Bits & Pieces, Sweaters & Fleeces

As Winter approaches, we are pecking away at lots of projects.  It's ever-frustrating to not have more complete, but progress is better than nothing, right?  [Sorry, no new pics to post. They are trapped on my phone.  Mac and Android are NOT getting along.  Couples therapy required.  I am confident they will work our their differences for the benefit of the kids.  Sigh.]

Here's our progress report:

1) Charles's room is STILL not finished (started in July), but I finally finished painting the walls and trim and ceiling.  There are no straight lines and no smooth surfaces in that room, so it has been a real challenge.  A few touch ups will be required once the floor is painted, but it looks SO much better.  And hubby has been wrenching away at the endless number of staples in the floor.  We are SO close to having that horrible task finished.  Furniture and finishes are ready to go.

We finally had to turn the heat on November 1, and we keep the Tavern and Bunk Room zone at 54, so Charles has moved over to the day bed in his sister's room (main house zone is a balmy 62) to avoid cold toes.  He has been so patient through this process.  Can't wait to have him move back into his own room again!

2) The window replacement project is coming along.  We acquired, painted and replaced the five front windows on the front of the house.  And the four for the first floor in front are primed and waiting for exterior paint today.   Nice to have the later-kitchen/porch as a no-need-for-drop-cloth painting space! Hopefully, hubby will have time to get those installed early this week. It only takes about 45 minutes each, now that he knows the drill.

We also splurged and bought three replacement casement panels for the old kitchen.  Those windows were literally falling apart, and we faced the potential of wide-open breezes this Winter if we didn't do something there.  They too are primed and waiting.  Hubby needs to seat the hinges before I paint, but we'll have those in before the weekend.  He did a great job reglazing the massive three-panel interior "storm" window for that space.

There is a chronic problem of high-velocity roof-run-off in that corner so those windows get blasted.  Architectural changes are needed, but we have not gotten our heads around a solution yet.  All in good time.

We've also been puzzling out ways to reuse panes and storm windows elsewhere in the house where updates are "futures".  Whatever we have leftover, I am hoping, will come together into some sort of a cold frame for my gardening habit.

3) Not one japanese knotweed went to seed on or near our property this year.  It remains to be seen what comes back or shows up in the Spring. Here's hoping all of our efforts made a dent.  And that the goats can polish off the stragglers in the Spring.

4)  The big dig worked!  The basement is tolerably dry and the portion of the pieced-granite foundation adjacent to the new grading and hardscaping is noticeably more stable.  The stepping stones have settled into the walkable gravel surface, the setting sand has done its job around the bricks, and the second round of grass seed is busy germinating on the slopes and in "the hole".  Temporary mostly-Fall plantscaping is pleasant and surviving the stress of planting just prior to first frost.  All good there.

5) Firewood won't be a problem or purchase this year.  Our selective clearing has left us with a relatively seasoned supply.  And we succeeded in budgeting to fill two oil tanks to brimming last summer when the prices were lower, so we are starting with both barrels loaded, as they say.  All told, we are in a better place as far as budgeting BTUs this Winter.

Again, we are keeping one zone at 62 degrees and one at 54.  The latter has the benefit of a convection fireplace for evening warm-up.  When the sound of the furnace firing up literally sounds like CHA-CHING, you learn to wear more fleece and sweaters.  I can think of so many other things to spend money on than fuel that burns.  Like more new windows and future insulation!

6) This Winter, we will be giving serious, definitive thought to what form the new kitchen, mudroom (old kitchen) and old-yucky bathrooms will take.  Lots of variables and not much common ground between hubby's ideas and mine aside from basic locales and progress imperatives.

Perhaps we will put out some new polling questions soon?

The Big Dig: Fearsome Firehose > Tolerable Trickle

You may remember last Fall when I gave two very large Rhododendrons significant haircuts in preparation for a move this past Spring.  Well, mud season came on fast and furious this year so no heavy machinery was recommended in close-quarters with our possibly-piercable pieced-granite foundation.

