Dear Everybody,
So here we are, at the Summer Solstice. It is only the second really sunny day after raining just about every day for the last three months; everyone has been struggling to get things mowed, and I’m no exception. This was the coolest, wettest spring in decades. Instead of a bright and warm April, we got cold rain and then (in batches) about a foot and a half of wet, heavy snow that brought branches and small trees down and crushed shoots. Then it froze, killing tender plants just coming out of dormancy. The rest are racing to make up a four-to-six week delay in the season, with mixed results. (The weeds, predictably, are the most successful at it.) And now suddenly we’ve been plunged straight into midsummer.
We haven’t seen any barn swallows yet, other than a few which were passing through last month. I miss them sorely, since we’re having serious problems with mosquitoes and biting flies; normally we have barely any, as they all go into hungry little nestling beaks. I hope they’re just delayed, rather than completely absent this year. The bats can only do so much.
When we left off three months ago, Jenny was living at Truepenny with two cats. Only has since gone off to the Salem Humane Society, where I trust she was fussed over by staff and visitors alike; she deserves a home where she can have lots of attention and laps without having to share. Once she was off on her journey, I moved Cricket up the hill, in the hope that she would find it easier to live there without going stir crazy. So far, so good, though Other has some strong opinions about this new interloper—they’ve tangled once already, and from Cricket’s reaction afterward I gather Other underestimated my scrappy tiny cat. (“Ha,” she says, “I had three grown brothers!”) I hope they come to an understanding soon, without injuries.
Charlotte went peacefully over the Rainbow Bridge earlier this month. I was with her to the very end, and kept her warm and comfortable and loved. I buried her in a sunny place beside the house, next to where the statue of St. Francis is supposed to go.
And we closed another chapter: the sale of the Red Barn is finished, though not without ups and downs and high drama. I hope I can finally wash my hands of the place, barring a few trips to get Jenny’s remaining belongings; perhaps she’s right, and it’s cursed. That’s what you get for closing on a property on September 11, 2001.
As for the to-do list:
I cleared two-thirds of the garage, and then promptly filled it with (used) appliances: washer, dryer, stove, and (later) refrigerator. It was worth the few hundred dollars to pay someone to haul them all up, as they were otherwise free—with the exception of the stove, which cost all of $300. It’s a very nice glass-top Samsung convection oven, I think it’ll be quite satisfactory.
I cleared the entire front room of the Annex back to a thin layer of old items along one wall. Then we promptly filled it with all of my belongings from California, when my brother and his wife drove the moving truck up, and we were joined by a small army of friends and relatives who helped unload it. It’s not stuffed, so I have reasonable access. The large and heavy items took up the rest of the space in the garage. Ah well, space never lasts long…
The fourth garden bed was built, amended, and planted. Though I’m afraid to say that the tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans are sulking. The parsnips don’t know what the problem is, so far it’s been great weather. (The garlic agrees: it’s chest-high.)
I have mowed about a third of the garden area, though it was arguably the hardest third: the area I hadn’t mowed before, which was full of thimbleberry and thick hillocks of couch grass. I’m keeping it down, but I haven’t advanced much beyond that yet. I got down about half of the couch grass near the mailbox, and I’ve been keeping the bracken fern mowed below the rest of the upper driveway; it’s already changed the composition there.
The April snow brought an ornamental plum down into the upper parking area, and caused the hazel and elderberry to sag still further over the lower driveway. My friend Emily helped me clear the fallen tree and beat back the brush a little more up there, and I’ve tried my best to keep the driveway passable by most passenger vehicles, but more needs to be done.
I gave up on finding the old drain for the pond. It was overfull for close to two months, as the beavers keep routing water into the inflow pipe, but all of my attempts to find the drain I know is there failed. It has now, inexplicably, dropped two feet to its original level in the space of two weeks. I have no idea what’s going on with it at this point.
Trash collection is a constant (I pull all kinds of plastic bits out of the garden every time I work in it) but I haven’t made a push to do any dump runs yet. It’s really something you want clear dry weather for, and we haven’t had any of that with sufficient predictability. It’ll still be there when I can get to it.
In addition:
I planted lots of flower seedlings in the bed under the picture window, and just transplanted some moth mullein which had volunteered in the garden. I cleared a similar bed on the other side of the porch, outside the downstairs bedroom/office window, and I’ll put all the stray flower bulbs there as I dig them up over the course of the season.
