Barren Landscape

We had planned on leaving the remaining evergreen trees in place until after this Memorial Day weekend because we know that the neighbor always has a huge family party on Memorial Day.  Those plans changed when we suddenly heard a chain saw in our yard this past Tuesday.

The man from Ashplunkt, the company that clears trees from power lines for the city, was supposed to come two weeks ago to "top" our trees so we could remove them safely.  He never showed up, so we cut down the first two trees by ourselves.  I wrote about that in our last blog.

On Tuesday, he was in our yard, climbing into the middle of one of the three remaining trees, hacking down the center of it to remove the tallest branches from the wires.  Rick went outside and told him he did not have to do so, but he said that he promised us he would cut them, so cut them he did.  Unfortunately, that is all he did.  He cut the main trunk near the top, dropping the cut branches into our yard, or leaving them in the neighbor's yard, or leaving them still caught and tangled into the middle of the trees.  Then off he went.

Terrific.  We went outside and were greeted by three butchered trees.  The lower and outside branches were still intact, and the upper part of each tree had a "V" shaped opening where he had removed the branches that touched the wire.  Actually, he removed SOME of the branches, but not really all of them.

I am ill with a sinus infection.  Rick was coming down with the same said infection.  We both were tired and felt like crap.  But we could not let the trees stand as they were.  So we brought out the gloves and SawsAll, and we started to haul branches to the curb.

When the workers from the city came to chop up the first load of branches, the driver, Matt, told us to pile the branches with the trunks all together, and to leave the branches as long as we could.  OK.  No problem.  We hauled the downed branches, lining the curb from our property line to over halfway to the opposite property line.  The piles all towered above my head.

Then Rick cut down the remaining three trees.  By the time we were finished, we were both too exhausted (and I was too sick), to care about the stumps.  That had to wait for another day.  We finished just in time for Rick to call Matt back.  Matt said that he would swing by our house the next day to pick up the branches.

Where giant trees once stood, we only have
dirt and wood chips left. The yard feels very open
and exposed.

The following day we traveled to Appleton to order shades for the patio, and by the time we returned, our trees were gone. Thank you, Matt!

Rick called a stump removal firm, and the owner came on Thursday to grind down the stumps.  He spent 35 seconds each on the first four stumps, one minute and three seconds on the largest stump, and about 10 seconds each on the dogwood and lilac stumps.  We would have taken hours to dig out those stumps, and he had them ground down in less than five minutes.  We gladly paid him his reasonable fee.

Of course, we now face all of the piles of dirt/ stump bits/ and mulch left over.  We also need to remove the 25-year-old landscape fabric that is firmly embedded with pine tree roots.  Rick and I worked all morning filling the back of the truck with what we could dig out.  When we unloaded it at the yard debris site, it certainly did not look like much, but we are glad it is gone.

We are about half-way finished in taking out the debris from this old garden, but that was as far as we could venture on that project today.

After lunch, I mowed and trimmed our lawn.  At least the neighbor can have her party overlooking a fairly civilized-looking neighboring landscape.

The cement to the right in the picture was black with mold.
You can clearly see where Rick stopped washing for the day.

Rick took our power washer and started to wash the mold off our front walk and our driveway.  He still has a bit to go, but the energy only goes so far.  He also washed the concrete floor in our screened in patio.  That needed mold removal also!

We both are exhausted tonight.  We will take the rest of the weekend off, and we'll get back to the gardens next week Tuesday when the yard debris site opens once again.  Until then, we plan to relax and to enjoy the next couple of days.

Inside and Outside

Our work on our Wisconsin house continues both inside and outside.  I thought I would include some shots of our completed weaving studio now that the paint has dried which enabled us to move our weaving gear back into the room.  I love the new blue color on the walls; the room now feels more "homey" than the sterile white walls that once surrounded us.

Due to the lighting, the walls look grey in this picture; I promise
that they really are a light blue.

The coverlet that Rick wove many years ago hangs on the wall
and fits into the room nicely.

The wall opposite the window wall contains a closet and has room
for the warping board.  A bookshelf holds materials and patterns.