And our friends who make a living with said heavy machinery Fat Cod were busy making hay while the sun was shining this summer.  So, as Fall rolled around and I made and off-handed query as to availability, I was somewhat taken aback when the answer was, "How about Friday?"

I immediately said, "Um, OK."  And the rest was, well, it's still happening, so not quite history, but there's lots to tell!  I don't have pics yet of our newly finished and landscaped dooryard featuring all sorts of reclaimed materials pillaged from deep holes and lost corners of woods and barns here at TOPH (coming soon!)  But, I will share a couple of the exciting experiments, achievements and milestones.

Here is the before picture of the large Rhodies, at-grade sills and negative grade on the west side of TOPH.  In anything but a passing shower, water regularly ran down the top of the parking area, across the dooryard and into the corner by the backdoor where it combined with the runoff from three roof directions and poured into the basement at a volume that was washing the mortar out from between the stones of our foundation.

And here is the pic taken just after the Rhodies were relocated to their new home in the south woods .  You can see where the grade has built up to the sills over the years.  And where the moss is growing on the siding where the bushes held moisture up against the house.

Here is a sneak peek at the new grading.  Although we had a pro from Fat Cod do the big digging , we were able to get in ourselves by hand and dig out up agains the foundation and reset the grade.  Stabilizing the drip edge with gravel and slate reclaimed from a mostly-overthatched patio was an afterthought, but proved to be key in the grand scheme.  We've had a couple of days of steady rain and the "breach" in our foundation (four feet below that sill cock by the window well) has turned from a firehouse volume to a trickle at the height of a downpour.  Huge improvement.  I know it sounds wierd, but we can live with trickle!  A river (well, maybe a small stream) runs through it.  That's par for the course in olds houses like this.

Here you can see a pile of reclaimed granite curbing (for water diversion) at the top of the slope and the beginning of a hardscaping and landscaping plan that had largely been in my head (as translated by Matt Gunn from Fat Cod with some handy pastry flour.)  We graded and shaped the walkway area by hand and then added nine tons of stone/gravel for good measure.  The walkway is not quite finished, but very, very close.   I've only rearranged the bricks four times... (Pics and details soon.)  

And then came the big dig.  It is our hope that this large rainwater collection area (now downhill from the house where the opposite slope used to be) will suffice to keep greater volumes of water away from the house and foundation, draining off naturally or with the help of suck-up plantings.  The alternative is some sort of high-volume French drain or piping system, but the distance that would need to be covered to reach the sufficient grade to achieve positive drainage would make that a much bigger dig, potentially disturbing working grade elsewhere around the house and property.  We will cross that bridge when (IF) we come to it.  In the meantime we could also supplement this rainwater collection area with a sump pump and hose if it does not drain quickly enough, but so far we have seen it drain more than 2 inches and hour.  And it has a capacity of about 2,000 gallons by my estimation.  Here's hopin'!

 That's all for now.  More pics and details on repurposed treasures when walkway is (really) set and the grass is showing and the base plantings are in.  There is even be some bawdiness in the finishes if you are of that mindset.

The One That Got Away: Over-built & Under-appreciated

Three layers of leave-behinds, the oldest
 of which was hand-painted.

So, about that floor...  My son's room is still not finished.  And it's not just my inept wallpaper removal that's holding it up.  Although, for the record, the last three people to do wallpaper removal in that room weren't all that awesome either.  There were all sorts of leave-behinds under there.  Layers upon layers of fun!

Speaking of layers, the floor in there was faux wood linoleum.  In a house full of ruined and wretched hardwood floors, what could be so bad that you had to cover it with faux wood linoleum?

One of the daughters of the previous owners recalled to us that there was carpet in there at one time.  And by other evidence in the house, there had been some ill-behaved dogs.   Hmmm.  Well, we painted the floor in my daughter's room to cover old ink and water stains.  That looks pretty cool, so we could always do that, right?  Maybe I'll just peel up a corner and see.

