Saturday, April 22, 2006

So, the condo sold yesterday ( a big woo-hoo, please...), and today we woke up to find an extra hundred thousand dollars in our bank account (not extra, it was what we expected, but it wasn't there yesterday!), so we did a happy dance, and promptly sent 13k over to pay off the credit card, and the rest will be over paying off our loan shortly. Yippee!

I spent this week AWAY from home, both in Redmond and back here in Seattle. It really didn't feel like MY house when mom was up here doing some woodworking for me. It was a disaster area! Sawdust EVERYWHERE, cats locked up all day....at least the weather was nice. It was really sunny on Wednesday, slightly less on Thursday, and a little rainy Friday morning, but beautiful that afternoon.

Mom made me a scrapbook room with oodles and oodles of shelves and cubbies. I still need to get out the staple gun and install the trim on the edges of the shelves, and put some clear varnish over the whole thing, and buy a sheet of plexiglass to go on the desk. I can put pictures under it for a changeable decorative desk. Very fancy. Still a disaster area at the moment, but it will look really good once I am done. Ethan started on the trim upstairs while mom finished up the scraproom, and we had sawdust EVERYWHERE. I sanded off our banister/half wall thingy behind the couch. It is about 10 inches wide and maybe 15 feet long. We are going to stain it to match the trim. The trim color is PERFECT. We will look SO snazzy once it is done. Really brings the room together. We need to get some furniture to finish it off, and be done. We need some sort of endtables, a rug and some sort of decorative something to put on our tall skinny wall (it is around 5 or 6 feet wide and up to the rafters). It looks really blank right now. Maybe one of those desk things that are shaped like a half circle, flat against the wall. The kind of thing you see in entry ways. Something. Not too big, we don't want to block the flow of traffic through that area, but it looks so sad right now.

Lots o construction in the casa de Amerson. I planted my hydrangea buddy, Heidy, in a huge decorative pot kindly left by the previous residents. She lives out on the big slab of rock that is just below one corner of our huge deck. My little Patty the periwinkle now lives in the 18 inch wide planting area that runs right between the house and the deck, all along the length of the deck. I also planted some calla lilies (bluish purple color), and some begonias (I don't remember which color). They don't have names yet, since they are just bulbs and I am not quite convinced that they will actually grow, but they will be probably Betty the begonia and Carol the cala lilly.....but I am open to suggestions. I planted another cala lily (same color), in a square wooden planting box next to the steps from the deck down to the lawn. There are also some plants left by the previous owner in a rock garden area. They are Herbert, one of my Hosta twins (his twin Harry lives under the front steps), and two different varieties of ferns that I didn't bother identifying, and therefore did not name.
In addition to Harry, I also have a big pot by the front steps that I put a bulb in, but I don't remember if it was a cala lily bulb or a begonia.....and I threw some impatiens seeds on the top (I had extra), but they will most likely not grow, since they need more tender care when they are little. I am growing a whole flock of beautiful blue-purple-silverish impatiens, and some random color ones too. I am not sure where they will live, but they are currently in my bathroom in a cool seed tray. They are all growing! They were just teeny seeds, now the biggest ones are these frail little stalks about an inch or so tall with two teeny leaves. In a couple more weeks, I will take them outside for some visits there to get accustomed to the weather out there.
The previous owners left us lots of stuff. There are some green onions growing in the square planting box with my cala lily (un-named), and TONS of gardening stuff. I have a weed killer (looks like a long screwdriver with a forked end, PERFECT for stabbing weeds and killing them), a couple of those three tong ground scraping things, several bags of potting soil, lots of different fertilizers, variety of pots for flowers and plants, lawn fixer (need to use that...you spread it on bare areas and it fixes it...we have a couple of not so good areas out front), and other stuff, too. These are all locked in a chain-link fence area under the small deck.
Out front, we have 5 rose bushes, and two more that are in big pots and need a home somewhere, I am not sure what I will do with them. There is nowhere else left!! There is a tree of unknown descent, and a bush also, with tiny purple flowers. In the back, there is also a rosemary bush (fresh herbs!), and an extremely ugly bush with yellow flowers that have huge black centers. REALLY ugly. REALLY. Terrible. Then there is a sort of sagebrushy thing, but it is small and not yet irritating me.

So. Those are the things growing around my home (at the moment--they may all just die and leave me with nothing). I also have some coleus that I am growing in my bathrom, they will live in this huge round glass pot that we will stick on our potshelves away from the cats. I need to find some more cat-friendly (ie: won't kill them when they eat it, which they WILL) to put inside. I already put some slug/snail killer around my hostas (slugs LOVE hostas) and shaded plants, and ant killer all around the house. I saw a small army of teeny tiny ants over by the roses, and I don't want them getting any ideas about coming into the house.

Okay. That is it for today. I need to head home. Hopefully Ethan got all the trim done and we will be all done with that. Doubtful. He will probably be fuming and surrounded with a bunch of messes up boards. Actually, he does a great job, just gets a bit frustrated when he makes a bad cut. But the end results look AWESOME....

4 comments:

Davinie Fiero said...

Hmmm. Reading about a ton-o-plants.... but not seeing ANY of those promised scrapbook room pics. I MUST have overlooked them.....

Sabrina said...

Yes, room pics please!! ( your plants sound lovely though!)

Sabrina said...

Oh, and

WOO HOO!!!!!!

alyca said...

I attempted to add scrapbook room pictures this morning before work, and my computer is crap and locked up and wouldn't do anything, so I will have to re-attempt tonight after work.