My Kingdom for an Electrician

My first trailer full of boxes that I packed myself.

This is going to be a post where I cheat big time and make the post short and sweet. It’s past midnight and it’s been another full day of  getting ready to move in FOUR DAYS. The guests arrive in SEVEN DAYS. Will we make it??

At the house, the work continues and it will be a race to the finish, for sure.

The electrician hasn’t been returning our calls and the stove won’t work without him and neither will the hot water. The plumber was there today and now all the taps work and toilets flush………that is except for the kitchen taps. That’s because they aren’t installed yet. Larry drove an hour and a half up the valley today to buy them and the kitchen sink. But the kitchen sink box had a hole in it and a metal piece that secures the sink to the counter is gone.

It’s all rather hairy, but in the scheme of things I suppose it’s really small potatoes.

Here are some photos that I took today to show you the chaos that we are still in.

I have to go to bed now so that I can visualize the electrician coming to save the day!

The mess in the hallway

There are always boxes to collapse.

My first trailer full of boxes.

It all takes time.

The plumber has more work to do.

The trailer looks pretty cute!

I can’t even tell which way is up. Will this ever look cleaned out?

A few obstacles still.

At least our guests will have a comfy bed to sleep on!

11 Day Countdown

It rained every day this week in Bear River. The rain stopped long enough in between to dry things up a bit, and to plump up the tasty cherries in the 3 very old trees at our place.  Most of them are far too high to reach, but the birds have been enjoying the bounty. I’ve been eating the lower ones. Yum!

Bear River's Cherry Carnival originated over 100 years ago because of all the cherry trees. The few remaining are very old.

The rain has also doubled the sizes of the vegetable plants. It doesn’t seem very long ago that I was turning the sod to plant things. Now, suddenly EVERYTHING is up and growing. So are the cucumber beetles who almost took out the zucchini, cucumber, squash and pumpkin seedlings over a 2 day period. I picked off over 30 and drowned them in a bucket of soapy water, but it was like trying to catch rain drops. I’d like to find out if there is a ‘friendly’ way to kill them without poisoning the plants and beneficial birds and insects. Until I do, I’m using some powdered rotenone until there are a few more leaves on the plants so they can better fend for themselves.

Pole beans, broccoli and bush beans.

The beans are getting chomped by slugs, but they are still winning!

Not exactly 'House and Garden'.

The rain has also brought the roofing to a dead halt.

The good thing about the delay in the roofing is that one of the roofers has time to work on floor sanding with Larry.

And lest you thought that there is no mess to clean up, take a look at the backyard! In two weeks time we’ll host my dear sister and brother-in-law who live in England. Because of the distance, we don’t see each other very often and I want their visit to be memorable, but in a good way! It’s hard not to see the mess through the eyes of a visitor, but this actually is a wonderful opportunity for me to practice acceptance. Still, it is nerve-wracking to think that the owner of the house we are still living in is returning in 2 weeks,  and we need to move all our stuff and unpack some of it at the other end, and our visitors will be arriving and a few details still need doing like:

• finishing caulking the bathrooms and complete the final water hookup
• replace the motor on the water pump that cuts out several times a day but restarts when you hit it
• finish installing the kitchen cupboards
• stain them
• finish chinking the bedroom floors
• tile the front foyer
• varnish the floors
• install kitchen counter
• buy a kitchen sink and install it
• paint
• hook up the hot water heater
• etc, etc, etc.

Plugging in the sander for the last time.

I didn’t think Larry would have time to sand this floor, but with the help of a great neighbour, the last sanding ended on Wednesday!

Larry never ever wants to look at another sander. The fellow at the rental asked him if he was interested in making extra money sanding. "I get lots of requests."

Now the upstairs sanded floors are getting crack-filled with strips of wood and then with a combination of sawdust mixed with a resin.

These floor boards are beautiful. They were first laid 144 years ago using trees that were over a 100 years old. History under foot!

By today, Friday, all the floors had been sanded and the kitchen was starting to be installed.

It's great watching it all take shape.

