Weeds!
My backyard is quite the eco-system. We have cut back on the pigeons now that the roof is closed up. I haven’t seen them in a while so I assume they have found a new home. The squirrels are as feisty as ever but I don’t think they are back inside. We have a Grackle nest in the sewer vent pipe but the rest of them mostly just squalk and try to get in. I’m hoping by winter they will have given up and found a different poorly maintained house to live in. I’m also going to put a gazillion birdhouses in the backhard. I figure I had better give those feisty birds plenty of places that aren’t my attic to live. I also want to manage to keep some robbins and blue-bird nests from getting ransacked by the Grackles.
I’ve got a ton of roses…covered in Aphids and what the neighbor thinks is a Spirea that has swarms of them. I also have a host of weeds. Goutweed is one of the worst around here. I’ve got a couple patches but my behind neighbor was kinds enough to work on them for a while earlier this spring when I didn’t have the time. It was spring vacation week and she made her kids help clean out my backyard. I think she considered it preventative maintenance/boredom buster/whining discipline. Hey sure, I can always supply some punishment chores.
My first bloom. B-E-A-utiful!
A bit of trumpet vine in the front. I need to get rid of it but I hate to kill a good plant. The stuff is a nightmare though. Perhaps I’ll get it started up the shed once we have that in place. I believe it is the tendril type vine not the sucker type so it’s relatively safe. It grows a mile a minute it seems.
Here is a photo of the Spirea-candidate. She should get pink and white blooms if she is indeed spirea. She was covered in Aphids and so far the spray I used seems to have worked. You can see a bunch of dead aphids on her.
I found a small bit of goutweed to show you. It doesn’t look like much but it’s the underground spreading method that is so difficult. It’s the little 3-leafed plant.
I do have plenty of mustard which runs rampant but isn’t nearly as hard to get rid of.
It pulls up real easily which is a definite plus. The yard is also covered in Bugleweed. I think it’s bugleweed. It’s either that or catmint. Can any weed experts tell? It has a square stem, little purple flowers, and it seems to spread like a ground creeper rather than upright like catmint. It smells great and doesn’t seem to mind being mowed so I think I’ll just let it compete with the grass for now. I moved a bunch of it to the front yard hoping it would take over.
I also have this vine growing on the ugly chain link fence on the right side of the backyard. I believe it to be False Virginia Creeper. It definitely has little spiral grabbers and the characteristic 5 leaves. I just hope it isn’t something bad like Poison Sumac but I don’t think that grows up here. I’ll tear it out once I have a chance to get rid of that fence but I don’t want it to take to my deck or something in the meantime.
There are also always the dandilions and Violets that scatter the lawn but those aren’t too interesting. There are a couple strange ferns and some plants with carrot-y leaves that I’ve pulled here and there but nothing recognizable. I’ll have to let some grow up and see if anything interesting blooms.
Here is one odd one. Looks viscous.
Oh, another great addition to the wildlife, we were gifted a squirrel tail this weekend. It seems some neighborhood cat has adopted us. I hope to get a peek at him sometime but so far, I haven’t seen any cats around.
I love all the nature in our little .15 acre lot. So many birds and plants. I’ve seen bluejays, bluebirds, a robin in her nest, lots of chickadees and of course the ugly grackles and the pigeons that we evicted. I even saw a hawk grab a chickadee out of the tree next to the house! It looks like there used to be a big hawk nest in the tree next door but it has been abandoned probably since the grackle population has drastically declined. Maybe next summer I’ll put out a bird feeder and a bird bath and see who comes to the neighborhood but until we have these grackles under control, we won’t be encouraging birds of any kind.
My Robin nest that was prematurely abandoned:
I’m not a huge fan of this weeping cherry. Sure the robins nest was cool and It’s beautiful in early spring but I don’t love the placement and I don’t love the shape especially in the winter. Here is a picture of it at its most beautiful:
Here it is from the side yard. You can see deck building going on in the foreground.
I need a National Audubon Society book so I can identify all the birds that I see. I know Finches and Chickadees and the blue-jay but there are so many that I don’t know. Do you know of any good regional weed books? I’d love to identify some of the things I’m pulling in the garden.
Sarah
Roses Roses Roses
My roses are blooming like crazy! It’s awesome. I have a beautiful sunset colored rose. The outside petals are pink and the inside ones are yellow. There is also a deep pink one, and a yellow rose and a huge fuchsia one. There are even a few that haven’t bloomed yet so they are surprises!
My grammy would love it!
Saga of the Refridgerator
The refrigerator is now plugged in and keeping pizza leftovers cold! It’s been sitting in the dining room for a while while we puzzled the conundrum of getting it into the kitchen…
We purchased at LG single door, bottom drawer refrigerator in white.
We looked at a LOT of refrigerators. We really liked the samsung sigle-door, bottom drawer but it has been discontinued. We also looked at a large number of french-door refridgerators. The problem is, that in order to access the drawers, the doors have to open more than 90 degrees.
