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It’s been quite the week with all of the contractor fun going on at the house (see our last two posts) plus trying to get ready for a vacation to see our families. During all this chaos, I got a chance to see my best friend from high school, Hans, who was in town for a training class. Being a baseball fanatic, we had to make a trip to Fenway. The weather was perfect for baseball. We saw Wakefield pitch 7 innings of shutout, 2 hit ball, saw a homerun over the monster, and got to see Papelbon mow down the last batter with the bases loaded to preserve the shutout. It doesn’t get much better than this.

The contractors arrived bright and early today for their second day of exploration - I mean installation. I got up even earlier so I could dig up bulbs in the side yard. I didn’t want them to get covered by the condenser when it gets installed. (And for those early birds out there, yes there were plenty of worms to be found digging in the mud at 6:30am)

We start today’s photo montage from the 1st floor bathroom. The cabinets were removed to make room for ductwork. You can see the fine wallpapering (ahem) behind the cabinets. Next, the contractors cut a hole in the ceiling. Brian took a photo from the hole, looking toward the back of the house down the rafters toward the big chimney. There is a considerable gap between the bathroom wall and the pantry, and also a gap between the ceiling of the bathroom and the floor of the linen closet on the 2nd floor.

You know what you can do with extra space in your walls or between floors? Here’s a clue. Yep, that’s just random debris. We got several more looks inside the walls. For example, here’s a shot of more junk but also showing the wall joint. Brian let his engineering instincts loose here, measuring the size of the beam, and also noting the first floor ceiling was originally between the 8 and 10 inch marks.

I am avoiding the temptation to drop something from the attic down behind the dryer. It’s a straight shot through the linen closet! I could even throw a tennis ball through the hole in our bedroom wall and you know where it would come out? Behind the dryer. I would love to turn our house into a giant Rube Goldberg machine at this point. Luckily the temptation will subside tomorrow when the rest of the vents and returns are completed.

Thank you Beej for keeping me posted on the construction activities during the day! It is fun to follow along viewing the pictures.

The contractors spent today working on our new HVAC system. They removed the old boiler and excess ductwork from the basement. Brian can stand up without bumping his head in several new areas of the basement. I’ve been told this is only temporary, as they contractors will be installing a more efficient branching scheme tomorrow. Note the dryer lint on the one duct; the dryer still vents to the basement and I don’t think there is much we can do about it until we move the washer and dryer.

The A/C unit was delivered. It is large. It’s 3×3 in footprint, as advertised, but it is also 4.5 feet tall. Luckily it still fits within our property line on the church side of the house (we measured).

For the most part today’s exploration of vent and return placement went well. I had no idea there was so much dead space in the house. That shot is behind the built-in china cabinet. Evidently there were a set of shelves (that picture is looking down at the shelves from a hole about ceiling level). Why someone would enclose the shelves and then put in new ones is a bit of a mystery. I chalk it up to the weird contractor who lived here a dozen years ago.

I did suspect that we lacked insulation. This photo - my favorite of the bunch - proves it. Brian took this shot reaching behind the cubby in the guest room (above the kitchen, behind our bedroom). This crawlspace goes behind the back chimney, across the width of the house. I was told that the guy who crawled in there was between Brian’s size and my size, but very skinny. I believe it!

The final interesting point of the day was the cat. He was very chill when I got home, which was a surprise given that strange men had been tromping around the house, drilling holes in walls and making lots of noise. Brian mentioned that the cat spent most of the day in the attic. The thing is, the ladder to the attic was removed. That means the cat jumped a good 5 feet up to the landing of the “good morning” steps in the attic. Good kitty!

In the garden, we have three roses growing. The big climber that has been most robust in the past seems to be taking the year off (note the dead looking rose at the right of the photo below). One small rose that we thought was dead, but replanted anyway, is growing! I think it’s reverting to an old variety, since it sprouted from underground instead of the main hub, but we’ll have to wait and see. The little climber is ready to bloom.

The perennials are doing well. I think we lost a poppy, and the cannas are still being coy, but otherwise everything is thriving.

The vegetables are very happy. The peas are up to the trellis, so we are training them to climb. The tomatoes, peppers, green beans and swiss chard all look good. The greens have four leaves now.

The window boxes have been doing strong work. It’s so nice to come home to a splash of color in the front of the house.