Just peeling up a little bit... And there's a subfloor.  Hmmm.

More tools required.  Now, the guts to go
 beyond the point of no return.

Yep, there's a maple hardwood floor under there.

So, there's a maple floor.  Same as in my daughter's room.  No apparent damage in this tiny little corner.     But.  There's always a but.  Whoever decided this floor needed covering did so in an era when linoleum backing adhesives were very, very good.  And whoever installed this floor also decided that staples are cheap.  The linoleum-armored subfloor is attached to the maple floor at a project-rage rate of 37.4 staples per square foot.  And these are not just any staple, they are 1.25"-long staples with super-tiny heads.

In short, removing this cheap-ass, installed-in-a-day floor is very hard work.  And it's still not done.  I, again, had to enlist the help of hubby to help me rip up the linoleum-enforced, staple-fortified plywood as I was honestly not strong enough.  And, now that it's up, the staples are a back-breaking remainder.  Removing the staples is sit-on-the-floor contortion antics at their worst.  And the staples are finicky.  Twist or wiggle them too much and the head breaks, leaving un-grabbable sharp thingies.  Just what I need, a bed of tiny spikes for my little one's tootsies to walk on.  Tom Thumb singing Tip Toe Through the Tulips Iron Maiden-style.  But I digress...

The priming and painting (and painting and painting) is progressing in there, but it's no wonder there has been a procrastination factor on the floor.

Still baffled as to why the hardwood was covered in the first place.  There is a dark stain and some minor mold on the floor near the former fireplace -- likely new from condensation off the chimney where our newly efficient, awesome furnace exhausts into and as-yet unlined flue (short list).  And there are a couple of totally fixable water spots along the outside wall from old roof/ice damn leaks.  But, seriously, this floor is totally OK.

It's times like these when you really wonder what people were thinking.  Under-appreciated maple hardwood masked by completely overbuilt subfloor topped off with faux wood linoleum. Does not compute.  At all.

I know, I'm just bitter about the staples.  And we are headed into month three of my three-week project.  And my poor soon is still sleeping over in the bunk room.  This room just has to get finished before heat is requisite as we don't usually keep the Tavern/Bunk zone warmer than 58 in the Winter.  Can you say son-sicle?

On a side note, said son is currently obsessed with The Wordsuckeruppernator (brainchild of The Electric Company) on PBSKids.org.  And he wants to build/invent one of these contraptions himself.  Wonder if  this clever almost-six year-old could come up with a Stupidstaplesuckeruppernator?

The One That Got Away: Sticky Bits & Draft Dodging

When you are living in an old house, the norm is for projects to take longer, cost more, and generally become way more involved than you anticipated.  We've had plenty of that here at TOPH, but I must say there is one that is d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g.  My poor son's room is still not finished.

Last year, I jumped right in on my daughter's room.  The wallpaper was a willing participant in the removal process and, aside from the month of humidity we managed to bring with us from Annapolis, which made paint drying a bit of an issue, her room was done in a reasonable period of time.  My son's room was slated for this past Summer.  Specifically, I was going to get it done with all of my free time when they were at day camp for four weeks.  Yea, right.

Before Pics of My Son's Room

Suspect Closed-Up Fireplace Here

Some Old Water Damage

Some Failed Lath & Plaster Marriages

First, I needed to get in the right mindset for the project.  So, I flew to Maryland and went sailing for a long weekend (Thank you, L'Outrage peeps!), which turned into a week due to last minute while-I'm-here business meeting and the monster of all flight delays which resulted in driving all the way home in a shared rental car (shades of John Candy and his polka band in Home Alone)...  

The bits and bits and bits...

Anyway, when I finally got back, I had three weeks to finish one room.  Doable, right?

Well, the wallpaper in his room would not come off.  At all.  Except in little itsy-bitsy bits.  I tried water and vinegar and orange infused vinegar.  Nothing worked.