Rick has moved on to the next finished room in the basement.  That larger room used to be our weaving room, but we have turned that into my sewing room and our exercise room.  He spent the morning painting the ceiling and adding the first coat of blue onto the walls.

While he was doing that, I was out on our back screened-in patio unwrapping the patio furniture from their winter covers.  Everything outside is absolutely filthy this year.  The whole house needs a good power washing, and the porch was no exception.  I had hosed down the patio covers yesterday.  Today, since they were dried (even with the rain we had last night), I took them off and folded them away.  Then I swept the floor, de-cobwebbed the corners, and took the furniture outside onto the grass for a good scrubbing and hosing down.  The furniture is in place, but that whole back structure still needs some serious work... including a new roof.  We'll have to see how it looks after we finish with the power washing.

Earlier in the week we continued to remove the overgrown trees from our lot.  Although we love having the trees block our backyard and porch from the neighbors' decks, the trees were so overgrown that they infringed on the neighbor's property by a good three feet, and they were starting to grow into the power lines above them.

The first tree starts to go down.  We cut off most of the branches
before taking down the main trunk.

The second tree was not as wide as it was "squished" between
the first and third trees in line. 

I had removed the smaller dogwoods and lilac bush earlier, but removing the trees took both of us.  We started at the bottom, taking off smaller branches in the multi-trunked trees.  As Rick used the SawsAll to take off the limbs, I dragged them out to the front of our property for the City to come and grind up.

We had five huge trees on the south side lot line of the house.  We removed two of the five so far.  The piles of brush out front are so large that we did not want to add any more to them for fear that the City would refuse to take an overwhelming pile.  We also did not want to kill any more grass under the stacks.

The pile of brush on the curb does not look large, but it is almost
chest-high when I walk up to it. 

I called the City and was hoping that they would have sent a truck out to remove the first pile.  Sigh.  No luck yet, but I know that we are "on the list" for pick-up.  We have a marathon race going past our house this coming weekend, so we hoped that the City would get the brush before then.  Today is Wednesday.  Keep your fingers crossed that the brush is gone by Sunday!

We cannot cut any more until this first load of brush is gone.  Another reason I wish they would pick it up is because I would rather cut down trees while the weather is cool.  Cutting trees when the temperatures are in the high 80s with high humidity is not my idea of fun.  Hopefully by my next post, the first pile will be gone.

The lilac in the back yard bloomed this week.

My lilac bush bloomed this week.  I love the smell of lilacs, so we are thinking of planting more bushes in the back yard between our house and the house to the north of us.  I have one small lilac bush already in the back yard.  I keep it trimmed low so it does not get woody and too large.  I would love to do the same with a few others.  Stay tuned...

The lilacs smell wonderful!

We have neglected this house for so long that this will be our summer to really start to complete some badly-needed maintenance.  Rick said, "Having two houses is a lot of work."

My reply was, "What better things do you have to do with your time?"  These two houses will keep us from getting too bored!

Fleeting Time

We get up each day and marvel at what day we see on the calendar.  The old adage "time flies" certainly seems to apply to our lives right now.  We both have been working hard, and we have been making progress, yet we both feel that time is slipping away like oily water through our fingers.

Part of that sense has to do with the number of appointments we have had this week.  Monday Rick spoke with an insurance broker about supplemental insurance to go along with Medicare.  On Tuesday he went into the dentist to get a crown.  On Wednesday, we both had doctors' appointments, and after those early morning visits, we got to work.  Yesterday, we spent the whole day traveling to Wisconsin Rapids to visit with my mother whom we have not seen since we returned north.

With the ceiling painted white, Rick cuts in
Lake Placid on the entry wall next to the closet.

Your work on Wednesday involved both inside and outside work.  We decided that we would move the equipment out of our lower level exercise room and turn that room into a weaving studio.  After Rick moved everything into another room, he taped the room and painted it.  We had picked out a light blue paint called Lake Placid.  He was not sure how he liked the paint when he had started the first coat.  He said that it looked purple to him.  By the time the first coat was on the walls and dried, though, he liked it much better.

Rick paints along the baseboard aided by light from the single
window and the two banks of fluorescent lights in the room.

