Quick update

I know. I'm a super slacker and I owe you all a long post, complete with a billion flower pictures.

But right now, let's just give a round of applause to my friend Scott, who moonlighting as a mason came and fixed my front stairs so I won't go butt over teakettle when I try to walk up and down them.

He even found one of the rocks had drill marks from where it was cleaved, so he flipped and flopped it over so they show! (Third step from the top.)
I'm going to get some thyme or sedium to plant around to keep the dirt in one place.

Chipping!

One of the big outdoor projects I wanted to get done which is sort of time sensitive was Whacking the Forcythia.
I like them well enough - they are holding back the hillside over there - but they had gotten very encroach-y. Last year I could barely get past it with the lawnmower. Cutting them now gives the plants time to regenerate new growth, so hopefully it flowers next year. After I took a big bundle of cuttings for my mom, I started.

If you zoom in, you can see the row of stumps that at this point I'd already cut and chipped.
I'd say here I was about half done.

The last of the pile!

I raked up all the chips and put them down where the shade from the forcythia
had killed everything under it to hold the dirt back.

This took me from about 11 am to about 6 pm, start to finish. I had intended to chip onto the driveway for easier cleanup, but was restricted by the length of my extension cord.
Now I'm standing in my office, trying to decide which Norway maple saplings are going to go next to open that up a little more.

This weekend I also got in some paint remover. The speed heater is great, but it's pretty messy in the house. Maybe I'm not super skilled at it, but It's just not living up to the ease hype for me. I had heard about this Dumond system, so I ordered the test kit.

Fun times in a box!

This is what was in the kit: 1 pair gloves, 1 scraper, 2 scrubby pads, 3 chip brushes,
1 package special paper, and 1 each of regular, high-test, and masonry paint remover.

I've started with the Regular remover in patches to see how long/how many coats it will take.
At the top: 3 coats/removes, little yellow bar is only 2 coats/removes, lower block is 4 coats/removes. 

Timing is tricky with this one. You want to leave it on as long as possible to let it work, but if you leave it on too long it starts to harden back up again. It seems to really only be taking off 2-3 layers at a time. It's cleaner, certainly not quicker though.

Those of you who's been through Agile/Kanban training yes, I have a sticky-note Kanban board on my wall.)

Hey, if a method works.

 Last week I saw an interesting recipe for Dandelion shortbread cookies on the internet.
So... Why not?

Ahh, humble Dandelion. You're so nice and dry in this picture.
Shortly thereafter it started to rain. soaking me and my Dandelions.

Do you have any idea who hard it is to pull Dandelion petals?
Particularly WET Dandelion petals?
Let's just say this was a one-off experiment.

You make the cookies, roll into a log and refrigerate overnight and then cut into slices.
They were ok. I think the water content of my rain soaked flowers turned the cookies soft though.
I was hoping for a snappier shortbread.

Still trying to get out and get a walk in as regularly as I'm able (though after the Great Forcythia Massacre, I crawled into the shower - that's as far as I was walking.)
It's fun to see what's coming into bloom.

An odd little Violet with oval shaped leaves, not the normal hearts.

Cluster of Wood Anemone

Quaking Ladies!

Little white Violets

Jack-in-the-Pulpet.

May 9th.
It snowed. The hummingbird dropped by. Then it snowed again.
I wore my winter gear walking, and I wasn't overly warm.

Hope you all have a good week. Stay safe.

Sprooots!

I over seeded the lawn a little while back in a vain attempt to make the bare patches better.
I don't know if it's better, but the seeds sprouted!