I went to Lowe's to buy a steamer and try that, but instead was led astray by a know-it-all paint-counter-chick at Lowe's.  She offered up a "trick" her father used to swear by.  He swore about it all right.  I painted over one entire wall of already-permanently-adhered wallpaper with KILZ on the theory that it would somehow bond with the paper and react with paste and basically fall off the walls.  Not.  I ended up with still-permanently-adhered wallpaper, which was then impermeable to liquid, which,  according to my husband (aka The Wallpaper Whisperer), was the trick all along.

The Wallpaper Whisperer

He took pity on me one afternoon and stripped the other three walls of the room with hot water and a dull putty knife.  Which, of course, left me with "that" wall.  Eight days later, with help from my mom, "that wall" was finally clear of bits of paper along with several chunks of the plaster wall that decided to go for the ride.  

Really.  If we just ripped off all the
 plaster and painted the lath,
 wouldn't that look cool?
  OK, so it would have
 been a bit breezy...

Midway through, I was absolutely convinced I could make painted lath look really good in a rustic kind of way.  Hubby was morally opposed to that little bit of avoidance-DIY decorating nonsense. (I still think I could have made that look good.)

Anyway, enough about the wallpaper.  It's over, along with six good-sized tubs of DAP Fast and Final spackle-product (like cheese product?)  That stuff is like "Wall Meringue" -- super light and perfect for filling in the spaces in crusty, crumbly surfaces that won't hold up to much sanding.  So, although the texture of my son's walls, like his sister's, is akin to a Mexican Mission, they are free of cracks and holes.  Draft dodging achieved!

Now, I wonder what's under that faux wood linoleum floor?

PS Yep, there was a fireplace there.

I Have What? Where? Now What?

I got a few questions offline about my last post, generally asking how and why I know about invasive plant species in New Hampshire.  Simple answer.  Last year, I wanted to know more about plants and growing conditions around TOPH -- a whole new climate zone for me.  So, I applied to the NH Master Gardener program and attended a bunch of classes through the UNH Cooperative Extension.  And now, brimming with this new knowledge, I am doing my bit (and tallying required volunteer hours) to spread the good word to you people.

Slight Tangent

Every state in the USA has a "land grant" university (UNH, U-Mass, etc.)  And each one of these universities, as a part of their original "resources and economies" mission, has an extension service.  Extensions services exist to share with the public what the brainiacs at the universities are figuring out about our natural resources and our economy as it relates to what we produce (agriculture, marine fisheries, forestry, etc.)   Generally, county extension staffers are hired/assigned to work with commercial growers and fisherman and companies (as examples) to ensure that resources are preserved, overhead is minimized and profits/jobs are maximized (roughly, in a nutshell.)

And then there's John Q. Public.  Some dude from NJ-Exit 5, who brings his own firewood to his cabin in New Hampshire, could easily introduce (any one of several) invasive insect species with no native predator into the north woods that would be it.  Really.  A large percentage of New England's forest (and all associated natural resources and industries, including logging, paper and maple syrup) would be wiped out within a year or five.  Really.


So, in an effort to educate the general public about best practices and threats to our lives and livelihoods, the extensions services also have "outreach" programs that educate advocates and educators in communities throughout their respective states.  New Hampshire, for example, has Master Gardeners, Natural Resource Stewards and Marine Docents.

And, in addition to the advocates and educators you may find in your community, most extension services include an office where questions from the public may be answered in-person, on the phone (NH: 1-877-EXT-GROW) or by e-mail (answers@unh.edu).  Finally, cooperative extension web sites (http://extension.unh.edu) are treasure troves of useful information.


Why Should I Care About Invasive Plants?
Non-native invasive plant species have been introduced into your local landscape by any number of means (human "it's pretty" transplants, bird poop, nubby tire cast-offs, etc.) and they are now a cause for concern because they have don't have sufficient and present natural enemies here, presumably because the things that eat, kill or otherwise control them stayed wherever they were native.  Thus, they can grow unchecked, stealing space, water, nutrients and light from native species that are integral to your local ecosystem.