The hole is even bigger than we thought. Brian excavated again yesterday. It is a full circle, not just the the semi-circle area we first uncovered. It’s about 6 feet in diameter at at least 4 feet deep, from what we can see at the moment. He didn’t get to the bottom of the structure, but he did discover the second chamber behind the wall, which is just as large and round as what we had already found. We decided it was time to ask someone from the historical society to take a look. I’m still leaning toward a well/cistern of some sort, but it would be fun to know why it is domed, and what the approximate age is. It may also be a kiln. Brian found an old-looking bottle, some hand-made nails, and more pottery in it.

It was a long week despite only having two days of work. Monday was non-stop until we packed and got to sleep. Tuesday we traveled to Indy, drove to St. Marys, then greeted family and friends at the funeral home. We talked with many of my mom’s cousins and one remaining aunt who came by, some neighbors, Rotarians, Grandpa’s coffee club friends, and some friends of my grandparents I had not seen in 20 years. My favorite part was hearing stories of kids who had bought penny candy or traded baseball cards with my grandfather at his dime store and grew into local businesspeople who were involved in Rotary with Grandpa years later. There were also friends who had grown up and gone to high school with Grandpa in Jay County. Wednesday I had a little quiet time to say goodbye, then we had the funeral and burial. I was able to share my thoughts at the funeral, as did my Dad, and my brother read scripture. We experienced such an outpouring of support and shared happy memories during those two days.

Thursday was a much-needed day of “down time.” Dad was committed to work at the Food Bank so Brian and I went with him to set up and have breakfast with the crew. They are all quite different - different ages, different reasons for being involved - but they enjoy good humor and the fellowship of working together. I picked some strawberries, ate lunch with Mom, then headed back to the airport.

Friday seemed like just another weekday. Brian had a hectic day in court (volunteering for Jeanne Geiger) and I traveled to DC for my first meeting at DARPA. On Sunday I enjoyed dim sum with the Shuldiners, Frank and Jodi, which involved the handoff of the potted lilies.  The holly bushes are planted at the San Clemente’s so we’ve nearly completed the plant hand-offs.  Only two more to go!

This week we’ll be saying goodbye to my grandfather, Arlie Sommer. I’m really lucky to have had a grandfather who lived almost 93 years, and was married to my grandmother for 71 (exactly - he died on their anniversary). I had to chuckle yesterday as I was reflecting on one of our favorite stories about Grandpa. People would often ask him and Grandma whether it seemed like they had been married so long - after all, Hallmark stops making up new anniversary themes at 60 years. Grandma would say that time goes fast, and it “seems like it was just yesterday” that they were getting married in the parsonage living room. Grandpa would mutter “and you know what lousy day yesterday was!” in a joking way. I thought, well, Friday really was a lousy day, it’s hard to imagine a lousier day than Grandpa passing away. It’s like the final punchline to his joke.

Grandpa was diabetic, but was able to manage it well with a restricted diet and regular exercise, and lots of sugar free foods. He survived cancer in the 1980s, when he had to drive an hour each way to the hospital three times a week, and the radiation treatments left burns on his skin. He had a 5-way bypass in the 90s, and his heart stopped on the operating table, but they got it going again and so he kept of living an active life for another dozen years. He had gangrene in his toe from lack of circulation about a year ago, but with some clever re-routing and roto-rootering of arteries and veins, he was able to recover and enjoy pink healthy toes again. Grandma would carry a list of his surgeries and medicines with her, in case he had to go to the hospital, and it amazed me. I think of Grandpa as a miracle of modern medicine.

I’m sad to not see Grandpa again, but I also feel so lucky. Lucky that my parents went to pick him up Friday morning for a doctor’s appointment, so they were there the day he died. Lucky that he didn’t suffer or have a drawn-out hospital stay. Lucky that he and Grandma lived together, in their own place, their whole married lives. Lucky that Brian and I just visited last month while we were in Indy. My brother called me around noon on Friday to tell me they’d taken Grandpa to the hospital. I had two proposal papers due at 5pm, and I really had to concentrate to get them done; I said a quick prayer and vowed to think about Grandpa after they were submitted. So, I was lucky to be thinking about him when he died at 5:02pm.

The calling is Tuesday and the funeral is Wednesday. I hope to get my thoughts together to be able to speak at the funeral, tell a few stories and share what Grandpa meant to me.  For now, we’ll be sad for a while, travel to Ohio to say goodbye, and reflect on Grandpa’s long and full life.

Our amazing string of sunny weekends was forecasted to end today. And it did - it’s now pouring thundershowers outside. That meant we had to do some weekday and early morning work to get everything done before June 1.