I thought that the color was fine.  The second coat helped even more; now that the room has some color on its sterile white walls, the room looks more homey and and inviting.  Since we have limited light in the basement, we were a little worried about the room closing in, but with the one high window in that room, it turned out well.  Rick also painted the ceiling, so now the whole room has a refreshed look.

The first coat of blue starts to add personality to the otherwise
colorless room.

While he was working inside, I went outside to start the destruction of our overgrown landscape.  About 20 years ago, we planted four evergreen trees, three dogwood bushes, and one Miss Kim lilac to provide a natural border between our property and the rental property on the corner next to us.  The Miss Kim never filled in the way we had hoped, the dogwoods were half-dead and scraggly, and the evergreens are so overgrown that they are on the neighbor's property and into the electrical wires.  They all have to go!

Two dogwoods are down, so I had one dogwood and the Miss
Kim lilac next to the shed to cut down yet.

We also had another smaller evergreen tree that someone planted way too close to the house on the southeast corner.  To keep the tree away from the house, I kept trimming it until it was in a wedge shape.  Each year I also had to lop off the top because it was growing under the eaves.

With all four bushes gone, I have only to remove the stumps yet.

I trimmed the dogwoods, the lilac, and the small evergreen tree.  The larger trees have to wait until the electrical company can come in to "top" them away from the wires. Then we can safely cut down the rest.

The small evergreen was too close to the house.

Now only the trunk remains.  Once we remove
that, we will plan where to plant the new
lilac bushes.

To get our privacy back on our screened-in patio, we considered various alternatives.  We thought we would just build a six foot fence where the trees had been, but that is impractical since the land slopes down just before our yard ends.  Six feet of fence would not give us the privacy we want.  Additionally, digging a fence post hole in the root-infested and clay soil would be very labor intensive.  And the fence materials themselves would cost us over $1000.

Our alternative is to hang sunshades inside the screened in structure of the porch.  When we want shade or privacy, we can simply lower the shades, and the materials costs will be substantially less -- as will be the labor! Saving both money and effort seems like an intelligent choice to me.

On the north side of the house, where we removed the evergreen, we are considering planting some better-spaced lilac bushes.  They will give us color, privacy, and plants that we can easily prune and control.  Again, this seems a good choice.

Today we went to the paint store for another gallon of paint.  We have decided to finally add baseboard to the main room in our basement.  That larger room will become our new exercise room and sewing room.  We have almost a full gallon of paint left over from the new weaving studio, so we bought one more gallon of Lake Placid to finish the main room too.

We have only been back a week, but we have made progress in choosing what jobs we want to complete in working toward meeting those goals.  We need to pay attention to this house now to make it our northern vacation home for the summer.

Happy May!

We leave for our drive north early tomorrow morning, so this will be my last post from Florida for this winter/ spring season.  This has been quite a work-filled yet productive year!

Although the list is only 18 items long, it encompassed months of intense work and thousands of dollars to complete.

This season we did the following:

1. Gutted and remodeled the master bathroom.  We kept only the already-replaced toilet and replaced all the rest.
• new ceiling fan
• new drywall and ceiling
• new electrical outlets
• new lights
• re-polished terrazzo floors
• new tub and Swanstone tub surround
• new granite countertop
• new Kohler sink
• new Kohler shower and faucet fixtures
• new Kohler toilet paper holder, robe hook, and towel rack
• new quartz windowsill
• new baseboard
• new paint
2. Had electrical mast moved to north side of house with new electrical box
3. Had back wall of garage re-stuccoed
4. Bought and installed new hallway light
5. Had new roof and roof fan installed
6. Had new front sidewalk and porch extension poured
7. Purchased freezer for garage
8. Poured two new slabs
9. Purchased and assembled two storage sheds
10. Purchased and installed new Elfa shelves in the garage; added workbench space
11. Purchased and assembled bench for the front porch
12. Purchased two small pictures for the bathroom
13. Purchased and installed pavers from front yard to back yard around patio slab
14. Repainted back patio area of house and front porch area of house
15. Purchased and planted Areca palm in the back yard
16. Washed all of the windows in the house
17. Washed the fence
18. Purchased new artwork for the hallway

Whew!  Gladys has seen a remarkable (and expensive) transformation, but we are happy to say that the inside remodeling is complete, and we have a good start on the landscaping on the outside.  We are leaving Gladys looking pretty snazzy, so we are happy with the progress we have made this year.