I have learned from all of this that when estimating how long anything will take to do, double the time – but only if you are efficient. Otherwise triple it. I will never look at anyone’s renovations with the same eyes ever again. It is a TON of work and requires amazing, constant decision making and attention to detail.

After supper on Friday, after a very long, hard week, Larry said “let’s go down to the house and see what that periwinkle looks like on the dining room wall.”

Look how high those ceilings are!

So, at 8 p.m. he started rolling it on.

It's always exciting and shocking to see the colour roll on.

The painted woodwork will eventually be white. The yellow-green that is most of the kitchen and dining room reminded us of the first leaves of the willow tree. The periwinkle is like the evening sky, but it’s also the colour of a shed we had in our former backyard where our kids and their friends used to hang out. Here is a story about that.

The woodwork will be white and the rest of the room a yellow-green.

I’ve been packing and weeding and vacuuming and mowing and driving into Digby for supplies. I really hope that in 11 days from now we have hot and cold running water in the kitchen and bathroom, the stove and refrigerator work and the water pump cooperates. Oh, and could we please have all our stuff there and the new guest bed that I ordered from Sears delivered.

Other than that, a good meal, nice company and a bottle of wine is all we really need.

Someone turned on the Lights!

The front of the house perches on a hill that I am cutting pathways into with our self-propelling lawn-mower.

It’s been hot, damp and rainy this week in Bear River. Right now everything is so lush and green that it’s hard to stay away from our house. You see, I’m supposed to be packing. We are moving for the third time in less than 2 years, but this time it’ll be for a good time and a long time! Still, I HAD to go to the house and witness the hanging of the light fixtures that we agonized over at Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Rona etc. etc. on our marathon shopping trips to Bayer’s Lake, a vast suburban shopping place outside of Halifax and over 2 hours from here. Larry has way more stamina for this kind of thing than I ever will have. I’m more like “ya, ya, ya….lets get that one and go home.” I really hate shopping and I find it hard to visualize what the thing will look like in the house. But thank goodness for Larry’s persistence in all things house related or we’d be moving into a tent in 2 weeks.

This heat wave is opening all the overgrown wild roses that border our driveway and the fragrance is powerful. The weather has also brought more of the low-tide seaweed/fishy smell from the river up to us. That combination of ocean smell and roses is what I will always associate with Nova Scotia. Walking down the driveway yesterday reminded me of  over 4 years ago when we were on holiday here. I was transported back to the conversation Larry and I had over and over. “Let’s not go back to Ontario. Why can’t we live here? Look how beautiful this place is.” It would take us 2 more years to move…and now here we are living in the picture postcard!

The blooms have just begun and already it's powerful. There are baby bushes sprouting up all over the place. I thought I'd pot some up. Would you like one?

Well, almost picture postcard. Right now besides light fixtures going in, besides floors getting sanded, besides establishing vegetable and flower garden, besides planning a pond,  a new roof is being shingled. It’s a bit of an obstacle course to get inside. But let’s do it!

The small roof on the far right is finished. The torrential rain this week has stopped the work for a while.

The electricians are busy installing the lights. Larry has started painting the walls and this greenish yellow is the very first colour. It’s in the kitchen/dining room. That large hole in the wall will fit a stove pipe for a wood stove.

When I saw the electrician using a ladder to install a light-bulb, my inner light went on and she said "by the way, did I tell you that 9 ft. ceilings have their challenges too?"

The very front room which has a door out to the front hallway, will be a studio space for fabric, computer, watercolour and all non-permanent-paint-sticking-forever-to-the-newly-finished-floors-media — for now anyway. The paintings on the walls will benefit from spotlights and there will be a fan in the middle to circulate winter wood heat or summer breezes.

While these modern lights are not in keeping with the style of the house, I like the lyrical feel of them. It's fitting for a creative space.

The front hallway will be a display area for paintings and metalwork and this fixture reminded us of the green willow tree that stands outside. We are planning on a soft yellow for the walls.

I can't wait to see the light from this pieced glass fixture at night.

The living room will be a neutral taupe colour. We thought that a couple of fans would help to circulate the heat.

Larry negotiating with Home Depot about a broken fixture: "So are you telling me that you give customer service for purchases, but not for broken merchandise?"