Tuesday the spruce tree disappeared! Brian said the tree guys cut off the lower branches, climbed partway up to cut a notch, then cut a notch on the other side and pulled the top down diagonally, avoiding the newly planted perennial bed. We now have blue sky! And Brian finally met our neighbors who live behind us.

Friday evening we got the new lilac, poppies and lenten rose planted in the back bed. Now that the garden is safe from contractor trampling, we also planted the peppers, swiss chard and as many tomatoes as we could fit into our small space.

It was forecasted to start raining last night, but as of 7am when I woke up there was no rain. So, I went out with a shovel and started trying to move the azalea. Luckily Brian got up around 8am because my digging progress was very slow. There were lots of tree roots between the maple tree and the former location of the spruce, requiring me to either hack at them or snip them with pruning shears. Brian dug a bigger hole and made quick work of the azalea. On to the rhododendron! It was trickier, with less room to maneuver and a larger root system, but it too was moved. We started moving dirt piles and getting the yard back in order.

Just then we started hearing thunder. I scampered into the garage for the trowel, so I could plant the 2nd perennial bed, where the azalea and rhododendron had been, before the rain. The plants have been doing ok but are much happier when in the ground, not in their little plastic flats. Whereas last time I got out a tape measure to map out the bed and ensure the plants were far enough apart, this time I quickly dug little holes, stuck the plants in them and kept going. I also plunked the rest of the tomatoes in the back, in a small open space bewteen the lillies and the hanging basket.

Here’s one picture of the back fenceline where you can see (right to left) the rhododendron in its new home, the azalea in its new home, the spruce tree stump, the hanging basket, and the little tomatoes, and the new lilac with poppies in front. The cannas are planted behind the lillies but they aren’t up yet. We’ll get more pictures when it’s not raining.

Last weekend we did a little work the yard to keep our momentum going, mostly defined the beds and moved the extra sod to the two bare areas. One area was where the bees built an underground hive a couple years ago, so there’s a valley in the lawn. The other area was under the holly bush foliage, which is now gone! We continued to consolidate the bricks to an orderly stack behind the shed. I also ordered canna rhizomes and perennials that arrived this week. Brian focused on getting new electrical service to the house (a two day event, including Brian removing ~1200 lbs of rubble from the basement, our contractor lobbying National Grid to remedy the pole corrosion post haste so we didn’t go 24 hrs+ without power. The contractor also had to come back the next day to hook up the kitchen wall, which in total exceeded their estimate for the job, but they only charged us for a fraction of the total time. Good contractors!).

Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend dawned sunny, temps in the 60s, and plenty of mail-ordered arrivals to plant. Pretty exciting! I puttered around in the morning, planting the green beans and another row of greens. (Note that the result of “puttering” was a full lawn bag of weeds. It’s an ongoing battle that I think we are winning this year!) The peas* are up! I started thinning the tiger lilies so I could plant the canna along the fenceline. I didn’t realize how much the lilies had spread until I dug them out. I have two bags of root/bulbs, a box to give away, and still tranplanted several pots and a row of them along the railroad ties. I also moved the bleeding hearts today to make room for the perennials and the tomatoes in the garden and patio beds. While I was puttering, I consolidated the firewood pile to move it closer to the maple tree, leaving more room for the tree people to navigate the spruce, and making it easier to transplant shrubs next week.

The larger patio bed has been planted:

• Monarda (bee balm) will be red in the center of the bed
• yellow Coneflowers (black eyed Susan) are in front of the monarda
• purple Salvia are in front of the Coneflowers
• blue Sedum are planted beside the Salvia
• mums will be on either side of the aisle from the patio to the lawn
• Lavender and Sage are at the back of the bed toward the patio - they smell good!
• Dusty Miller filled in a few gaps, since I had a few extra from the window boxes

This will hopefully produce a red, then yellow and purple color scheme as the season progresses. The goal is also to have some color in the yard throughout the summer and fall. The 2nd bed (where the azalea and rhododendron now reside) will have a smaller mirror image of the same plantings.

Next steps:

• The spruce tree is scheduled for removal on Tuesday
• We’re hoping to gift the holly bushes shortly to the San Clemente’s. They are wrapped in burlap in the interim.
• Once the spruce tree is gone, the azalea and rhododendron will be moved to the back fenceline
• Once the azalea and rhododendron are moved, the 2nd patio bed can be planted
• Once the spruce is moved, the poppies, helleborus (lenten rose) and lilac will finish the back fenceline

We took a break mid-day to look for a patio swing (unsuccessful), trellis and burlap (successful). We both came home and took a nap. It would have been easy to call it a day, but we caught a 2nd wind and kept digging and planting. Perhaps the biggest accomplishment of the day was to remove the holly bushes. Brian had at it, and was victorious! He also discovered some sort of underground structure, a circular brick area with a diagonal wall, that extends several feet into the yard. We are not sure what’s there but think that it’s a good time to excavate before we fill in the rather large gap and sod it over.

