Rolling on...........

One week after the epic snowstorm, this is what the yard looked like on April 22.  

During the blizzard I refilled the bird feeders twice a day; I was very glad we had enough seed on hand so late in the season. All of the birds suffered though; and there were casualties.

 

Now, another week later, there are still snowbanks in the yard, though I finally saw my first crocus open today. The daffodils are just starting to break the ground, it will be sometime before they are in bloom.  I'm actually glad they weren't flowering when the storm hit; this way they won't be flattened out by the weight of a snowbank.  

Needless to say, we haven't accomplished a thing outside to speak of.  This was the year we were hoping to get our projects done so we did not put up the greenhouse for the first time in decades.  Our good friend has a perennial greenhouse business and the snow destroyed two of his hoophouses entirely, flattening them to the ground.  When I saw the mess at his business, I was very glad we didn't have ours up, too.  I do miss my plants, though.  Carl and I have a spent a few days helping him with the reconstruction.

Since working in the garden isn't possible, I was working on some spring cleaning and organizing the last few weeks.  The house is going to need some major renovations and, after much procrastination, as in years and years, we decided to seek the opinion of a remodeling contractor we met at a showcase of new homes/remodeled homes tour in March.

I had asked other contractors in the past, but most of them weren't very interested in the job of making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  The consensus seemed to be we may as well tear down the house and start over.  But when we met the contractor I hope will do the work for us, his attitude was more optimistic.  He came out to the house two weeks ago and went over our list of things we'd like to do, took a bunch of pictures and measurements and said he'd be in touch.  

Remodeling a house is a big step to take, but we'd both like to live here for the rest of our lives, if possible.  As long as so much needs to be done anyway for maintenance, we feel this is the time to take the plunge.  And a big plunge it will be, that we know.

Though I haven't heard back from the contractor, I remain cautiously optimistic he hasn't forgotten about us (or decided to hide from us) and I continue on with the cleaning.  The roof is going to be coming off, so the attic and forty year's worth of stuff needs to be dealt with.  This is when you find out how much junk you really have, and it's not pretty.

And this is where Carl and I clash.  How silly to have to argue about nothing more significant than junk.  We made it through the stash of gloves in the hall closet without incident, but there are some much bigger problems coming up and well, they have to be dealt with.  

But, another fly in the ointment: On Sunday morning, I was rushing to the back door to open it for Carl who was carrying packages in.  Halfway to the door, I kicked a chair leg by accident.  Being barefoot, the pain was excruciating.  You know how most of the time you can 'walk it off'?  Well, I tried, but it wasn't working.  There was no broken skin but the pain was intense.  

I took some ibuprofen and sat down for the rest of the day with my foot elevated, defrosting frozen vegetables one bag at a time.  Carl went over to work on the planters at his Dad's shop and I felt guilty leaving him to work all alone.  I could barely put any weight on the silly foot, but I thought it would just take some time.

Monday morning we all were up early to meet with the land surveyor for Joel's new house.  I could gingerly put my Birkenstock clog on and as long as I didn't flex my foot too much, it was bearable.  Later in the morning we went to our greenhouse friend's house to help dismantle the old greenhouses.  My foot wasn't great, but as long as I limped along a little, it was doable.

The next day, I decided to get some plant therapy and went to bug my other greenhouse friend, Brenda, at her business.  It was wonderful to be in the middle of the glorious blooming plants and soak in the beauty while the snow was still on the ground outside.  

I was carrying some flats to and fro when suddenly my foot started to ache a little and then a little more and then a LOT more and finally, I realized I was done for the day.  I made my apologies to Brenda and headed for home.  Stepping on the brakes in the car sent jolts of pain up my leg.  By the time I got home, I was hobbling.

Great.

Still optimistic, I headed back to the recliner and the frozen vegetables thinking surely this will pass.  I'll be better in the morning.

But I wasn't.  By Wednesday morning, my foot turned black and blue and was swollen more than the first day.  Finally time to make an appointment for an x-ray.  

"Well, I was right," the nurse practitioner said as she gazed at my x-ray.  "Here, take a look, see that diagonal line on your little toe?  There's your fracture.  I knew when I saw the bruising in your foot that you had a break, I just wasn't sure where."

Drat.  I'd been hoping for a sprain, though I know sprains aren't any fun, either.

"I'll send the films over to the orthopedic surgeon and let you know what they recommend.  The good news is it is not dislocated, so you shouldn't need surgery.  Six to ten weeks from now it should be much better.  I'll need to see you May 10 for another round of x-rays just to make sure it's still aligned.  Keep wearing stiff-soled shoes and stay off of it as much as you can.  Remember to keep it elevated when you're seated."

Drat again!  Six to ten weeks.....and spring is here.......and I'm hobbling.

