29 April 2012 - Hereditary weeding

Yesterday, I was surprised to find myself channeling my Mother. She fought dandelions for years and years. I can remember that my sister and I were drafted at a very early age, to be part of her army.  As general of the forces, she would attack the weeds with her digger and throw them behind her as she progressed through the lawn. We always managed to poop out way before she did.

In my own garden, much to Jack's bemusement, I too, pitch weeds behind me as I work. Since he often ends up cleaning up behind me, he doesn't quite understand.  So today, while out digging dandelions, I realized I was in my mother's classic pose:  one knee on the ground, one knee up by my shoulder. I had to stop and laugh.

Then I had the "aha" moment. I remembered that my friend, Amy, gave me a lovely turquoise trug. It is a lightweight, flexible plastic container with handles. I could drag it along with me and pitch the weeds into it as I went. It certainly eliminated a lot of clean up. 

There is a rhythm you fall into, a sort of mindless being that lets you dig, while your head is elsewhere. It is an interesting place to be. 

 Our list for this weekend was overly ambitious as usual, but we still were able to accomplish quite a bit. High on our list was one: cleaning off the porch,and two: getting David to come haul all the steel, plus assorted machinery away so we could use the covered space behind the garage for storage instead of the porch. We definitely have storage issues, especially for yard equipment, and it does look pretty trashy. Jack says the only thing that saves us is that we don't have a car on the lawn up on blocks.

Quite a bit of stuff on the porch was furniture (dressers, bookcases, computer furniture, etc) that we didn't have room for in the house. this stuff spent the winter on the porch wrapped in tarps. Today we loaded the van and made two trips down to Savers, and managed to tuck a few more things in the basement. Wow! That freed up a lot of room. 

Neither one of us thought to take a before picture, which is really too bad, because the difference is astounding. Jack took a picture about halfway through the porch project. 

So, are you wondering about the blue ceiling?  Several years ago I read a tip from Martha Stewart. She said to paint your porch ceiling blue and it will keep wasps from building nests on your ceiling. We get so many wasps,  it is always a battle to keep the ceiling free of mud dauber nests, and paper wasp nests, so we tried it. And I am here to tell you that it works! Apparently it confuses the wasps into thinking it is the sky, and they think they can't build. Ha!

David came over and we filled his pickup with metal until his tires started to flatten out. Don't have a clue where he is going to put it all, probably on his porch!  He still needs to come back and take more things: three or four grinding wheels, a very large metal clad storage box, really old machines that aren't even made anymore, or that make parts for things that aren't made anymore. Very cool stuff, mind you, but we can't/won't use it not to mention we desperately need the room. 

Between the stuff that David took, and moving a lot more around, we were able to get almost everything off the porch. Lots left to do behind the garage, but that is another day.  The next big thing on our list is to replace the porch post that is currently sitting on the jack. That will go a long way toward making this area more livable and usable. But right now, it seems like gracious living.

I love to sit out here with my first cup of coffee in the morning. Even when the temps are in the high 40s or low 50s, with the sun coming in, it is very comfortable.