jack
Originally uploaded by merideth.
Because Beth had our nephew Jack attached to her torso. It’s hard to repaint the ceiling in this state.
Actually, Beth chopped one of our sage plants into 4 plants and moved them to the front yard while I shoveled all the the mulch out of the street so we don’t get a street-sweeping ticket this week. It was not fun.
mulch redux
Originally uploaded by merideth.
Yup, that’s right…after the initial neighborhood-sized mulch delivery, this second truck came rumbling toward our house. Beth starting sweating, thinking there’s no way the formula supplied by ASP could allow for this much mulch!
So the delivery guy says to Beth: “You ordered some mulch?”
Beth: “Yes, but it’s already here.”
Dude: “But you placed an order?”
Beth: “Yes, but as you can see (by the giant mount St. Helen’s of mulch–implied), it’s already here.”
Dude: “Hmm.”
In the end, it was an error on the part of ASP, so they drove away without dumping. Whew.
mulch
Originally uploaded by merideth.
This is the full size, humongous dump truck full-to-the-top of shredded (that’s right, not your janky home depot chips…SHREDDED) mulch. When it was dumped on our sidewalk/driveway/street, it was taller than Beth. She sent me this photo at work and I couldn’t stop laughing.
All I have to say is SHE USED ASP’s formula for calculating the amount, so we suspect they wanted us to mulch in a layer about….oh 9 feet deep. Clearly they don’t care about plants.
On the up side, we’ll have plenty of mulch for the backyard! And the neighbors’ yards. And maybe the park.
Weed abatement fabric of course! Scha. So last weekend Beth rolled out and staked down the professional grade landscapers’ fabric (she would have none of the standard, amateur grade). After pulling out and poisoning all the oxalis, this fabric is our next line of defense, so Beth is not fooling around. After the fabric went down, she pulled out her color-coded plant map (phase1), laid out, and planted the first batch of plants.
She did all the heavy work on this…I was pretty much there in my capacity as lazy ass.
Okay, I did trim all of our gorgeous and giant sage plants down to sad, bloomless spikeballs in preparation for replanting in the front.
After years of paper and scissors, we finally get to get our rock on. And here it is. From the moment we moved in, Beth’s dream project has been landscaping the front yard. The poor girl has had to wait almost a year to get started because we knew that the stuccoing that had to be done would bring with it guys in boots who tromped up landscaping. We were SO right in that. Well, with the stucco all done, the front yard facelift can finally begin. And so it did two weekends ago.
This is the before shot. While it may look all lush and green, it’s actually filled with hateful oxalis, which is a weed that’s a bulb. And dude, it’s all but impossible to get rid of this non-California-native, invasive, pain-in-the-ass plant.
And this is the yard one day later with four new terraces and stacked rock walls. Oh, it looks like barren dirt and rubble now. But just you wait until Beth’s plan is activated! (Isn’t Beth cute in her garden gear?)
Beth gets up for work around 5 a.m. every day because she works 4 10s. On Friday night, she worked until about 9 p.m. and got home exhausted. We went to bed, and at 5 a.m. Beth’s alarm went off because she forgot to turn it off for the weekend. She sat bolt upright, looked around and asked, “Is it Saturday?” I said “yes” and her sleepy reply as she turned off the alarm was: “That’s better than my wedding day.” She went back to sleep for 3.5 more hours.
Just so you know, our wedding day was REALLY good.
Remember in Robocop where those next generation robots came in and were all out of control? Well the little thing that delivered our rocks today was like the little baby of one of those and Number 5 (is alive).
It cutely detached from the back of the flatbed truck carrying the rock and was used to promptly and precisely dump 2 tons of rock in our driveway. It was so cool…yet so cute.
Here’s a little .pdf slideshow of the unloading.
trunk
Originally uploaded by merideth.
On New Year’s Day, Beth’s mom and dad drove out from Colorado, their truck loaded down with stuff for us. The headlining item was this trunk that was in her house as she grew up.
In addition to simply BEING gorgeous, it now holds all of Beth’s sewing paraphernalia, thus making room in the dining room buffet for actual dining room type stuff.
Seriously, do we EVER have enough storage?
prairie style vase
Originally uploaded by merideth.
Yup, the beauty of this piece has nothing to do with calico and covered wagons. This is what I want to see when someone says “prairie.”
This is my home-run Christmas present from Beth. And if I say that I love it…well, that only covers about one millionth of how I feel. She did a rockin’ job of picking it out. It’s awesome…a monolith worth WAY more than monkey worship sitting in the middle of our dining room table.
Now that…THAT…is as good as jewelry.
P.S.: Beth installed under cabinet lighting in the kitchen today. That is just making my life a world of easier. Yay her!
On Wednesday, I blew out the electricity in most of my kitchen, half the bathroom, the backyard lights, and all of the breakfast nook (which is my office). Nice job, Mer. Waaaaay to really test the old house circuits.
I checked the switch box and flipped everythign back so I didn’t look like an idiot when the electrician came over. Electrician came over. Looked at all the problems. Ran around the house between outside (where the switchbox is) and inside for about 15 minutes. He fixed said problem (I had a bad switch). Then…the piece de resistance…ran out the door and called over his shoulder in the rain like some Santa in a blue van “No charge ladies! Just remember who the best electrician in town is!”
Well you’d better believe we will!
