For anybody wondering why I am not plugging ahead on art and stuff as fast as usual, I am a home-owner, and it is summer.
Before it rains, much maintenance must be done. Including getting six years’ worth of dandelions out of the yard and replacing it with the white dutch clover that will crowd out the grass — which cannot survive without extra water — and will hold available water, including dew, in the soil. It is also very low-growing, and never produces hard stems that our reel mower can’t handle. It stays soft and low, and offers masses of nectar to bees and other insects.
Yesterday, Nearest ripped out the back porch stairs and I whipped in a new set — and was wiped for the rest of the day. I can do anything I did as a kid, but it takes longer and longer to recover. Even got the walking surfaces on the steps and stairs stained and weatherproofed, so we can hit the rest when we can and not be held up using the steps.
I have many art- and publishing-related things to do once the rains close in, but for now we’re racing the sun like vampire-hunters.
Next year’s whole plan is to fix one corner of the house’s siding, clean off all this moss, get rid of these stupid shutters the previous owner put on, and paint the whole outside.
Maybe, if I can, I can pull up all the yard tiles, lay down the plastic the neighbors ripped out of their dead swimming pool, and then re-lay the tiles. The previous owner went to the trouble to make and lay these tiles; why lose them.
Earlier this spring, ripped up and re-built the shed floor, built a scrap greenhouse. And got in all the winter’s wood.
I’m almost summered out, I tell you.
Ugh, the “joys” of houseownership. We do a lot of our own maintenance here too, even though we rent. We get a discount, and it saves our elderly landlady from a lot of hassle. She was upstairs in an apartment doing maintenance, and it was so hot and muggy that I went up with a full ice-cold pitcher of fresh-brewed iced tea. I know what house maintenance and winter wood is ALLLLL about. I still help mom and dad get theirs in before winter.
I expect to spend the rest of this month canning for winter. Hottest month of the year, and I spend it in a hotter kitchen. Wish I had an outdoor canning station like they used to have in the olden days. Phooey.
Sometimes I wish we lived like the bush folk of Africa — and all we had were our own rocks. Canning? Trying to plant winter stuff and just eat whatever’s up.