Sometimes, it's the darnedest things

Back when I was looking for a house to buy, I would regularly turn to MACRIS if it was an old house to see if it was listed. Back in the 80's and 90's there was a huge push to get properties listed in the Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System. Then if they qualified, listed on the National Register of Historic places. 
I don't know why, but for whatever reason, I don't believe I ever searched this house.
Or I did and it hadn't been digitized yet, I don't know.

But now I do know - I live in the T.L. Jacobs house. A Greek revival, single dwelling house, built c. 1830, first appearing on a map in 1855. In 1991 when the survey was taken, my house was white, with what I think is a taller front chimney. The sidelights in the front door are full, not half. But the driveway had already been done, and the windows already replaced.

The Stone House (the big red one on the corner) and Brigham Farm (the big yellow one up around the corner) also have entries that are fascinating. This house is quite short and modest in comparison.

But... Holy Geez. 
Research!

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.

A little sunshine

Well, the time between posts is getting long, because time it's self is getting a little squishy.
It's not "Sunday" anymore, it's "Facebook Church and Google Meet with Mom Day".
It's not "Tuesday", it's "YouTube Live from Alton Brown's Kitchen Night".

But I've got a ton of pictures and maybe I can string together a bit of a narrative with them.
Here goes!

We got a bit of snow back a while ago.
About 6" - I only figured that out by realizing how tall the grape hyacinth were.

It was beautiful in an austere sort of way.

The wild weather threw the bird off. I found this intact robin's egg under the forcythia and left it for a few days.
Nothing ate it or smooshed it, so I cleaned it thoroughly and set it in my indoor primrose.

After the snow melted I discovered my poppy survived it's transplant!
But it was not surviving the Bunny that has moved in.
I used this old fire pit screen to protect it until I could hose it off with a new shipment of Bobbex.

A friend gave me this electric chipper last fall, which I promptly jammed.
I took a nice day to take it apart, oil the moving parts (remove the jam) and put it back together.

And it worked! I had no left over pieces!
This little unit is drastically under powered for my needs (and pops the breaker every time it jams)
I'll be looking to upgrade it to a gas-powered model in the future.
For now, I'll just chip and curse every time something slightly oversized falls in.

I took up the pavers from out in front of the house, and all the left over mulch,
and made myself a decorative path to the compost pit. (the old barn foundation.)

With the good weather coming on, it was time to get serious about raised garden beds.
And my struggle against the Bunny.

Rather than have them on the ground (as I first intended) I made these freestanding.
I'd just read a book called "Square Foot Gardening" which makes more sense on my property
than to try to do a traditional row garden.
I also double dog dare the Bunny to scale this bed.

All in all I made 3 - the one on the far left is for herbs only, the long one in the middle is for misc. veggies,
And the one on the far right (double deep) is for rood crops like potatoes.

Around this time I noticed a new roommate. Not the best choice of siting, Robin friend.

The ground has been tossing up more bits and bobs.
This tiny intact glass bottle (it's smaller than my thumb) came from a flower bed.

I don't know what this was, but the area between the barn foundation and the shed keeps spitting out bits of metal.

I found this old door latch while trying to dig out some compost/dirt from under the brush pile.
It snapped in half when I pulled on it, thinking it was a root.
There really is no rhyme or reason to where I'm finding debris.
There were a few 1" white square tiles with it, and bits of cut off green tiles that match the bathroom.

These did not bloom last year, so I can only guess the intense liming and bonemeal-ing of the lawn has helped a little.
These are called "The Poet's Daffodil" or "Pheasant's Eye" and they smell really nice.

I turned over a bit of a ground bed for pumpkins, and amended it with 160lbs of of Alpaca Poo from a local farm.
$20 bucks gets you 160 lbs and an afternoon's worth of entertainment.
Added bonus: rumor has it deer don't like the smell of Alpaca poo!

I had also gotten a few bags of MiracleGro Compost from Home Depot.
Be careful playing in dirt. :(

I'e been taking a lot of long walks - 2-4 miles a day on the local trail system.
Someone tucked this by the trail to find.
We could all use a little more these days.

So there you have it. Lots of outside garden activity. In the last week or so, the beds have gone from brown to green. I've been dividing more hosta, but that's pretty much ended now. I need to get a little more soil for the raised beds, but planting can't happen until they stop talking about snow (seriously, they are talking about snow again.)
I do have a new product on order for stripping trim on the inside of the house though, should come in this week sometime. Then I'll have more pictures!

Speaking of pictures, I've started a little project over on Instagram - #100plants100days. It's a nod to my middle school bio teacher/project.

Stay safe. - Sarah

Staying busy

Progress photos.
Progress... photos? Progress?
I don't know what day it is half the time. I'm marking the days on my calendar by the number of contacts I have with people outside my house. The last time I put gas in the car was a month ago.