You can kind of see in this picture that the doors have to really open in order for the drawers to clear the organizers in the door.
Since we are putting the fridge in the corner of the room, the right door will not be able to open much more than 90 degrees. We thought about taking the door organizers off the right door but the fridges are designed in such a way that the door is the only space for milk-jugs and 2-liter bottles. So, until we come up with a better solution, the single-door fridge is the only way to have a fridge in a corner.
We also didn’t want the water-dispenser in the door. With the bottom freezer, you end up having to have a second freezer element for the ice maker and that ends up taking up a large portion of your fridge space. The tap water is also extremely good tasting where we are so it didn’t make much sense for us. There is an ice maker in the drawer and even that isn’t super necessary since the tap water doesn’t get hotter than about 55 degrees.
Back to the saga, the fridge is 33″ wide, a standard-ish small-ish size. It is 30″ deep plus another 3 ” for the handles. Problem…the door to the kitchen is only 28″ wide. So the fridge was delivered with much excitement..then much disappointment..then resignation. We stashed it in the Piano Room/Formal Living room until we figured out what to do. My initial thought was that we would have to take it out the front of the house, down the driveway, up onto the deck, and in through the back door which is slated to be replaced anyways. So, we’d tear out the door, get the fridge in, and put a new door back. First of all, that is a lot of destruction to get a fridge into our house not to mention how would we ever get it out! Secondly, there is a dumpster currently blocking the aforementioned path down the driveway to the deck.
The fridge lived in the piano room for a week or so and then the cabinets come, fully blocking the path of the fridge. Stefan did some research and developed a plan. If you take the doors off the refridgerator, it is 27 3/4″ wide. The door is 28″ wide. That should be enough. This past Monday, we inspected and re-arranged the cabinets and removed the doors from the fridge. With much finagling we got the fridge lined up with the not 1 but 2 door-frames it had to slide through to get into the kitchen. With 1/8″ clearance on each side, we managed to force the fridge through perhaps the narrowest doorway possible. I wish I had pictures of the feat but I was too busy guiding to snap any photos.
In the end, the fridge looks happy and healthy in his corner, keeping leftover take-out chilled and fresh for our next evening of house-work.
Sarah
Update – Weekend of May 19 and 20
We decided that we were tired of not living in our house and that we were going to move the bed over on Saturday and try to get hot water going so that we can live in the dusty dirty mess that is our new house. It’s one step up from camping but it’s been a fun ride. The mattress came over on Saturday and I spent Sunday getting things situated while Stefan worked on the Hot water heater. I am pleased to announce that by Sunday evening, we had hot water in the house, all we needed to get was a Water Heater System Repair! There is still a bit of a water hammer problem but I’ll work that out at some point. For now, it’s just nice to finally live in this place that is quickly becoming our home.
We are arranging the bed in the 3rd floor “playroom” since it hasn’t had any work done. It is relatively clean and I can’t tell you how much better I sleep on our quiet street in Arlington.
The bathroom is on the 1st floor and it is small but functional. I need to get a clean-ish path made between the bedroom and the bathroom but for now, it’s a shoes always kind of place.
I got rid of all the cardboard covering our new floor in the kitchen since the workers are gone and I re-arranged the kitchen to give us some counter space etc. Stefan is supposed to set me up with a washdown sink and get the stove functioning soon-ish as well. Then we’ll really be all set up.
I assembled this Ikea hutch. It’s the Hemnes line and it looks great! It’s already been super useful for keeping the food centralized and out of the way. I still have to put the doors on but Stefan is on business travel until Thursday and it’s a bit of a 2 person job to hold them up and attach them.
The place is really coming together. The dining room is the “goods” warehouse. I’ve got all the cabinets in there as well as all the ikea furniture and the range and dishwasher are stashed in there until we need them.
The piano room is going to be the day-time home for the kitten we want to get soon. He’ll have plenty of room to run and play but he won’t be able to get into any trouble. He’ll have a litterbox, food, water, and lots of toys. At night, we’ll let him wander around with us and/or keep him up in the bedroom with us. He’ll have a litter box and water and food there too but we wanted to keep the primary litterbox out of the room. Stefan has a sensitive nose and we figured we could make it work better this way. Once we get the kitten, I’ll be sure to post pictures of him and his awesome setup at Wolpertshousen.
Stefan worked on the water heater this weekend and I am so proud of him. He set a goal that we would have hot water by the end of the weekend and we did. We built a mount, ran gas lines, ran water lines, ran venting, and ta-da:
Looks like a professional job which is certainly was. Stefan is much more detail oriented than I am and he made sure everything was to code and done right. Another couple hours and we would have had the washer/dryer set up as well but we worked long enough to miss the Thai Food dinner window as it was. Hopefully we’ll get that done one evening this week and we’ll be able to get this backload of laundry done!
That’s where we are for now. We need some more stuff moved over from the apartment but we should be doing pretty good, living in our new home!
Sarah