Pushing the woods back

Over this past weekend, I started pushing the woods back again. Flower beds need to be cleaned out and put to bed for the winter, and the Hosta is showing signs that it was lightly grazed by frost - I want to get it cleaned up before it turns to mush. It's so icky to clean up after it's frozen and thawed.
I started around the driveway, just trimming back what my sister and I cleared in the spring. I worked around to the front near the road, and gave that a good cleaning, finally getting to the telephone pole which eluded me in the great front clean up. Then I started up the side of the front lawn, reclaiming a flower bed that hadn't been touched in years. This basically involved clear cutting it back. I left a few phlox and asters to bob in the breeze for the bumble bees.
The bed was made up of hosta, phlox, iris, ferns, moss, and a rose that might be intentional. It also contained bittersweet, grape, poison ivy, blackberry, and multiflora rose. I actually left the poison ivy alone, and after carefully cleaning around it hosed it down in Roundup. As I worked my way up and close to the house, the bittersweet and rose were so thick it had choked out the poison ivy. But now I was in the territory of nature's own razor wire.
I also gave the yard a good trim, lowering the deck slightly so that I can over seed the grass. I'm sure it could use airation, but it could also use a good smoothing. Moles have gotten in and made a mess out of the south side of the lawn, but I spent much of the weekend walking all over it. I'm not don yet, so hopefully they will take the hint.
The pictures aren't all that interesting. There isn't much for scale or comparison.

Took two days to get through this bed. Another day to get up to the septic cover.

Looking toward the road - there was a tree being smothered under there.
The mound that's left there is a giant multiflora rose

Turning slightly to my right - there's the tree, and there's the cap to my septic.

And turning more right - there's the cap to the septic, and the path to the school-bus sized pile of yard waste that the brush is hiding.

So Busy

Last I left you all, the mold guys were done doing their thing. I had tried to do some yardwork and was defeated by surprise flowers.
Well. I made up for some lost time this past weekend.

Before.
Note the rust at the bottom of the door and sidelights.

During - There's no pictures of the sanding step, but it was in there.
Here I've cleaned the door, masked off a bunch and hit the problem areas with a rust retarder.
Also, filled the pinholes at the bottom with a filler.

During - Sanded down the filler, and hit the door with the first coat of oil based primer,
which promptly gave me a headache.
Subsequent coats were done using my respirator.

The weather stripping around the inside of the door was all shot at the bottoms, so I ripped it out and replaced all of it.

Second coat of primer?

And done! All in, there are 3 coats of the Ben Moore DTM white paint on the sidelights
(left over from the bulkhead) and 2 (3?) coats for Kilz Oil based primer on the door
(which was terrible to work with) and 2 coats of Ben Moore's Exterior grade
in "Prussian Blue" left over from the shed door.

In between coats on the door, which spanned two days, I decided to replace the exterior light. It was an adventure (I still don't know what breaker it's on, but it's on the left side of the box somewhere) and in the end, it was replaced and looks nice.

Pretty! I've since replaced the bulb with one of the fancy looking Edison LED bulbs.
Details, you know?

TaDa!

Now to work on getting a step there to bring that door up to code. There's a place up in the Fitchburg are that has reclaimed slabs of limestone that might look nice for short money. Now that the water isn't pounding on that area (yay gutters!) it's an option. The front of the house just looks so much more handsome now. I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. I hope it holds up.

Other things that happened -

Found behind the outside light in the wall. It was loooong ago dead.
But it led to Operation Winter Prep, since the nights are getting colder.

Step one: Operation Winter Prep.
There are seven deployed in the basement, baited with dried cranberries and peanut butter.
I tour them every day or two.

Winter Prep step two: Fill in the hole in the foundation.
Here the frame was still sort of in place. A claw hammer and crowbar later it was gone.

Here I've started to dry fit the rock my coworker friend Erika gave me out of her yard.
They are mostly perfectly sized, I just need to go back for a few more.
I'm also going to get a length of PVC to put through the wall here
so I can still run the dehumidifer out of the house after I mortar it shut.

One of my "mammoth" sunflowers that I planted late, and in a bad location.
The biggest one is about 8", petal to petal, but so perky.