I saw an ad on Craigslist for a knee walker and immediately contacted the seller.  Carl and I drove twenty miles to the man's house and picked it up that very night.  The model I bought was an all-terrain unit.

Introducing the All-Terrain Kneerover

  (And yes, the 'lovely orange flooring is on its way out (if the contractor returns, that is, though he told us that orange is now back in style again.)

Anyway, in the meantime, Carl's dad wasn't feeling very well, so I made a trip to the nursing home on my new scooter.  I felt right at home motoring down the halls with my contraption, though it surely does get a lot of attention.  Resting my knee on the seat, I can take the weight off the sore foot which is a relief. It does go over the lawn pretty well, too. 

Today is Friday, and I'm still pretty much off my foot.  I do get up and cook and do dishes, but the 'kneerover' helps.  My only complaint is the house is small and the Kneerover is big, resulting in a lot of Y-turns, back and ahead, back and ahead...oh well.  

I really didn't see this injury coming, but then, do we ever see any injuries coming?  If we did, we'd avoid them.  

 I just wish I had a better story.  

Kicking a chair is so lame. 
  

Snowstorm Evelyn Brings On Spring Cleaning

We've just spent a long weekend being snowbound, as with an all-time record-breaking flourish, Snowstorm Evelyn bestowed upon us an epic amount of the white stuff, rough estimates around 29 inches in two days, breaking 128+ year records.

There's a driveway in there somewhere....

The excitement started Friday with a few claps of thunder and rain on and off all day.  The meterologists were abuzz with excitement, we were all supposed to dust off our recently stowed snow shovels, look out, here comes Evelyn!  And yes, I will admit, they were right.

By Saturday afternoon, we had over 15 inches of snow and we weren't going anywhere anytime soon.  I had been in town on Friday morning when I visited Carl's parents at the nursing home and I'd debated stopping at the grocery store, but decided against it because it was raining and I was lazy.  

I should have heeded the nagging little voice in my head (and the louder ones on the car stereo) urging me to take this storm seriously.  But, I didn't.  And thanks to me, we had no toast all weekend.  (I know, oh, the humanity!  And I really shouldn't be eating much bread, anyway, so there.  I had an enforced diet.)

I have to admit I am so glad we decided not to put up the greenhouse this year for the first time since 1995.  Normally, by March we would have dug the greenhouse out of the machine shed and I'd have annuals of all sorts growing, but this year, we decided against it because we were going to get an early start on our garden construction projects instead.  Ha. Best laid plans of mice and men...
 

 Right about now, it is very hard to believe the garden should have drifts of petunias in a few short weeks.

Driveway in July 2017

Driveway tonight April 15, 2018

Mountains of Petunias in July

Mountains of Snow in April

Carl, wading out to the road on Sunday afternoon

 Since we were going to be snowed in for two full days, Carl and I took advantage of the time on our hands and decided to clean out the hall closet.  Yes, we really know how to have fun here, don't we?  (Hey, it beats going bonkers and coming down with cabin fever; at least no one was wielding an ax and hollering, "He-e-r-r-e-'s  JOHNNY!!")

I recently joined a decluttering support group on social media and being inspired by the members and their success stories, I thought it was time we tackle the hall closet, our biggest and baddest closet of all.  Lurking in this 5' x 2' space was an amazing collection of gloves.  And I mean amazing.  We had piles and piles of gloves of all kinds lying on the kitchen floor in semi-organized groups; brown jersey gloves, nitrile coated gardening gloves, leather gloves, rubber gloves, and finally, warm winter gloves.  After getting all of the gloves into their various categories, we tackled the right-hand, left-hand pairs dilemma.  

Apparently, both Carl and I are only left-handed people.  We were stunned by the amount of left-handed gloves with no right-handed counterparts.  I suppose the right-handed gloves must have gone on an adventure with the mates to the socks we never can seem to find, too. 

A few weeks ago, a dear friend of ours told me about a book about the life-changing magic of decluttering. I haven't had time to look into a copy, but I did read some online reviews.  The gist of the tidying process is to take all of your clothes from wherever they are in your home and make a pile of them in one place and then, one item at a time, decide whether the item in question brings you joy or not.  If it does not bring you joy, it is to be discarded, donated, whatever you need to do to remove it from your home. 

Well, that's essentially what we did with the gloves, and for the most part, it worked.  The only thing I had some trouble with was the author's assertion about inanimate objects having 'feelings' per se, as in, 'Don't roll up your socks into balls, do you think they can rest in that position?  They've already done so much for you being on your feet all day.  Store them so they can rest easily.'  

I'm not sure if that is taken word for word from the book, but I did see it pop up in several reviewer's critiques.  And something about emptying out your purse at night and letting it rest after working hard all day lugging around my junk.

Well...... 

The problem with this philosophy of thanking my items for their 'work' and giving them 'feelings' brings Carl and I full-circle back into the problems we both have (though mostly Carl) with keeping almost everything to the point of hoarding.  