Things are getting a little squishy here, folks. Not going to lie - the Betty Crocker box brownies are the way I'm getting through all of this.
I have managed to wrestle my brain around a few things. Mostly outside stuff now, because that takes very little active brain space for me. I did get the mudroom as done as it's going to be without appliances.

So much spackle.

Paint!

Dry fit of the access panel, no top trim yet.

Painted panel, trimmed out, and upper trim!

Ta Da! This room is DONE.
Except for you know, the fridge.
And the washer/dryer.
(Come on, Covid check. I can stimulate the economy with one phone call.)

After that, I did do a little work on the office, stripping trim. Stripping trim is dirty, tiresome and tedious. Particularly trim that's been caulked together.

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

What's this? They put the top bit of trim along the upper edge of the older bottom piece of trim,
but because the house had settled and the lower trim wasn't even anymore, they filled it with caulk?
Oh Hey Look! I see what a case of caulk disappeared!
I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't worth ripping this nonsense off the wall and just replacing it.

Ahh, the poor alligatored windowsills.

Stripped. I must have pulled 8 coats of paint off of this.
Or maybe they just upended the can when they were done with the room on the sills.
More gaps, full of caulk.

I mentioned the gaps full of caulk?

The cat is perfectly over this "Working From Home" nonsense.
Me too, sweetie. Me too.

Last weekend, I tired to right my mental ship by doing outside things. I ordered 3 yards of mulch, because the smell of mulch makes me super happy, and I was intent on spreading it hither and yon. But the beds needed tending before I could do that, in good faith.

My mulch replaced the gravel that had been in this very spot.
Here it is, weighed down before the big blow monday.

This is the part I dealt with last year, so i could just put a nice 3" coat over the top.

I don't often consider my house from this angle. I wish that darn radon pipework wasn't there.
It's a smart little house from this side.

Liberate the hosta! There's a metal pipe sticking out of the ground here. (septic in the back)
The pipe doesn't move much - wiggles slightly, but will not come out. There's a few pieces of wire twisted to it.

I cut. and cut. And divided. And divided some more. I save 6 chunks of hosta for me, and put the rest on the road.
I must have made 30 splits between this and the lower part of the upper bed.

With mulch! Yay!

Only part of the haul I put on the road.

Now I'm out of little plastic bags.
I reserved enough for litter box duties.

No good before picture. There was no edge. Just weeds.

This is where the rhubarb lives. I don't know how to use rhubarb,
but I think this year will be the year to figure it out.

Mulched! You can see where the rhubarb is peaking out,
and the rose in the middle that I'm trying to figure out if it's intentional.
I've pruned and fertilized it because there was a little bamboo stake I found in the ground with it,
as well as large old rose (?) stumps. We'll see.

Since I can't go anywhere. I made Jurassic Park in my flower bed.
The slates are heat rocks laid there for my friends Sampson and Delilah,
the ribbon snakes who eat the pests in the gardens.
I'm hoping to get a picture with them and the dinosaurs.

While hauling the hosta around, I remembered it was edible when young, so I tried it roasted. I trimmed and cleaned it all up like a real vegetable.

It was ok. Had a funny bitter back-of-the-tongue quality.

While I was digging all over the place, I kept finding bits and pieces. I put them in a little pile and then cleaned them up.

Things found this Easter weekend:
A jar, intact! Marked "Richard Hudnut New York". Empty of treasure.
A small collection of coal slag, which I couldn't figure out until I stumbled on the half burned piece. (Below jar)
A pair of wire snips, fully rusted shut.
A tiny little coupling thing - brake lines?
A tiny ball, too light to be a marble. A whistle pip?
An amber bottle shard that says "REGISTE..."
A large plate (?) fragment, with the slightest bit of blue glaze at the edge.
2 unmarked shards of porcelain(?) One on right looks to be a child's sized thing.
1 piece of porcelain marked "M_ER\ Porcelain\ FO__Y-_IMO\ FRANCE
1 unidentifiable piece of ferrous metal.
1 brass threaded pipe bit

Quick internet search only turns up Limoges France as a place that
produced hard-paste porcelain starting in the later 1700's.

So that was fun. Nothing was found in any great concentration to suggest a privy. Probably just "fill" from somewhere else. The jar was found wedged in the corner of the old barn foundation on one of my many trips to the compost. It stands to reason that it was the New York perfumer Robert Hudnut, from the late 18-1900's. A quick visual search turned up no identical bottles. Apparently he was a colorful fellow.

So that's about it. Trying to work, stay busy, and not worry too terribly much, though that increasingly difficult. The cat is out of chicken, to tonight I must brave the market.

Or hold up a locomotive.  One or the other.

Stay well, stay safe, stay home if you have a choice.