Baby Steps

I started writing this post two weeks ago.  It has kind of turned into a monster - sorry.

It feels like we haven't gotten much done in the past couple of weeks.  The amount of work we have ahead of us is kind of staggering at times and we go through phases of catatonic stupor because of being so overwhelmed.  It also seems as if we've really only had a few weekends to get good chunks of work done, let alone rest up from the week.  The Meadowbrook spring open house was a month ago so Tom worked that Saturday.  That Sunday we did have a really nice Reber family gathering with Tom's parents, his sister, Meg, and her husband, Josh.  Meg and Josh were visiting from Germany.  We are so glad they came to visit, though it was far too short!

The following weekend, Tom and I had a really fun, whirlwind trip out to State College for my brother's graduation from Penn State's MBA program.  Congratulations Andrew and Mindy for surviving two crazy years!

Two weeks ago Tom worked both days and this past weekend he was on Saturday.  He's on again this Saturday as well.

We do some stuff during the week, but it is hard to get into big projects with the small windows between work, dinner and bedtime.  Adding to the usual exhaustion of work has been Tom's frustrations with his job - being under-appreciated, under-compensated, overworked, being constantly pulled from his own work to fill gaps in the organization and then having people wonder why things in his own department aren't getting done -  it is really quite mind-boggling.  We're mentally and physically exhausted.

So we haven't done much - mostly baby steps and getting caught in the web of projects that need to precede the ones we really want done.  We really want to get the first floor painted - once we do that, we can decorate at least the parlor and set up bookshelves and unpack books, etc.  We can have at least one room that is basically complete.  Before we do that, however, we need to shuffle things around so that we can wash the walls and put down drop cloths.

A few weeks ago, we got a large number of boxes cleared out of the parlor and moved the filing cabinet upstairs.  Nothing flashy, but it was a big improvement.

       

We also got lumber so that we could build a free-standing lumber rack in the cellar.  The plan is to move the lumber out of the shop so we can move the workbench in from the dining room.  I was pretty useless on the lumber rack at first and Tom had very little time to work on it, so we got stalled on that for a little while.  I finally got over that and we've almost finished it a few times this past week.  We needed to get some more carriage bolts and install those and today, when I was putting in the bolts I remembered that we didn't have enough nuts - we need 8 more.   So close!

We moved this section outside to get it out of the way and discovered that we could do this - pretty cool!

It's going to hold a lot of lumber.

Our other accomplishments have mostly been outside.  We've begun to plant some of the things we've been acquiring - most have only been in the past few months, but there have been some long term snags.

In the front yard, we ripped out some of the landscape fabric on the front slope and got some lowbush blueberries and Comptonia (Sweet Fern) into the ground.

 

We planted an Ostrya (Hophornbeam) in the side yard

and a Lindera glauca var. salicifolia

Yes, Tom is pounding away on that root ball

  and a Quercus ilex (Holly Oak) up toward the front of our property.

   We still need to find homes for some highbush blueberries and more goodies we've acquired in the past few weeks.

We pulled a huge quantity of garlic mustard, attacked the roses, Robinia, grapevines, bittersweet and Clematis that have run rampant for the past couple of years.  A few weeks ago, I started digging in this mess.

 I discovered that there are some arborvitae along one of our fences.  One or two are alive, and some used to be.  

 This was only a 5-6 foot section of fence.  Almost all of it is just like that.  We'll be at this for a while.

We had been creating a brush pile at the back of our lot, but when I was working on this fence section, I decided that we weren't going to be able to process all of the waste coming out of our yard at this point.  After we have things cleaned up, sure, but we really don't want roses in our compost and vines are just annoying.  I headed out to the local library and picked up 15 30-gallon yard waste bags.  I filled four just with the pile from that first day and we've been adding to it ever since.  It has also managed to rain for the past two monday nights and I've been reluctant to move soggy bags out to the curb and risk having them just crumble so they're kind of piling up right now.

We also started tilling up a patch of grass in the sunniest part of the yard for our vegetable garden.  We got maybe half of it done last Saturday, but it has been too wet ever since to get back into it.  It is going to be maybe 12-15 x 20.  I decided that I was going to start tilling it while Tom was at work last Saturday - so on Friday night (after we popped the Direct TV satellite out of the ground) we marked out the corners.  Tom went inside to get something to mark it out with and what did he come out with? The blow torch.  Tom is really not your typical guy, except maybe when it comes to fire.  It didn't really work, so he ended up grabbing his axe and making some stakes instead, but it was pretty funny.

So that's about where we stand today--things have been rough lately, but we're still making progress and little by little we'll get there.  I just have to keep thinking of what I chanted to myself on those days during high school cross country practice when I was on a hill and just wanted to stop...flattening the hill, I'm flattening the hill.