so we don't need it. He had called the cable television company to come and get their cable, which he had coiled out by the road for their convenience. They told him that they had no record of there ever being any cable television account at the location of our house, and they would not be coming for the cable. A cable, that is according to the building code inspector, is a regulation cable used by no one but the cable television company.

You see, I was asking because we get a lot of junk falling along the road that fronts our property. A couple of months ago, I was in the kitchen when an enormous clattering of noise came from out front. I ran to look out the front window, convinced that I would be confronted with an over turned truck, and saw that there was a scattering of construction debris along the road. Wood, bits of cement, junk. Now, surely the person driving the truck that this flew off of heard the noise it made when it landed in the road! But they did not stop and it fell on us to navigate our vehicles around it as we left the driveway each day. It was nearly a month before the highway department came to pick it up and haul it away.

A couple of weeks ago we acquired another fallen item on the road out front. A mattress! Now, you would think someone would miss a mattress that did not get to its intended location. But no one came for the mattress, which my generous husband pushed off to the side of the road. Again, it languished there for weeks until this morning. The road department finally came by to take it away.

In other news, my husband has asked me to start looking at wood stoves to see what I like, so he can keep an eye out for a good price on one. We're thinking ahead to next winter, of course. But my thoughts are of bulbs peeking through the ground, longer days, and the promise of spring. The thought of looking at wood stoves holds very little appeal right now...but it's the least I can do for the man who indulged me in a gardening conversation last night while helping me process a huge bunch of coriander by pulling leaves off of stems. What a guy!

We inherited junk

Because what doesn't kill you sometimes makes you laugh

More adventures in home improvement

Adventures in Home Improvement