Imagine how much damage three-year-old triplets could do in a Crate & Barrel if their stroller happened to deliver them without parental supervision.  And now imagine they can clone themselves and move on to other Mall stores and all adults present were somehow powerless to discipline them, no matter how they tried.  It's the stuff funny-at-first, scary-cliff-hanger-ending movies are made of.

Just as an example,  here at TOPH we have four acres of mostly woods and weeds, but very few birds.  The Norway Maples that took over the former pastures here grew very quickly, creating a thick canopy, shading and killing a bunch of native cedars that weren't as tall and couldn't grow to adapt fast enough.  In addition, the Norway Maples are allelopathic, meaning their roots produce a kind of toxin that makes it hard or impossible for anything else to take root nearby, except for invasive species, of course.  So, we have very little understory in our little forest, so no dapple-shade-loving, dense, evergreen and berry-producing bushes for the birds to nest in and eat.  Just like that, habitat lost.

Weed Wrench pic from invasives.org

So, how do you recognize vexing vegetation? Try this Guide if you are in NH: extension.unh.edu/forestry/Docs/invasive.pdf.  (If you live elsewhere, look for a guide put out by your local extension service.) There's also information in there about recommended control methods if you find some of these on your property.  

There may also be some great money-saving resources available. We have a bunch of Buckthorn (along with a gazillion of the aforementioned Norway Maple saplings.)  The Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve happens to be at the bottom of our road.  And they maintain a kind of lending library of tools, like Weed Wrenches, which would be very expensive to buy, but are almost invaluable in the process of prying these buggers out of our land of good! 

Trust me.  I learned to recognize two of these too late last year and they went to seed.  We now have a much larger and more expensive mess to clean up.  And we now have less time and less money to spend on our dream landscape.

Invasion of the Invasive Species!

I guess anyone one who moves into a house with a lot of history feels like an intruder and an interloper at some point.  We've certainly had those moments here at TOPH.  There was that a-ha moment last year when we decided to clear a trail through the woods in a direction we thought was logical, only to find we were clearing exactly where a well-travelled path/road had clearly been years before (The Road More Traveled, October 2011).

And then there was this Spring, when I truly started making plans for landscaping and gardening for next year and then all of these random plants started popping up around the property -- day lilies deep in the woods in the shade behind an old barn foundation, a sea of violets naturalized into the front lawn and a perfect six-by-six square of chives in the corner of an old, overgrown pasture.  I will not be the first endeavor to make this property more beautiful, edible and sustainable.  I guess it's easy to forget that.

There are also times when you feel like you are "bonding" with an old house.  Particularly when protecting it from invaders.  Last August, when I looked around the basement and considered vacuuming away all the cob webs, I stopped and realized that those spiders were serving a purpose (Clean Dirt & Spider Detente, August 2011). They were lying in wait for wood-iverous boring insects as they attempted to lay eggs in our structural beams and/or emerge after hatching to go propagate.  I refrained and the important work of our eight-legged housemates continued.

In this small section of what used to be the lower field: Norway Maple, Common Buckthorn, Japanese Knotweed, Garlic Mustard.  Elsewhere on the property: Oriental Bittersweet, Blunt-leafed Privet, Showy Bush Honeysuckle and Multiflora Rose.

But there's nothing like a common enemy to build a kinship between house and her steward.  TOPH is facing a threat by several invaders at the moment.  And we are stepping up to defend her (and the future of any successful, responsible landscaping plans!)

TOPH is besieged by invasive plant species. Last year, I would look into the scrub-woods and just sort of know it was going to take a while to get everything healthy and tamed and back in shape.  But, I really had no idea..

Last Fall, I happened to walk through the Stratham Town Hall on the way to the Library (same building) with the kids.  There was a poster on the wall -- a collage of identifying photos, really -- depicting all the invasive plant species to be on the lookout for in Rockingham County.  Let's just say that it caught my eye because I recognized more than half. (The creator of the poster, Doug Cygan, also created this handy PDF with identifying pics and a description of habits, threats and eradication techniques.)

