Spring update

in which we proceed on the campaign to eat an elephant

Dear Everybody,

I promised an initial update, to give you a picture of where we’re at. So…

Jennifer is still living at the house, with Only and Other. I’m living in the house she bought in town last summer, a doublewide on a modest lot. It’s in decent condition, but I’ve fixed a few things and I have a few more to do before it’s ready for her to move in. I expect to get serious about swapping houses sometime this summer.

As some of you know, I’ve been making trips here for a little over two years. In that time, with help from various people, we’ve replaced the water heater and the downstairs toilet, installed a new heat pump to keep the main rooms warm, gotten the upstairs toilet working again, fixed the sewer line and repaired the septic tank (after six months of diagnosis and waiting for a contractor), cleaned and repaired the water box that supplies the house, rebuilt the back porch door, cleared and organized the back entry (aka the mudroom), installed satellite internet, constructed three raised garden beds, taken out several dead or hazardous trees, cleared the alders in the far pasture, demolished beaver dams to drop the water level in both main creeks by up to four feet (reclaiming a bunch of land), and cleared brush in several key areas, such as behind the Shippen. I took a feral kitten, who spontaneously arrived at the house in 2020, to Portland to have him fixed and checked out before bringing him back; he has proceeded to devastate the mouse population in the yard, which has dropped the number we get inside the house almost to zero. I’ve cleared about half the garage and organized the Annex, hauling out old trash and taking items away for donation; I’ve started organizing the Lift (the large room at the top of the stairs) and cleaned two of the four garret closets.

That’s a lot of progress, especially in a pandemic, while splitting my time between Oregon and California. I wish I could say it was anything other than the tip of the iceberg. I’m dedicated to getting the place in shape, no matter how much work it takes; many of the projects on my list will take years to complete. Nothing worth doing comes quickly or easily, however, and the initial results have been very encouraging.

As one example, spreading lime in the garden beds and the pumpkin patch brought in a bumper crop of vegetables and squash, better than Jenny had seen in many years. A few flowers she thought were gone reappeared, like a scarlet poppy. We’re still eating the squash months later, and I’m expecting this year’s veggie beds to do even better.

The intake screen and the water box (which serves as a cistern with filters inside) are now much easier to maintain and repair after storms. I stabilized the path along the creek between the box and the screen with large rocks to improve the footing, even in winter when the water is high and everything is wet. That came in handy when the torrential storms managed to toss debris around which disconnected some of the pipes, prompting a trip up in the snow.

A joint effort to pull out and then poison a colony of Japanese knotweed on the bank near the corner of the front lawn resulted in a very weak showing last fall, and I expect it will be gone this year. It’s a promising outcome as I contemplate the two clumps we just discovered below the upper driveway.

I have a great many plans, from creating paths between the house and the Shippen that don’t get muddy in the winter, to installing a handrail on the main staircase. And I have a wishlist, like a proper greenhouse and an outdoor kitchen. For the moment, however, here are the things I see myself tackling next:

• Clearing more of the garage, to make room for new (used) appliances coming in and hauling out the old ones.

• Clearing the front room of the Annex, by discarding stored trash bags and consolidating the items which are still useful in the back room.

• Building a fourth 3’x12’ garden bed, and planting as much as we can.

• Mowing the full garden area thoroughly, making it easier to keep the brush and grass down while I work on digging them out over the course of this year.

• Hacking away more of the brush encroaching on the driveway and upper parking area, and mowing them regularly. (The front lawn is more of a challenge.)

• Excavating the drain for the pond. I’ve been working on that for almost a year now, and with the beaver dam gone for good I should be able to find it at last. Once that’s clear, I can get fresh water flowing through the pond for the first time in years.

• Cleaning up a bunch of the discarded plastic trash lying around. We have a regular trash pickup in town, and I have a working pickup truck to haul larger items to the dump; I plan to use both heavily.

We’re in the middle of selling Jennifer’s other property (the Red Barn), and I need to start the process of changing my residency to Oregon, both of which will take up some of my time. I also handle things like driving Jenny into town for errands and helping her with shopping, moving boxes of her things at her direction, and helping her do business over the phone. But I expect I’ll still have some good unbroken blocks of time to really dig into my to-do list.

That’s about it for the next few months, I think. Expect another update as we get close to the longest day of the year. If things continue as they have been, I’m likely to have a few surprises for you!

—Sam