Category: home and garden

I recently noticed that we missed the neighborhood tree planting for this year so we’ll have to try and get permitted and purchased on our own. Dang. It would be so nice to have a Mountain Glow Maple on the street.

Michelle and I just joined a CSA called Organics to You in an attempt to improve our diets and to help encourage the ag boom in Oregon. Don’t get me wrong – Michelle and I eat very well – but it isn’t always the best for us. We’re especially weak in the fruit/veggie section of the Pyramid.

Oddly enough, Michelle and I are 80% vegetarian, but we’re doing a poor job of actually getting the raw fruits and veggies. So here’s the challenge. We’re starting with a “Bin for one” and intend to eat all of it before the next bin arrives two weeks later. So far, things look good, and we’re pretty excited about the challenge.

Yesterday Michelle and I hosted family for our first thanksgiving dinner. Everything with the food went way too smoothly until both casserole dishes shattered in the oven and I wouldn’t shut up about why it happened which did nothing to solve the green bean bundle and stuffing crises.

The only thing that really caused me to freak out when we were looking at this house was the size of the dining room and our current dining set. We did a measurement beforehand and did a mock up with realtor business cards and it the room was too small for my grandparents dining set. Well, our measurements were wrong and amazingly the table fits perfectly, and only slightly less perfectly when extended. Luckily no one had to use the bathroom during dinner.

All in all, the food and times were good, and we can’t be thankful enough for the help we’ve received from family in moving in and getting situated in our new place. It is so comfortable and home-like, even with a small oven.

A loud smash woke Michelle and I at 2:10 a.m. this morning. My brian quickly though a circuit had blown but all the power was still on in the right places. Gas explosion? No, the furnace was still working fine. A tour of the basement revealed nothing out of the ordinary – nothing had fallen, and no one had broken in. We were both a little concerned at not being able to find the cause. Barley was still camped out in bed. Then I thought to check the front porch. The Sunday edition of the Oregonian was laying propped against the wall. The wall our heads are against in the bedroom. Oh.

Who delivers papers at 2 a.m.?

Last night we found the county assessor’s card on our door when we got home from dinner with Scott & Stephanie. Looks like our unbelievably low property taxes won’t last long. Damn.

We also had the furnace serviced for what appears to be its first time since installation. It was fairly dirty and the jets were somewhat corroded, but it kicked on for the first time this morning when the temperature inside reached 61F. I’m pretty sure Michelle is going to crank the temperature up to an opulent 64F though. I’ll just have to turn it back down afterwards.

Our last place had a fancy thermostat where you could set temperature ranges for days and times. This one is just your classic knob with a temperature scale. The fancy one was nice because we could drop the temp to 60F overnight and have it start warming to 64F in the morning, then drop back down during the day while we were away. I think it counts as one of those situations where technology improves life. I guess the furnace probably can be lumped in with the fancy thermostat too.

Yesterday I cleaned out the crawl space under the house. The previous owner had left a pile of miscellaneous wood (termite fodder) and a structural guy would need to have access to the SE corner to patch some erosion. Our original home inspector mentioned the wood as well as an abundance of broken glass under the vapor barrier. Call me a sucker for personal safety, but I figured I should remove some of the glass to make movement in the already cramped and spiderwebby basement a little less mortally wounding.

Sure enough, like many old houses, the crawl space had been used as a trash heap. The contents included a lot of glass ( light bulbs, bottles, windows, etc) and a few metallic items. The coolest finds:

1. an unbroken Lucky Lager bottle with a Best By date of June 24th of 1953
2. a G&W two star blended whiskey bottle
3. a Jumpin’ Jeep windup toy (pictured above)
4. a wooden jeep

I’m sure there’s more glass down there, but I did as much as I could find easily. There’s a large earthen mound which I assume is the bulk of the heap, but I’m afraid to disturb it. It could also be a grave. That would put a damper on the new house thing because you don’t know if it means the place is haunted, or if you do dig it up whether or not that will cause the haunting to start. Ah – the challenges of home ownership.

While I’m thinking about it, I love refrigerator water. So cool and clean and readily available. I’ve not had access to it since a wee child in Cody, but I remembered it fondly. Now that we have it again, I’m also reminded of another refrigerator issue from childhood – cubed vs. crushed ice. My parents always scolded us for using crushed ice, which we never really understood. Now that Michelle wants crushed ice and i want cubed ice, I finally get it. Crushed ice makes it so you have to fill your glass twice with crappy fractured chunks. Chunks that melt too quickly and create a slurry rather than a sustainable cooling agent. Preliminary arguments suggest we’re not going to resolve this any time soon.

I hooked up a drip system in the front yard this weekend to reduce the amount of interaction (and wasted water) with the flower bed. We’re still learning the names of some of the flowers that the previous owner planted. Luckily, they’re fairly exotic, and we can find the names in the floral section of our grocer. Some are so outlandish that I’d never have planted them, but according to the oregonian, they’re hot shit right now.

We also got the equipment to install the arbor my dad made for our wedding. This is the first time we’ve had a place for it, and I think it’ll make a nice entryway to our yard.

Thanks to a relaxing, uneventful Saturday, Michelle and I were able to tackle a significant portion of work around the house today. We finally bundled the apple tree so I can get rid of it tomorrow, we delivered the wood stove to the lucky owner, we mowed and weeded, reorganized the basement, plumbed a line for the ice-maker in the fridge (fridgewater is my favorite), did a massive cleaning, walked the dog and had coffee, did our grocery shopping, laundry, and other small tasks here and there.

Now I’m sitting back and sipping a scotch with the first 4 cubes from our ice-maker. Now that’s what satisfaction tastes like.