Our list is long and our methods many (see PDF for recommended approaches), but the ONE invader on this list that is truly scary (to me) is the Japanese Knotweed.  If only I knew what I had earlier!  Last year, we had two patches, about 10'x20' each. One was at the head of the driveway along the fence of the dog run by the garage and the old well.  I saw it everyday -- just assumed it was some kind of elderberry or bunch berry weed that I'd get to when I had time...the other patch is down in the woods where (I think) the leach field is. Both are places where the previous owners would have had fill sand brought in over the last couple of years, so I am guessing that was the source.

The spread since last year is INSANE.  It spreads by seed (millions of them), rhizome (long tendrils between plants just under the surface of the sand/soil) and every little bit that breaks off or gets mowed or cut can root!  We unknowingly let it spread last year by all of the above methods.  It's particularly hard to kill.  I drenched it in hot saline one week this Spring.  No result.  I doused it in hot vinegar solution the next week.  No result.  On a roadside where you have a workable area, you can cut it at the base in May-June and cover it with heavy black plastic (for a YEAR), but the stubs can be sharp (like bamboo) and the rhizomes are sneaky -- any daylight peeping through it's all for naught.

In the UK, this "weed" has gone viral.  There are now zoning policies in place there that make developers responsible for removing it (at huge expense) before land can be developed.  And, if you have it at your house, you have to put money in escrow to treat it over time before you can sell. These policies are rooted in the potential for structural damage to foundations where the root balls impede.  Yes, it's that evil.

So, against all my better judgement, and with a sincere felling of defeat, we resorted to a chemical treatment solution today. And it's going to take several applications as various phases emerege.  I will NOT name the treatment here, as the brand name and manufacturer are my greatest corporate nemesis.  Grrr.

I am not feeling victorious.  But I do hope we have won some small degree of appreciation from TOPH.  And, for the record, my compost is WAY on the other side of the property from "the areas" in question.  And no food will be grown in those areas for as long as I know better...  I'm doing the best that I can with this decision, folks...  Sigh.

Taking a Page from The Heirloom Gardener: Starting Our Herbarium



The Heirloom Gardener - John Forti (on facebook)
Co-Founder of Slow Food Seacoast
Curator of Historic Landscape at Strawbery Banke Museum
(formerly) Horticulturist at Plimoth Plantation Museum

I've met some some wonderful people since moving to the Seacoast of New Hampshire.  Although, I would like nothing more than to embarrass my friends and neighbors online, I will refrain.  However, there is one person who is something of a public figure, so I feel no qualms whatsoever about featuring him here, and spreading a bit of his gospel. No, I have not been evangelized or converted... Well, maybe I have.

John Forti is a person whose life we could all take a page from.  His personal web page reads, "He aspires to plant the seeds of history and encourages a more sustainable future to bloom."  I think we can safely say he is doing more than aspiring.  He's doing it.  He's one of those people you just want to follow around with a tape recorder to capture all the little bits of history and wisdom that sort of flutter off of him has he chats his way casually through the gardens and orchards at Strawbery Banke and the historic downtown of Portsmouth and the farms and foodie hot spots of the Seacoast.

By writing this, I do, of course, risk that John will now see me as some sort of a crazy groupie, but since I volunteered to coordinate all the volunteers for the Victorian Children's Garden this season and design and develop to the Discovery Guide for the same, hopefully, he will just role his eyes and smile in his enigmatic, diplomatic way and give me a pass.  (Thanks, John!)

Anyway, since moving into TOPH, I have been plotting and planning what to do with the landscape and gardens here.  At first glance, there are no "beds" per se.  Anything that was a garden is now overtaken with scrub trees, weeds or half-assed hardscape demolition.



Here's a shot of the front yard as the purple "surprises" started to bloom.  And there are the turkeys retreating down the driveway after feasting in my compost pile.

