Farm: May 2006 Archives

Make sure you visit us over at Mamarazzi. Updates daily. ***** 6 beds: Linens changed, includes ironing and french linen water 5 bedrooms: Mopped, dusted, and fresh flowers cut and placed in vases by the beds (I cut my pink peonies that have just opened and made small arragements.) Grocery bought, put away and some of the cooking completed. Floors mopped, carpets vacuumed, furniture polished and laundry almost completed. ETA 2 hours. Pork for pulled pork BBQ cooking. Ribs marinating. Coleslaw made. Potato salad made. Baked beans waiting to bake. Gallons of tea and lemonaide chilling. I am now ahead of the game! :-) For those concerned about my post mentioning Steven had purchased a shotgun. We live in the United States of America. We exercise our 2nd amendment right. We live in an area of Virginia infested with groundhogs. They are a rodent that is listed as a vermin and a pest. They will eat a garden overnight. They ruin field crops. They also tunnel and damage not only fields but property. They burrow under the foundation of farm buildings and cause major $$$'s worth of damage. It is legal and lawful to shoot them. We do. Our barn has sustained major damage over the past year and my garden is suffering drastically.

The Second Amendment, as passed by the House and Senate and later ratified by the States, reads: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

A walking tour just like the local Ladies Garden Club but you don't have to buy a ticket and I am not wearing a hat and gloves. Come on up to the house. Just past the house take the little path to the right before you get to the car garage. These red roses are from three different plants. One plant is an old fashion rose. The blooms are so heavenly scented. The other bushes are like the american beauty varieties but I can't say for sure that is what they are. Just at the end of the little path that leads to the koi pond and the little garden bench is the lone rose. It produces only a few blooms once every year. I think it doesn't get enough sun. The root stock is very old so I am not going to move it for fear it may not survive. This is a lovely shadey place to sit. I prefer to sit here in late evening just before dark as the little garden lights are beginning to come on. The trickle of the water, croak of the frogs and scent of the flowers makes for a very peaceful moment alone. It is almost healing when sitting here. Just behind the bench are these pink old fashion roses. To the end of the little path entering the orchard are more traditional pink roses. These are so delicately scented. They are perhaps my favorites. They need a good dose of bone meal and blood meal. At the end of the orchard where the wisteria grows is this lovely red rose. Last year it bloomed once. This year it is showing signs of improvement. At the very end, near the bend of the front drive is this very old rose. It did nothing last year and I nearly cut it down. I have no idea it was a rose bush -tree sort of. Only this spring has it budded out and even has new branches. Back in the fall I butchered and hacked at it and I told it should it do nothing this spring I had no choice but to assume it was dead. Now it is blooming. Those blooms hang in the air about eight feet. I can't reach them to give you a little prospective. The view from the bottom of the orchard looking back up toward the koi pond. The arbor is the wisteria and the red rose. I am adding this shot so you can see the peonies. The bloom heads are so very heavy they won't stand up. The peonies at the side of the house and the grill house are all open. I love this color pink too. Yesterday I continued my 'Angie Do' list. After cutting grass I spent the afternoon trimming around the fence and putting out roundup. If you have ever seen morning glories take over a fence you will understand the need for roundup. I put out 5 gallons yesterday. Early in the morning I also mopped on 6 gallons of wood sealer on the deck. It soaked in as fast as I could put it on. This is a similar view of the back of the house from last year. Huge difference. I really need to think about landscaping around the pool. Any ideas? And finally my beautiful happy boy who makes my heart ache from loving him so much. He is the youngest blossom in my garden. And that concludes our tour. Punch and cookies are being served on the front lawn. Enjoy. Make sure you visit us over at Mamarazzi. Updates daily.

It was a big weekend here with MUCH work being done. I am nowhere near being caught up on my to do list but we are slowly mucking through it. Finish chipping and shredding along fence line Pressure wash back deck Pressure wash side porch and concrete Build new steps to the tobacco barn (now pool house) Cut down self seeding brush from along fence line. Weed eat along backyard fencing inside and out Haul away 2 loads of debris Go to Lowes and watch Steven choose MANY tools because he insists he can't build/cut/plan any project without new power tools. Come home with router, workbench and bit set. Realize he is researching shotguns. Go with him to purchase one along with a case, cleaning kit, ammo etc etc etc Take trash to the landfill. Come outside shortly after and see he left half the trash in his hurry to get to the dump and back. (what the hell is up with this? EVERY single weekend when he has to take off the garbage he leaves garbage behind because he 'did know it was trash"!! How can this be?) Make 2 trips to Walmart. For bucket and cheap mop for deck sealer. Come back with those items plus 2 movies, kids a bathing suit and pool noodles. Start taking photos of the work being done then forget and only have a couple of 'In the beginning' photos not worth the effort to down load and upload to the journal. Fall into bed each night with tired body, sore arms and a wonderful sense of jobs well done. Be the one to wake up during the night to feed the baby more than once while a husband snores away the minutes oblivious to any signs of life around him.