Perhaps next year, we can start to act like a couple of retired people enjoying the good life in Florida.

Loose Ends

We have been spending time tying up some loose ends.  Rick has worked hard to make sure that all of the mail is in order for transfer back up north, and he has taken care of routes, hotels, insurance, water on and water off, and the thousands of other little details that go along with closing one house and opening up another.

Last night we took a walk down by the Marina after dinner, and Rick stopped for an ice cream cone.  We sat on the patio of the ice cream shop while he ate the cone, and I had to take a picture of the under side of the umbrella under which we were sitting.  It made me smile.

The underside of the umbrella at the ice cream
shop shows blue skies and fluffy clouds.

We found a small picture in the consignment/ decorator's shop that we like downtown when we stopped in yesterday.  We went back today to buy it.  The frame was really old even though the watercolor is newly painted by a local artist.

The new picture in the old, dark frame.

The newly framed print in our hallway.

Rick did not like the frame, so we went to JoAnn Fabrics to buy a new frame.  We chose white to match the decor of the house.  Perhaps the darker frame brought out certain colors in the painting more, but the white works with our woodwork, too.

I finished the puzzle I was working on and will return it to Chris' house before we go back north.  Rick warped the loom and is trying his hand at it. So far the results are not positive.  He does not like the tension nor the mechanism on our small table loom, so a new loom may be in our future if we can sell this one.

We are ready to head north.  Storms continue to rage across the United States, so we are hoping that we will get back to Wisconsin safely.

Walk in the Wind

We got up to a cloudy, rainy-looking morning, but we decided to go for a walk anyway.  We no longer believe that we will get any rain in Dunedin!  We are tired of walking in our neighborhood, so we drove down to the Causeway for a brisk morning walk in the wind.  The temperatures were down to 73 this morning with a very aggressive wind, so we did not feel like we are going to melt.  

Storm clouds threaten to release their moisture,
but we never received any rain.

Choppy waters lap at both sides of the Causeway as we
return to our car.

The walk was fun; we enjoy seeing something new beyond the same vegetation in the same neighborhood.  The seas were choppy enough that no one was out in boats, on jet skis, or kite surfing (although the wind would have made for one wild ride).  The only people near the shoreline were a few brave fishermen who did not seem to have much luck in catching dinner.

On the way home, we DID notice something new in our neighborhood.  The house across the street from us on the corner had one side that was painted blue.  Until now, the house had been a soft yellow with cornflower blue shutters.  Now one side of the house was a lighter blue in contrast to the shutters.  When they painted that side of the house is a mystery to us.  They must have done it yesterday while we were at church and then at a weaving meeting in the afternoon.  Shows how much we notice!

A lone "brush" starts to bud on our
bottle brush tree.

We made a second discovery in our back yard today.  While the gardenia tree in the corner has valiantly been producing a little white flower here and there, today our struggling bottle brush tree started to grow one of the fuzzy-looking red plumes for which it is named.  We have been dumping gallons of water on the tree just to keep it alive, and that was our reward for all of that costly moisture.  We will have to see if it produces any more blooms.

We are starting to gather all of the things that we want to take home, and I am beginning to wonder if we have a big enough truck.  We'll pack later in the week so we can somewhat keep track of what we are taking with us.

Until then, we are trying to enjoy what little time we have left here in not-so-sunny-today Florida.

Countdown

We only have a little over a week to go before we close this house for the summer.

One of the main things we do each season is to try to "eat out" the freezer, refrigerator, and pantry.  Our progress on that front was marked by two events today.  First, I was able to move what remaining food I had stored in the large freezer in the garage into the smaller freezer in the refrigerator.  We probably have five or six meals left to make, but that should work well for us this week.