Carl freely admits he has a problem in his workspaces in the basement and most alarmingly, his shed(s), which I not-so-nicely refer to as the SOS buildings. (Which stands for Sheds O' S#$t.)  I know, that's no way to be supportive of my spouse.  But, well, you'd have to see it.  No, on second thought, no one should see it...in almost forty years of marriage, I can honestly say the junk has been the only problem we have ever had.  And it's a big one, because, let's face it, one person's junk does affect the entire household, just like any other addiction.

And then we have my problems with 'things'; ever since childhood, I have had a bad habit of giving inanimate objects 'feelings'.  I don't know when it started, but I suspect it has a lot to do with a rather violent upbringing and wanting to protect helpless things from destruction.  (Long story, too painful to tell, so I'll spare us all the grief.)

For instance,  when I was little, I could not bring myself to eat my chocolate Easter bunny because, well, it was a bunny and it had a happy little face and bright eyes and a little bow around its neck.  How could I bring myself to destroy it?  It was so cute!  

I remember my father becoming angry with me because I wasn't like normal kids who would have had the confection gone in a matter of hours; instead mine sat in the refrigerator awaiting its demise for months on end.   

One Sunday summer afternoon, Dad decided enough was enough. He'd gone into the refrigerator to retrieve his pack of cigarettes and saw the Easter rabbit sitting on the shelf.   He sat me down at the kitchen table and demanded that I eat my bunny.  Oh, dear.  I sat there and tried not to cry; treacherous tears always got me in more trouble, but no matter how diligently I tried to stem their flow, flow they did, followed by great, gulping sobs. 

"Well, I have never seen anything like you!" Dad said, probably truly worried about my mental health. "C'mon, for godsakes, just eat the damn thing!"

Since I sat there helplessly blubbering, he grabbed a cutting board and a butcher knife and whacked off the chocolate bunny's ears, thrust them at me and hollered, "Here, eat it!"

I'll never forget the taste of chocolate mixed with salty tears.  It was a dreadful combination.   I did my best to try to eat the bunny, but I failed miserably.  Dad was disgusted with me.  (Too bad this didn't put me off of chocolate for the rest of my life; I still do love chocolate, just not in cute shapes.) 

So, by anthropomorphizing inanimate objects (socks! purses!) both Carl and I would be in a whole heap of more trouble.  The last thing either of us needs is to feel sorry for everything we have that would be discarded by normal people.  But we're not normal.  Yes, we know it.

Still, Carl was making impressive strides this weekend.  In the past, he would have saved every leather glove he had (he gets them from work's trash cans when his coworkers toss them out after getting a hole in them somewhere.)   He had plans to cut the holey gloves into circles and make a hammer handle with stacks of circles (to tell the truth, there would be no landfills if Carl ran the world, he can find an alternate use for just about anything.  Except cigarette butts, I don't think he could find a use for them...) but after two days of sorting through gloves, Carl decided the really worthless ones could go into the trash can.  Success!

Carl says he doesn't give inanimate objects feelings.  His problem is he can't stand to waste anything and feels he can make something out of nothing (which, in his defense, he can and has; case in point, the dome:

The dome was made from a combination of recycled copper sheeting and reclaimed steel pipe with the addition of aluminum castings.  What was once a pile of scrap metals turned out very well.  The problem is, Carl has so many ideas and so many raw materials that even he knows he will not live long enough to create everything he wants to do.  

He sees something of value in everything.  And yes, it is hoarding.  The same bitter tears I shed while being force-fed my Easter bunny have been shed while trying to come to terms with the piles of stuff he has around here.   

Since we've both turned sixty, though, even Carl is starting to think a little differently.  What sounded so hopeful in the past, as in, 'Some day I want to do ___________ with this," has now come down to, "How much time do I really have left to do these projects; in twenty years, if we're blessed to live that long, we'd be eighty." 

 Yes, the passage of time does change things, and I think Carl is feeling his mortality.  Will there be a huge purge of everything we own overnight?  Probably not.  But as one member of the support group said, "How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time."  (Which also did work for the Easter bunny from fifty years ago, I did eat it, one bittersweet bite at a time.)

And as the snow piled up outside, so did our garbage bags in the house.  We got so lost in the process of discarding and sorting that we were both stunned when we looked out the back door around 5PM Sunday night. 

Whoa, that truly is a lot of snow.
 

No toast for awhile yet

By evening the snow had slowed down considerably and the woods across the road had ceased to roar with the onslaught of high winds.  Time to put on our winter gear (and use some of those dang gloves!) and venture out into the snow-pocalypse.

Carl broke trail for me.  We debated skiing, but the snow was very sticky, making it impossible. We had to get to the tractor (remember, silly me took the snow blower off in March) and the only way to get to Mom's house was to walk.  