This is our first Spring here, so we are seeing a lot of things bloom for the first time.  No question at all that the previous owner liked purple (as if we had any doubts here at TOPH.)  The front "lawn" is awash in violets and forget-me-nots and some kind of dwarf broad leaf plant with a bearded (like an Iris), two-tone purple flower.


All the "dead" space around the pool is now blanketed in violets.  There are purple phlox under the pool fence.  There's about an acre of vinca spreading from the wall along the driveway off into the southern woods.  There are scraggly lilac bushes peeping out of the brush on the north side of the front yard by the stone wall.  And, of course, there are the purple rhododendrons along the back of the house. (See Roadies & Rhodies.)  Yep, she liked purple!

Imagine my surprise when the bush I thought was an ugly old privet turned out to be a flowering quince!

The one and only non-purple remainder is an oddly-pruned, flowering (red) quince, which I mistook for a privet last summer.  The only reason why I didn't pull it out (because they are my NEMESIS!) is because privet is so blinking impossible to eradicate.  But, with a little pruning, I will happily live with this quince and hope there is something nearby that the bees will feel the need to cross-pollinate it with so that we get some edible fruit.  Hmmm.  Possibilities abound!


So, now that these little specimens are cropping up, how am I going to keep track of them all?  And how to memorialize (and teach my children about) all of these horticultural finds?  We are going to "take a page from" John Forti and start an Herbarium (or three.)

This is the first page in Emily Dickinson's Herbarium.  You can dedicate a page to each specimen and add lots of notes, or collect a bunch and arrange them in a more artistic fashion. Whatever strikes your fancy. There's no wrong way to do it.

An Herbarium is a kind of journal for saving pressed plant materials and any information you might have or find about them.  They were very popular in the Victorian era when kids knew more about botany than they do now about corporate logos.  It doesn't have to be an engraved, leather-bound affair.  It can be a 3-ring binder or a school notebook.  There is a replica of a Victorian era Herbarium on the Strawbery Banke web site that they use for teaching in the Children's Garden there.

You can help your kids to identify their finds in books (or on Google -- look for .edu sources, please!)  Recording when and where things are found can help kids to start to see the difference between plants in Spring and Fall, when things bloom and when seeds emerge, etc.  If you travel and don't want to take the whole book with you, a pencil and an old paperback is a good way of saving things until you get home and have some craft and research time.  A small kit of tweezers and a magnifying glass will make it all very important and official -- perhaps a reward for filling their first 12 pages?  Modern technology also affords the use of things like pictures, but I find that what I take electronically, stays electronic -- I have yet to sit down and scrapbook all of the lovely pictures of my children I've captured on my various phones and cameras over the years, let alone roadside botanical finds... Sigh.

Keep it simple and enjoy some time with your kids, building a vocabulary of botany and natural wonders, perhaps even displacing some of the spoon-fed-by-osmosis corporate branding we are all surrounded by.

No Regrets

This personalized luggage was our gift to the kids during the big move. It made a huge difference for them to be able to pick the PJs and outfits and special toys and items that would be with them during limbo.

It's been a year since we packed all of our worldly goods into suitcases, boxes, tubs, crates, PODs, trucks, boats and busses and moved out of Annapolis.  At that time, we had sold our old new house, but we had not yet convinced the owners of our new old house (TOPH) to accept our very reasonable offer.  So, there we were in limbo.

We are very lucky to have family with summer rental properties in Wellfleet that were as-yet unoccupied for the season. So, we "camped" there.  Hubby had an internet connection, so he was working.  I was able to get the kids into school there for the few short weeks that remained until summer vacation.  And I earned our keep doing odd jobs painting and gardening and cleaning and generally sprucing things up around there.

The view from the Lodge out over the Herring River, Great Island and Cape Cod Bay to the West.  It's one of the few places on the Eastern seaboard where you can watch spectacular sunsets over water every day.

As places to "be" go, we really weren't hurting.  It's really quite beautiful there.  And there is something about the combination of changing tides and manual labor that clear the mind.  We made some pretty big decisions in those few weeks and truly have no regrets. In short, it was a pretty amazing place to be rootless.  (Rentals available May-October at Friendship Cottages & Lodge.)

