Cleaned out the Gutters

When there is a fully grown tree that drops the helicopter seeds as we like to call them, it becomes a pain trying to keep the gutteres clean. Especially when the gutters are not attached to the house correctly and have warped. There are some places on our gutters where I have a difficult time getting my hand in and out because they have become so narrow.

I get on the roof at least twice each spring and at least twice each fall. I almost can't wait to get new siding because we will get new gutters at the same time and probably the leaf guard so that the gutters won't get all clogged with the helicopters and leaves.

That Lamp Post Has Got to Go!

Well, last Saturday my parents were kind enough to come over and help remove the lamp post that didn't work from the yard. My Dad then took the wire that went to the house and added an outside outlet. Now when the holidays come we can put up lights if we so desire.

It was not easy removing the lamp post. The bottom was so rusted, that when trying to wiggle the post to see if we could get it loose or needed to dig a little deeper, the post just snapped off. Since we are considering planting a tree in that spot, we dug further to remove the concrete the post had been set in. This was the hard part as it was down a ways and the dumb thing weighed a ton. But I'm happy to say that with the help of my Mom, we dug down far enough that she was able to get under it with a shovel and free it. I then hauled the thing out of the hole.

With the lamp post gone, you can see from the photo I'm very happy it is now gone. Disposal of the lamp post was easy too. We stuck it out at the curb, and one of the trash collectors grabbed it like less then an hour after we put it out there. The concrete monster it was stuck in, and part of it still is stuck in, is another story. We've tried bashing it with a hammer, but that is slow going. I think we will invest in a sledge hammer to break it up a little quicker.

Time to Clean Up the Garden

I've been kind of ignoring the garden, and now it's biting me in the butt. I've been avoiding working in the garden because of the roots from the tree on the side of our house for one. The roots are all over the garden and each year, digging holes for plants has been next to impossible. This goes for removing weeds as their roots weave in with the roots from the tree, so they have a good grip and almost never come when pulling the weed. Second, would be I still don't really know what I'm doing. My thumb has not gotten any greener. You may remember I posted about trying to grow some veggies from seed. The Broccoli was the only thing that came up...and then a few days later they were dead.

Putting it off has bitten me in the butt though because the weeds have taken over. Now there are more weeds to pull than plants that are to remain in the garden. I've managed to get through most, but there are still lots left. I'm hoping before this next week is over to have the weeds cleaned out and some plants in the ground so the garden doesn't look so empty. I'm trying to find some plants that aren't done over and over. I want to be different, and I'm tired of looking at the same plants throughout the neighborhood. Basically everyone has an evergreen bush and trimmed to look so perfect and manacured. One, I don't have that kind of time, and two, it makes me sick to see people mold nature to look like that. It reminds me of society and it's expectations for people to look a certain way, act a certain way, and think and believe certain things.

Don't Forget to Take Care of Yourself

Don't forget to take care of yourself. If you get injured, or sick, then it's not going to be easy and may not be possible for you to take care of your home or others. So when you are getting stressed at work, go for a walk. Getting stressed at home, go spend some time in the garden; don't pull weeds unless they really start to bug you, just get lost in the beauty of the plants.

When we let things stress us out and don't deal with them, we may become psychologically sick. The brain just will not function anymore because it's on overdrive all the time. Or you could become anxious all the time, or the opposite, you could become depressed. All these things will effect not only you, but others around you and what you do. You could slow down in what you do because your thinking about what is stressing you. It may not be in the forefront of your mind but it's there.

Letting stress get to us can also open us to getting sick because our immune system is effected. If you get sick, you will feel like crap and just wish for the cold or whatever to go away.

The quality of what you do is also effected. If your head is worrying about something else, it's not focused on the task at hand which allows for mistakes. Depending on the task, the mistake may not be anything too major. But even if you're just preparing dinner, you could burn yourself or cut off a finger.

So, remember to take care of yourself, and take some time to unwind.

Finishing the Fireplace Hearth

So, when we were taking the grout off the hearth we liked how the water brought out the grains of the stone, but we didn't want the stone to be super dark. We tried several items on spare stone tiles and decided on Thompson's Watersealer. Some items we tried were butcher block oil, grout sealer, and polyurethane. We decided the butcher block oil and the polyurethane made the stones too dark, and the grout sealer wasn't doing anything; we gave that up after 12 layers and the stone still looked the same. I did test the watersealer, since we are applying this near the fireplace, to make sure it wouldn't catch fire. I held a lighter to the test stone for several minutes. It thankfully never caught, did go a little black but for the most part that wiped off. So now we have a nice looking hearth and just need to put the fireplace door back on.

Starting a Vegetable Garden

Well a few weeks ago I planted some seeds for 4 different kinds of lettuce (of which only 3 sprouted), onions, and spinach. They sprouted within a few days and you can even see from the picture some of them have really taken off. Now it's a matter of planning out where to put them in the yard exactly. We have an idea of where we want to put them, but don't know exactly how big we will make the garden.

I started the seeds with a few items from Meijer. I purchased some seed starting soil, a 72 cell tray for planting with a cover to keep the moisture in, and of course some seeds. From the seeds, I found some that should be planted in April but could be started 2-3 weeks early indoors and started with those. I had 8 which worked out well, and I put each seed in 9 cells. I then took some post-it labels and labeled what each 9 cell square was. I've kept them on our kitchen table so they can get sunlight and I see them everyday and am reminded to check the soil to see if they need some water.

Soon I will transplant them into larger pots and start some new seeds. I'm not ready to plant them in the ground yet as we could still have some frost which could kill the plants.

Home Expo

This weekend I went to a local Home Expo. There were a lot of different companies there for all kinds of different things, windows, doors, landscaping, duct cleaning, roofing... well it's impossible to list them all. I'm really glad I went since I was able to pick up several brochures for companies I could use to help us with our house in the future. Plus some of the companies had picutres like the landscaping companies, and while we're doing the landscaping ourselves, the pictures helped to give ideas of maybe what we would like our yard to look like.