Make sure you visit us over at Mamarazzi. Updates daily. ****** Yesterday I got nothing done. Nothing. Not one thing. After a busy week, busy weekend, and not enough sleep the grey morning and cool air left me lazy beyond lazy. I napped a few times yesterday, nursed the baby, visited a few of you and not much else beyond preparing supper. Last week was a flurry of activity as the pool was finished. Now we are just waiting for the builders to schedule the cover fitting and the concrete work needed to anchor said cover. Which reminds me I need to buy chlorine tabs. Mother's day was busy. I recieved lovely cards from everyone. But even on Mother's Day there is much to be done and one is still Momma, the great be all wonder that makes everything function properly. My kitchen project is kind of in a holding pattern. I haven't gotten much done than where I stopped in the middle of last week. But I do plan to plow ahead quickly this week and get things moving again. because next week I have a summer class at the community college I am really looking forward to taking. It involves local history and a field tip or two involving some very old and historic homes I am nashing my teeth at to get to see. This is how it is going so far - This is a photo of how the kitchen looked when we came to see the house before purchasing. I am posting it because I can't find my folder of photos that I have taken. On the far right of the photo is a double glass door and a bank of windows. Completely unseen and hidden. They had put a hutch and a refrigerator in front of those areas and completely blocked them out. We didn't know there was a double door nor the window until much later. These lights are flourescent. They are blindingly bright except when you are at the counter working. Then you are standing in your own shadow and cannot see a thing. Here on the right you can see the tops of the window. We did not know that was a bank of windows until our third visit. We replaced those lights and added a ceiling fan. This part of the house was not air conditioned at the time. It has nine and a half foot ceilings and the heat just hangs in the air in the dead summer. Also we added some task lighting and plan to install some under the cabinet lighting when the painting is finished. I really want to replace those cabinets with something nicer and in the color of a nice dark cognac. For now that part of the budget for the kitchen was spent on living during the 5 months Steven spent working for his company for no pay :( . I had to find a suitable way to brighten and enhance the look of the kitchen without buying new cabinets. I have taken to painting them. The color is everard chamber white. It is a kitchen and trim enamel paint in the Williamsburg collection of historic colors. On the left where there is paint smeared on the blue strip on the wall. That is where a room divider was on both sides. With these built in shelve things that were detracting and annoying. I took a sledge hammer to those shelves and posts and took them down opening the room up into a full length 27 foot room. It will be a kitchen/dining/den area for the family. -When I ever finish, that is. Instead of dumping everything out and having a gigantic mess everywhere I have been emptying one cabinet at a time. The cabinets have to be vacuumed, then cleaned, allowed to dry before 2 (sometimes3) coats of primer/sealer goes on (I am using Kilz) and then 2 nice coats of this luscious paint that is soooo very sexy to paint with! Once everything has had 24 hours to cure the cabinets are arranged and everything put back in its place. It makes for slow going but at the end of the day we are able to move around in the kitchen and there is very little by way of debris to have to clean up or stumble over. It has been raining part of the last several days so the painting of the cabinet doors has stalled. I like to paint them outside in the bright heat of the sun. They dry MUCH quicker and can go back up at the end of the day. That wallpaper is nasty. It was put up over the drywall BEFORE the drywall was primed or painted. Oh what fun that crap is to remove. I am looking at tin ceiling tiles to replace it with. First I have to find the perfect ceiling tile! I have managed to keep Steven entertained and get one coat of primer and paint on at a time usually though while he is napping. Colby is home from school now so it will be a huge blessing to have her to lend a hand both with the painting and keeping the baby happy. I have been hesitant to brag on what a good baby he is for the fear the powers that be might hear and knock me down a notch or two. But he is. I have never had a baby that would sit in a swing for 30 minutes or so or even one who would nap during the day. He swings, he naps and is generally happy. Which makes doing things around the house much easier than I ever dreamed. I am watching him now as he naps in the morning sun. He is the most delicious looking baby! How did I get to be so lucky?

Things have really picked up in pace over the weekend here. Just how big of a change? This big - The view of my backyard from the attic window this morning.We were left on November 3, 2005 with this for a backyard. It sat like this from November until this past weekend. Then a flurry of activity began as the weather had warmed up enough to be able to continue the construction process. These guys work fast.An electrician was scheduled for friday. He was a no show. The plaster guys were to come on Saturday. They went to the wrong job first. The water guy called he was on his way. Had to cancel. About two and a half hours later they were finished.Finally the plaster guys show up at 7:22am on a sunday morning. WTH is up with that? Where I come from no one does work on Sunday morning. It never fails to surprise how you can get just about anything done in Northern Virginia on a Sunday. Even a doctor appointment. Yes! How surreal for me. The plaster was pretty much considered dry but it is the water that actually cures it. It is all done in the same day.It took three of these beasts filled with water to fill the hole in the ground. This truck brought 5000 gallons of water. Another truck brought two loads of water at 4300 gallons a load. It takes longer than you think to empty a truck.That is somewhere in the neighborhood of 13,600 gallons of clorinated city water works water. MUCH longer.About 3 hours later the pool was finally filled. The girls sat out by the pool every minute possible anticipating the moment that would come when the pool was finally full of water. They saved everything from last summer to have on hand immediately without having to look for it.These two were bound and determined to get in as soon as the water was in. The water temperature was below 60F.Did I mention what the temperature was yesterday? Don't let all of that sunshine fool you. Official temperatureYes, you see correctly. Tomorrow I must tell you about the shoes the plaster guys wear.