Last night after work I started whacking away at the front yard over grown mess. There are no pictures. It's a disaster of piles of debris. I'm about 1/5 done and that was 2 hours. Maybe I'll take pictures and share that process later.
So far I've uncovered Hosta, Tall Phlox, Rose (Intentional? Not sure?) Iris, ferns (Sensitive and something tall and plumey) - Also Blackberry, Goldenrod, Bittersweet, Grape, and Poison Ivy. I'm trying to leave some of the goldenrod and still-blooming phlox for the bees, but everything else is getting cut back. Just short of scortched-earth is the only way to reclaim this and keep my sanity.

Basements, driveways, and mudrooms, oh my!

I was a long weekend for a variety of reasons. But!
I got the basement stairwell as done as ti's going to be:

The paint is a light blue-grey semi-gloss.

Pre-lightswitch plate and railing re-install. The motion sensitive LED battery light is nice.

I've since added back the switchplate and railing. It's as done as it's going to be.

The guys showed up at 8:30 to start sealing my driveway - all 172' of my driveway. I felt they did a really good job, and the end result around 4 pm looked like:

Do not cross for 4 days!

All nice and black!

So that's ticked off the list.

At some point this weekend... Saturday morning? I discovered that the freezer is no longer freezing on my fridge. I lost a bunch of stuff, put the still frozen stuff in a cooler and hoofed it over to a friend's house to stuff in their chest freezer for now. Knowing I was going to have to replace the fridge, and wanting to replace it into the mudroom instead of the kitchen, I started demolishing the mudroom Sunday morning.

Closet doors off.

Shelves can't stay and accmomodate a modern fridge.

The closet was added before the outer wall of the mudroom shifted.

Closet and shelves out. Electric box will need to just be moved.
(That is the cold air intake to nowhere.)

Next up - Remove the rest of the closet shelving/rod parts, fix the walls, pull up the carpet. Try to determine where the electrical comes to that wall from. Try to get the electrical in the wall and not spidering out as a web of conduit. Eventually fix the floor, level things, and get the fridge in this room.

The idea is to put the fridge and a stacking washer/dryer on that back wall next to each other. I know putting a dryer basically on top of a refrigerator is a bad idea, but there's precious little room in this house to accommodate both. I might start with a washer and do a lot of line drying (eventually).

Shed door progress

You can't tell, but I'm making progress!

It might rain!

I've been tuning up the shed door. There's been patch involved for the holes, and a lot of sanding. It seems that there was a light coat of varnish on the boards that mildew got under, so I've started with 60 grit to strip all that junk off (and take the patch down.)
I have to stop tonight and pick up more sandpaper, since I discovered last night that I jump from 60 to 150 in my sandpaper library. A few years back I bought an electric sander to finish my sister's wedding cake stand, and it has proved it's worth time and again.

I love my sander.

I also succeeded in killing the hornets, so the driveway is officially all edged.
Thank goodness. Time to get sealed. Keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't rain on the day my guy is scheduled to do it.

All edged! All grass removed from the cracks!

More things that want to poke me

I got in a morning of yard work before driving to my folk's Saturday. Got the yard mowed and then attempted to prune back the forcythia. A 6th sense told me to step back, and I discovered I had been all but on top of a ground hornet nest. All I can think is that my foot was actually on the hole, plugging them in, and then I backed up fast enough that I was able to get away.
Ok. Enough of that.
I went and started to cut back the front stone wall that was starting to over grow again. 6the sense told me to back up again, and to my amazement the lawn (now at about face height) was covered in Bumble bees, all flaying around at about 6" off the grass.
Not one to piss off a Bumble bee, I decided to wrap it up and head in for a shower.

Other yard news - The hosta is blown out and now my phlox is going crazy. All sorts of colors, thought right now the dark pink is dominant. There's a pretty little coral colored one that I need to watch - I'd like to have more than one of that. I've caught some of it getting mildewed, so I've hit it with a weak vinegar solution to hopefully control it before it spreads too bad.