This is our bedroom. Ha Ha Ha. In two weeks it will be sanded and painted. Maybe.

You would never know this room had been vacuumed about 30 times throughout the last months.

There is a Sears catalogue store in Digby and they also have a few appliances: beds, ride-on lawn mowers, and TV’s. The essentials, I guess. They are really the only game in town which I don’t mind, because it means there is only one store where I possibly CAN shop and that selection is narrow. I think this really speeds up my shopping process. I don’t know where you’ve been for the last 5 or 10 years, but I haven’t been shopping for a freezer. So I was delighted to find out that they come in upright versions now. Perhaps I’m counting my chickens before they’re hatched. Or should I say “tomatoes before they have blossomed” for the only flesh we eat is fish and even that is in sharp decline. When I look into this frozen cupboard, I see tomatoes and beans and strawberries and rhubarb and homemade soup and lasagna. I see us after a long, productive, creative day in the studio, wading through the snow to the house, melting a hearty harvest soup. Eating it with slabs of home-made bread and enjoying a bowl of blueberries and ice-cream around the fireplace while the snow glistens outside.

Larry says that chest freezers are more energy efficient because they don't loose all their cold air when the lid is opened. (Cold air falls, heat rises.) However, an upright works for me ergonomically so I have to override that sound objection.

With crazy thoughts of winter in my head, I drove back to Bear River and when I turned onto the road that goes along the river, I had to stop and take this photo of a cloud forming in the river and rising to the sky. Pinch me. We’re really here!

Every day I see startling examples of nature's beauty. I am truly blessed.

When Mother Nature gives you Lemons, make Lemonade!

Last year when I started thinking of where the vegetable garden might grow, I noticed there were lots of Queen Anne’s lace in the spot I had picked out. So beautiful. So delicate. So picturesque.  Fortunately, a sharp gardener called Robert Woods let me know that I was looking at Goutweed. Apparently it has a reputation among gardeners.

L

What innocent bloom can this be?

“Goutweed is a majorly rhizomatic plant, meaning that even the smallest piece of root will sprout into a new plant, which will in turn send out new rhizomes to once again invade the entire garden space.”

Goutweed is one of the earliest plants to emerge in the spring.

“Goutweed is one of the two most beautiful and most invasive weeds in the garden. You should be forced to sign a waiver when you buy it releasing the nursery from any responsibility for losing your mind trying to get rid of it. It’s lovely looking in the shade but a plant that should be put in a cement lined pot and then planted, surrounded by more cement.”

I admit that I was thoroughly intimidated and I choose a different spot for the vegetables..250 feet away! At the same time, I figured it was futile to try and dig out all the runner roots and rhisomes that come with this determined plant. Instead of fighting it, I reasoned that I could shape it.

The green looks so lush and thick.

I thought that I would embrace the stamina and ground cover quality of goutweed and shape it with the lawn mower!

The green of the goutweed contrasted well with the apple blossoms. When they fell, the white goutweed flowers bloomed. Mother nature is quite the artist!

Currently, the Goutweed flowers are in bloom and I feel like I’m living in a postcard.

The bucolic look of Goutweed just before it forms a million or so seeds.

I played around with one of my Goutweed photos in Adobe Photoshop and had a good time altering the colours. I’m no William Morris, but I did think of the Arts and Crafts art movement at the end of the 19th century and their love of the patterns in nature.

I continued altering my photograph and finally  made a little poster to honour the beauty of Goutweed everywhere.

I altered one of my photos using Adobe Photoshop to make a poster.

So while I have saved the goutweed and am trying to contain it,  I didn’t get a vegetable garden without challenges either. It seems I planted it in a former couch grass field.

“This species can become a pernicious weed, spreading rapidly by underground rhizomes and quickly forming a dense mat of roots in the soil that strangles other plant growth. Even the smallest fragment of root is capable of regenerating into a new plant, thus making it exceedingly difficult to get rid of. A good thick mulch through which nothing can grow, can be applied to the area, though it will need to be left in place for at least two growing seasons to be fully effective.”

At least the butterflies and finches like to feast on it.