*Brian picked out sugar snap peas and I agreed to plant them. The author in no way endorses peas. The author maintains no commitment to eat peas, grown in the garden or otherwise.

Another weekend of good weather meant more time in the yard. This weekend’s activities chipped away at the preparation of the backyard. The beds along the patio all had brick edging. I pulled that up and was ready to pull up more bricks around the garden when I realized it would be a good idea to figure out where the bricks would end up after I was done. The empty space behind the shed seemed like the right spot, but first I needed to clear the last layer of dirt, roots and plant debris. Using the hoe, spade and pushbroom, I got to the bottom of the brick - yes, of course there is a 7 x 10 foot bricked area behind the shed. A prior owner must have really loved paving bricks. They are EVERYWHERE! I pulled out lots of weeds and a couple thorny vines, and also moved all the dirt to a holding area (the spot where we removed the tree). Brian helped clear the last layer of dirt along the shed wall, and also mowed the lawn.

Next I stacked the bricks from the yard, plus a few random ones we’d found while removing the tree, and pulled out another couple rows of bricks to expand the garden beds and combine them. Previously we had two square beds (5 x 5 feet) with an L around them for the garden. I took out the bricks along the L, and expanded the square beds out another couple feet. Finally, I turned over the soil to remove the weeds and get it ready to plant. While Saturday’s work was definitely a required step, I didn’t have much to show for my work, especially since the two rows of neatly stacked bricks are behind the shed, out of view.

Sunday dawned beautiful and clear. A perfect day to plant peas, greens and the window boxes. Brian and I scoped out a couple garden centers to check their selection of perennials for the backyard, but didn’t buy anything yet. We will wait until the spruce tree is removed before doing the backyard planting - no sense having heavy equipment sqaush our new plantings. But, we did buy red geraniums, dusty miller and sutera, a cascading plant with white flowers. The window boxes and a few rows of the garden are planted.

Brian and I ran the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon, a 13.1 mile race, on May 3. It starts in downtown Indy, goes out to the Speedway, around the race track, and back to downtown. Shortly after the start, the race course goes past the zoo. A large and small elephant were looking down the hill at us, probably wonder what was causing the stampede of 35,000 runners. There are various entertainers along the way; mostly bands, but two of our favorites were the Circle City Cloggers and the square dancers. (The square dancers even had black and white checkered petticoats or ties to keep with the 500 race theme.) We were out for an enjoyable tour of town, not worried about any speed records. Brian set the pace, keeping back my early-race enthusiasm so that we could maintain a 10-minute pace and finish in 2 hours, 11 minutes rather than speeding through the first half and blowing out our knees/hips/quads by mile 10.
We had a great time seeing my brother and sister-in-law play softball, hanging out with my parents, visiting my grandparents, and trying to do enough walking to keep our legs from getting sore and stiff. Spring is about two weeks ahead of New England, so there were lots of tulips, flowering trees and lilacs in bloom.

As many a spring initiative has started strong and whimpered out when schedules got busy and weather got worse, we thought it was important to continue working on landscaping a bit more since our last post.

The tabblo has been updated with more pictures. The holly bush bonsai project was conducted Sunday April 20. I couldn’t bring myself to hatchet down the gigantic bush. I had to deconstruct it to see where things went so horribly wrong. You can see photos of the interim state. The fellow who gave us a quote to remove Spruce tree this week warned Brian that “it will come right back, you know!” Brian assured him that this was round one, but that we were not giving up yet.

The second round of chainsawing and town compost trips occured April 26 (we are up to 5 Subarus full and counting!). Not pictured, we also pared down the 2nd holly bush so the pair is ready to transplant if anyone wants them - hint hint!

Today we ventured out amid the sprinkles and grey weather to measure out the yard so we can plan our attack. We have been working with the New England Garden’s Guide, Botanica’s Annuals and Perennials and our 3D landscape design software program (rudimentary but useful for visualization) to map out the beds and develop our list of candidate plants.

Next week is our race in Indy so we really need to hit the ground running, or rather digging, to get the spring plantings in when we return!