And I have to ask – are we the only ones who take a year to remodel what is in essence a small shed?
On second thought, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.
So we’ve moved around to the back half to finish our utterly favorite part…..and by that I mean the hellish nightmare that is angled trim work. I believe we’ve established we suck at this and not wanting to break tradition, we still do.
How badly do we suck?
I’m glad you asked.
Badly enough to require shaving corners with less than modern tools if you’re my other half.
What….
You mean 1940’s saws aren’t still viable members of the tool arsenal?
Yes, that’s always my reaction as well….
But the husband says it still has life left in it.
Corners were turned…
Though not all of them where they should be…
As the poppa barn ( who’s still screaming for paint and agrees with River how wonderful he would look in a nice rusty red with white trim ) looked on in horror.
Maybe I should rethink that title…. don’t need the porn spammers dropping by again.
Anyway, after we planted our free trees the other day we had to do something with this under performing flowering plum that was now ruining the alignment.
We planted 2 of these before the big barn construction began, but one died and the survivor gets eaten alive by Japanese beetles every year. I was all for heaving it, but the husband had other ideas.
When my mother died in 2014, she was cremated and I planted some of her ashes with a lovely tulip tree in our backyard.
It did well for 4-5 years until we had crazy late spring freezes and frosts that it couldn’t tolerate.
Since I planned to replace it this year? Husband decided to do a little transplanting.
I (very helpfully) told him we’d need a bigger hole since we were moving a mature 12 year old tree with an extensive root system. With this (ever so helpful) advice, he did what he always does….. and promptly ignored it.
Digging up the plum was an absolute nightmare. The roots were thick and deep and under the topsoil? Hard clay that might as well be cement.
Our farming neighbor offered to come over with his backhoe and scoop it right up, but no.
The husband didn’t want to tear up his lawn and went with the spiderweb approach to removal.
It took us approximately two hours of digging and tugging and even then we ended up chopping what had to be 10 foot long roots.
Whoever said gardening isn’t a workout needs to be bitch slapped.
This photo caught the other half gasping for air after the last pull.
I had serious doubts the hole out back was large enough, but away we went.
Yeah, not quite.
There was a lot of twisting. And turning. And laughing. ( Okay, that was just me. Husband didn’t find it the least bit amusing. )
Some quite inventive spiderweb root trench digging later……
Don’t get excited, I’m talking about deer antlers.
And as I was filtering through my hundreds of shots of our buck the other day….
I thought some of you city people might get a kick out of this.
After the fall rut….. (read: deer orgy, where size does matter) ….. the buck will drop his then useless horns.
It’s a slow process that sometimes takes all winter. The blood supply is cut off and they slowly loosen. You often see bucks with one side hanging crookedly… and they’ll rub against trees, fence posts, picnic tables or whatever is around to knock them off.
When this happens, it does look a little bizarre.
And painful, though they assure me it’s not.
But how do the proverbial ‘they’ know?
I doubt anything has fallen off of them lately.
It certainly doesn’t look like fun to me.
Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 