Defrosting the garage freezer was not as difficult as I imagined.  The ice melted quickly, and since we have not owned the freezer for the entire winter, the puddles in the bottom were easy to wick up with an old towel.  We actually went to the fabric store to see if we could buy some inexpensive material to drape over the top while we are gone.  We want to leave it open so air circulates through it, but we don't want the inside to be full of dirt when we come back in the fall.  Sadly, we learned that even "inexpensive" material is not that cheap.  I need about 2 yards, and the most suitable fabric would have cost me about $12.00.  Rick said, "Heck.  We can go to Wal-Mart and buy a cotton twin-sized sheet set for $8.00."  We were on our way to do just that when I remembered that we had some old bamboo sheets that had shrunk to the point of not fitting on a queen-sized mattress any more.  Those will work well; thus, home we came.

Our next task was to bundle up any non-perishable food that we did not want to eat now or to keep until next fall. One pudding mix hit the trash can when I discovered a "best by" date of April 11 of this year.  We did, however, have three bottles of juice and a small assortment of canned goods that were still good.

Earlier we had donated four cases of juice to Dunedin Cares, a local food pantry run by volunteers in our neighborhood at Faith Lutheran Church.  We took the bag of juices and canned goods to them this morning, and they were delighted to get our donation.  We noted that all of the juice we had donated earlier was gone. One of the volunteers told us that the juice went "real fast." I cringed at the grammar but was delighted that others wanted what we had donated.  

I learned later that food drop off  for Dunedin Cares was supposed to occur on Monday and Wednesday mornings rather than today, but no one else was there, and the volunteers were happy to take our food for their shelves.  We both hate to waste anything, so we felt good in being able to donate food for the benefit of those who need help.  We'll make sure that we do this each year before we leave for the summer.

Each day we try to pack a little more or to finish one more task on our "to do" list.  We saw yesterday that the morning temperature in Wisconsin was only 39, so I really have mixed feelings going back to those temperatures.  We hope now that the temperatures continue to rise, and that we do not have to drive through dangerous weather as we dive to our northern home.

Not Working Hard

As we wind down the season, we finally have time just to breathe and to enjoy ourselves a bit.  I have gotten into the mode of doing a little task each day, and then not feeling guilty if I take the rest of the day off to sew, to read, or to work on my family genealogy.  Isn't that what retirement is supposed to be?

At least the fence was in the shade when I washed it!

Yesterday, I finished washing the fence.  Having a white fence is wonderful, but Florida is dusty (especially since we are in the midst of a severe drought), so the fence gets dirty.  Also, spiders like to leave their "spots," and birds and squirrels who perch on the top also add to the mess.  I keep telling them that they do not have to fertilize my fence... it will not grow!

It's clean again!

I did not do a soap-and-water, get-off-every-spot type of wash.  I will leave that for when we return in the fall.  This was more of a "take a wet rag and wipe down the top, scrape off what I can, and hose the whole thing down" type of wash.  It still took both time and energy, though.  I did the first half two days ago, and I finished the last half yesterday.  The fence is not perfectly clean, but it certainly looks a lot better than it did before I started.  At this point in the season, that is good enough for me.

To reward myself, I made pie for dinner.  Yes, the whole dinner consisted of various types of pie.  We had left-over ham from Easter, so I decided to make a ham and swiss quiche. A quiche, however, only takes one crust.  (I cheat and buy the ready-made crust in a box.) So what to do with the other crust?

Well, I discovered that I can re-roll that second crust into two smaller crusts and make a six-inch pie.  When we went to the store yesterday for the quiche ingredients, we also bought some peach pie filling.  After all, what is more Southern that peach pie?

This peach pie taught me a lesson: never
used canned peach pie filling!

The peach pie baked beautifully.  Sadly, it probably looked better than it tasted.  I learned another valuable lesson: if I want to make a peach pie in the future, I will look for a recipe that uses fresh peaches.  The canned pie filling just tasted like someone added too much corn starch to thicken it.  Fresh or nothing next time.

That said, dinner in slices of pie was filling, and we have enough left over for a second meal.  We continue to "eat down" our freezer as we prepare to close down the house soon.  This has been a very productive season, but the heat and humidity are coming in, so it's almost time to drive north again.