I scored a beefy 30-gallon electric air compressor (free), a drill press from 1940 which should be an excellent fixture in the workroom with some light restoration (also free), and a full-featured radial-arm saw for $16.25. My scavenging luck continues to hold.
I called four roofing companies and supervised as their agents took measurements for replacing the garage, workroom, and Annex roofs. I hope to have all of the estimates for comparison sometime next week.
Kathyrn Jane and I spent three hours in the Annex, establishing that most of the kitchenware, rummage, and unwanted books can be sold if we do it right. She’s a goldmine of information on what’s trendy, what’s objectively valuable, and the best places or people to move various types of things. I’ll be leaning on her heavily in the long process of clearing the excess stuff out of here.
I hiked to the water box and vacuumed an inch of silt out of it, plus I shoveled half of a winter’s accumulation of mud and sand out of the settling pond. It needs further maintenance to restore the settling pond’s full capacity and finish cleaning out the screen, but I’ve started flushing the mud out of the water lines. The tap water should, I hope, be clear again in a few days.
Where we stand right now is that nearly all of the space I’ve cleared is full again: the office still has a bit of clear floor, but I’ll need to clear more room in the garage to start the process of moving out appliances so new ones can come in. Things are very much in flux right now, and it isn’t helped by the bathtub (which shares a drain with the mudroom sink) refusing to drain. I suspect the trap is clogged, but crawling under the house is miserable in wet weather, and we’ve had nothing but…
More serious, but hopefully easily fixed, is that there is some item which was brought into the living room area which has been so contaminated by toxic mold that I can’t enter the house without a respirator. It came on suddenly, but Jenny has no idea what it could be, and it’s impossible to find the source before we’ve aired the place thoroughly. That will take several days. Since it was averaging 60 degrees F (65 on days when we get some sun) until yesterday, opening the entire house up would turn Jenny into a popsicle in short order. So I swapped places with her, letting her stay warm and snug at the house on Lamson Street while I brave the modest chill at the house. The upstairs aired out quite promptly, and as long as I mask up in the living room, I’m doing all right. The new house is quite an adjustment for Jenny, so it’ll be a few days before she can really relax and get used to it.
In the next three months, I expect to be working on a few things:
Getting the plumbing in order, having grab bars installed, and adding additional shelving at Lamson. I know that’s not strictly Three Creeks, but getting Jenny settled into a comfortable and safe living situation is a priority.
Clearing the old refrigerator and stove out of the kitchen—the latter is a collector’s item, I need to keep it in good condition until it’s sold—and dismantling the center island, so that I can strip the remains of the old floor tiles off and install new ones. Then the new refrigerator, stove, washing machine, and Hoosier cabinet can come in.
Running new wire from the breaker box to the stove, to replace the old cloth-wrapped one, and installing a suitable outlet. Getting at least a couple of three-prong outlets put in in accessible places on that wall would be a big plus, while we have everything moved out. This is likely a job for an electrician.
I very much hope I can fix or replace the kitchen faucet, so that it turns on and off properly on both the hot and the cold side.
Lots more mowing, and however much burning we can get done before the ban comes into play. Then lots of hacking down weed trees.
Burying the septic tank again, once the ground dries out somewhat.
Trying to get the pond and the east creek to behave. I’m still fighting at least one beaver, but getting out there consistently is key to discouraging dam-building. A lot of the willows along the bank have fallen around like pick-up sticks and need to be cut down and hauled out; actually killing them is very difficult, but at least it doesn’t have to be an impassable snarl. And once I have a drain for the pond, I can start running fresh water through it, to get it clear and discourage things like backswimmers (they bite!) Ultimately, I’d like to stock it with fish in in a year or two.
Wading through the bureaucracy so that I can formally become an Oregonian. I have an appointment with the DMV next month.
I’ll be taking some pictures today and tomorrow to show you what it’s like right now; you can find the album here. Please be patient, it may take a little time to get everything captioned, and I know most of it just looks like masses of green.
The next update should be in late September; as 2020-Too doesn’t seem to be letting up, it’s anyone’s guess how close my plans will be to reality. Tune in and find out!
—Sam
Given the enormity of the dry-season work that you're taking on, l think that you're doing wonderfully well.