The town had plowed several times during the blizzard, which was such a change from my childhood.  When I was a kid fifty years ago, we were stranded every winter for several days as only the highways were tended to.  If you lived on a side road, you learned to wait.  (Or use your farm tractor to get yourself out.)

We made it to the road and trudged along.  It really did feel good to be outside after almost 48 hours even with the biting wind and still-pelting snow.

We both gave thanks for the tractor; shoveling this much snow would have taken us days.

Carl, on the road, looking back toward the house. 

When we arrived at Mom's house, I was stunned.  I have never seen that much snow in the yard.  Ever.

I had driven the tractor in after the last time I drove it, now we had to turn it around to put the snow blower back on.

Just as Carl and I arrived at Mom's house, Joel called to ask how the digging out was going and that he was on his way to help.  I was worried about the roads; everyone was told to stay off of them unless it was an emergency.  But there were a few cars now and then on the highway in the distance, so the world was starting to come back to life.

In the meantime, Carl and I put the blower back on the tractor and got started.

By the time Joel arrived, Carl had made one pass down the middle of Mom's driveway.  Joel took over and did our yard and then we followed him over to Carl's parent's home to take on the mess there, too.  The normally busy highway was down to only a handful of cars, everything was glare ice underneath.  We were glad there was no traffic on the two mile drive.

Luckily, Carl's parent's yard was not as bad as our two previous ones had been.

When we got back to Mom's house with the tractor, Joel posed for a picture with the snowbanks.  (Joel's well over six feet tall.)

We didn't do a complete removal of all the snow, after all, this is April, and it won't last forever (and we were running short on gasoline.)

All in all, it was an interestingly productive weekend; we tackled projects we normally wouldn't have and gained ourselves some useful space.  There may be hope for us yet.

I'm hoping that someday soon, Carl and I will be able to conquer the piles of stuff and come to a happy compromise.  It's all about attitude, really.  

And setting the junk free also sets us free. Things don't have feelings, but boy, oh boy, people sure do.  

Our takeaway reminder:  How do you eat an elephant?

 One bite at a time. 

April Snowstorms Bring May Flowers?

Though the calendar says April, Old Man Winter wasn't quite done with us yet.

On Tuesday night, the meterologists were predicting up to ten inches of snow and though I didn't get my ruler out on Wednesday morning, I would say they were pretty close.

When I woke up, I looked out the window at the driveway and debated; do I want to put the snowblower back on the tractor? 

But wait, back up the truck here; why did we take the snowblower off the tractor before June in Wisconsin?  What was I thinking?

Well, it all started off fairly innocently.....we'd had a very dry fall and winter and near the end of March we got the urge to get at some garden remodeling.   

For some time now, Thing Two has been bugging me.  Thing Two was a repository for a bunch of spare limestone boulders we had leftover from the Pachyberm and it had been my bright idea way back in 2010 to make a small garden feature out of them instead of leaving them in a pile out in the Eight.  Thing One (on the right side in the photo below) is actually bigger than Thing Two (on the left) but for now, I'm thinking I'll keep Thing One. 

The Things

While the ground was still fairly frozen, off went the snowblower, on went the forklift teeth and we started hauling the rocks back out to the Eight for storage.

 (Just think, some husbands complain when their wives want to move the living room furniture around, 'On second thought, honey, I think the couch would look better on the other wall; oh, no, I guess I liked it better where it was'....well, around here, Carl has to put up with, 'I think we'll take those rocks out and do something else with them.'   Just for the record (and marital harmony) let me reiterate, Carl was the one who wanted to leave them on a pile in the first place, but he humored me.)  

We worked on dismantling poor Thing One on March 25th when there was no snow left on the ground.

Audrey and Daddy on Easter

Even our little Audrey, now almost two years old, came to help for awhile (with her mommy and daddy, too.)  Audrey was carrying rocks to the pallets for us.  I wish I'd gotten a picture of her first experience with her Crazy Rock Grandparents.

Then life got in the way again a few days later and we had to hustle off to work on something else, so Thing One remains forlornly half-disheveled in a heap of nothingness.  

And then it snowed.

 
 Snow is not unusual around here this late in the season, but our cold temperatures are breaking a few records at night and the snow isn't disappearing as quickly as it normally would.  

Snow Cone and Snow Balls

I really didn't want to go through all the work of putting the snowblower on by myself, so I walked up to the machine shed at Mom's and fetched the tractor.  

The tractor has nice, wide tires, so I simply drove around in circles, squashing the snow flat.

There, problem solved.  Until it snowed again, which it did, the next day.  Oh well, I'll just leave it be, we can still get out of the driveway, sort of.

For now, I'll go along with Carl's philosophy on snow removal: no matter what time of year it falls, up to and including January:

"Don't worry about it.  It will melt by July."