So... wanna buy a house?

No, not our house. Well, not our current house.

This one is on the market again.

Doesn't look like they've done much to it, aside from destroying the exterior with a whole bunch of ugly landscaping, and wasting a lot of perfectly good cedar turning the downstairs workshop into a laundry room. And given that what they're asking isn't a whole lot more than what they paid US for it, I don't think they're being motivated by any potential capital gains, if you know what I mean.

I'm tempted to go and take a tour if they have an open house, but the War Department has no interest in it at all. Something about preferring the memories over whatever travesty has been foisted upon it since we gave it up. Actually, I can see her point.

But anyway, I'm sure nobody comes here for updates on the old shed. You want to know what's up with the new digs, right? Well, we're mired in that unbelievably interminable stretch of paint, fill, sand, paint, fill, sand, sand, vacuum, beer, sand, fill, paint, etc. Which is a pretty accurate summary of doing the trim in the War Department's office/our new guest room.

I would give you a preview of what it looks like but a) it looks a lot like my office, only slightly bigger and slightly brighter, and b) I just painted the window sills and had to erect a cat barricade to keep the little bastards from jumping up onto the fresh paint:



And before some smart-ass (Dad) asks why I didn't just close the door to keep them out, it's because the door frame is also wet, and I haven't hung the door yet.

But the floor is done, the new curtains should arrive sometime this week (thanks, Mom!), the trim is almost, almost, almost finished, and with a little luck and some more work, we should be moving furniture in this weekend and getting our respective rooms together.

Oh, and speaking of flooring, we've got about 150 sq. ft. or so left of Elements by Kentwood Maple Saffron engineered hardwood flooring - anyone want some? Cheap?

Man, where did THAT month(s) (and a bit) go?

Seriously, what happened to the last two months? It seems like I just updated this thing yesterday, and then I look at the date and realize I've left all my reader(s) hanging for two months.

And then I go and drop a relatively short post on you anyway... Uh... sorry?

Where were we anyway? Looks like we had just put in the stove and started messing around with the outdoors. Well, the stove is pretty much the same (still sheer awesome), so why don't we get caught up on the garden then?

The also bad news is that I don't have much in the way of photo-editing software installed on this computer yet, so I can't do my usual before-and-after presentation, but I CAN post some pictures of how the yard looks now, and tell you how it got that way.

I should also take this opportunity to point out that the outside - pretty much all of it - is really the War Department's demesnes. I just do the heavy lifting and some of the less-precise chores, like mowing the lawn. She's the one with the landscaping background, and she also does NOT share my complete and abiding hatred of the outdoors. (Actually, it's not the outdoors I hate per se, but the creatures that inhabit it. Especially the wasps. Actually, specifically the wasps. I really hate wasps.)

Where was I?

Right, the wasps. I mean, the yard! The yard. Yeah.

Okay, I'm never going to get through this post without resorting to my second favorite method of presentation: the list!

Things we've done so far:

• Finished digging out the roots from the huge cedars we cut down at the front of the house; fixed the irrigation pipe I busted while digging out said roots; planted some heathers and rhododendrons instead; and covered the rest of the bed with bark mulch.
• Dug up the turf from the shallow spots on the lawn; filled in the shallow spots with topsoil; and reseeded the now-not-shallow spots.
• Removed the stupid-looking stones from around the front bed by the big rock; weeded out all the dandelions, foxglove, and primulas; planted some heathers, rhodos, and the azalea we rescued from the backyard; and covered it up with some decent soil and a top coat of bark mulch.
• Took out a strip of flower bed along the stone wall beside the sunroom; and reseeded it as lawn.
• Cut down a couple more cedars from along the side fence; yanked out some dead or decrepit plants that really weren't doing well there; planted a "Japanese Black Dragon" wysteria in their place (which I picked out solely because of the name, by the way); and it's still an ongoing project, so lots more to do along the fence there.

Oh, what the heck, here are the "before" shots of the yard:







And the "afters":











Here are all the stones from around the beds in the front yard, now carefully piled up on the stump where the dolphin fountain used to be (a VAST improvement if you ask me - both in terms of replacing that god-awful fountain, and in terms of moving the haphazard, random assortment of rocks from around the beds in the front):



We also...

• Built a mason bee box and put it on the side of the house. (Absolutely NONE of which was my idea, by the way. Bees, wasps, butterflies - all just brothers from different mothers if you ask me. Evil flying nasties that'll sting you as soon as look at you.) Anyway, it's kinda cute, eh?

• Made a nice home for a couple of passing ducks. Okay, so we didn't really do anything specific to attract them, they just showed up one morning and have been dropping by for visits fairly regularly ever since.

• And, lest I forget, I also drove all the way up to McBride to pick up a painting that, it turns out, didn't fit into my car. Fortunately, not only was the consolation prize a rather spectacular photograph:

But mon pere was gracious and awesome enough to drive all the way down FROM McBride the following week to personally deliver the original painting as well, which looks absolutely amazing and really helps to finish off the bear pit:



Anyway, we're currently working on Amy's office/the guest room, and I've already finished the floor, but it's late and I'm tired, and I'm sure everyone would rather I post again this weekend than waste EVERYTHING in one post now, right?

Right?

Hello? Anybody still reading this?


Bueller?