It wasn't all staring at the sea and rearranging heirloom perennials, though.  We spent countless hours online on Realtor and Zillow looking for our new home. (Although, we had already found it. The previous owners just didn't know it yet.)  And I made quite a few whirlwind round trips to the Seacoast of NH to check out houses and neighborhoods and the lay of the land.

When our patience and perseverance finally paid off and we landed a contract on TOPH, we were well into June.  We had been displaced from the Lodge when the rental season started and had been hopping between vacant cottages.  With the summer season entering its prime weeks, we were again headed into limbo.  My mom was good enough to "take a vacation" from her house in Harwich and let us get organized there before closing -- about two weeks.  (If she only knew how many loads of laundry we did there! Well, I guess she knows now.)  And then hubby left for Europe on business, leaving me to camp in the new house with the kids a couple of mattresses on the floor, a patio set and some kitchen basics until the PODs and moving trucks arrived -- almost a month before everything had finally caught up with us.

Looking back now, it really was hectic and chaotic and stressful, but it was all for a purpose and we knew it, so that made it OK.

So, now we've been at TOPH for ten months.  We have completed some significant physical plant upgrades (boiler, water heater, some wiring, some plumbing, etc.)  And done some planned livability projects (a place to put a couch and TV in the same room, etc.), but, in general, we have stayed pretty true to our plan.  Live in it.  Don't make any major changes or decisions for a year.  Stare at it and get to know it.  Don't plant anything permanent for two years.  Be still and breathe.  Don't spend any major money (aside from the initial, planned and pending physical plant stuff) for three years.

So far, so good.  I promise not to take so long to post my next... Installation of small (moveable) herb garden and blow-by-blow of our attack on the resident invasive plant species are coming soon.

Hyper-variable Marionettes + Applied Campaign Strategy = ?

It's almost the end of February and I have almost nothing to report vis a vis progress at TOPH.  The truth is we have a massive, steaming pile of stuff to do.  We are way past the "to-do" list phase.  We have arrived at a point where all things left to do impact some or all of the other things that need doing.  And they all need money -- some a little, some a lot.  So, here we stand on the precipice of a domino-effect adventure.  And it's VERY hard to take that first step, however little, because the chain reaction may just be out of our league.  For now.  So we haven't.

We inhabitants of TOPH are marionettes with too many joints, plus the constriction of natural and unforeseen entanglements.  Sigh.

And then there's that marriage thing.  The hubby is a impulsive projecter with big picture deficit disorder and I am compulsive planner with eyes-bigger-than-stomach project completion disorder. There are those rare occasions when his technical talents intersect with my plans...  And those unforeseeable sweet spots most frequently occur exactly six and two thirds minutes before one or both children are tired, hungry and/or bored.  So, yeah, we're not getting much done.

In an effort to increase the number, frequency and predictability of these instances of promising team effort, I am now on a mission of variable reduction -- essentially I am planning, which is my "fairy talent" as my daughter would put it.  This is a tact both hubby and I have employed in taming chaotic political campaigns.  If you can get a strategy on paper and get buy-in from all the stakeholders, you are essentially eliminating noisy variables from the equation.  And you are creating a trajectory for future tactical planning, a framework for decision-making and a means to plan time, money and people effectively.

So, I am trying to get a plan on paper, with a little help from my friends, perhaps.  If we know what it's all going to look like when we're done, then maybe we'll see the best way to start.  I must say that this process is WAY simpler to apply to other people's stuff.  I am certainly seeing for the first time why candidates paid us the not-so-big-bucks to do this for them.

There is probably some witticism about doing things for yourself or knowing when to hire a professional I should be applying here...

Just Don't Look Up

We were marginally successful in creating actual living space for the holidays.  I can't tell you how amazing it was to have our comfy couch and chairs out of storage (sunroom) and arrayed in proximity to a fireplace and a TV.  It was like our own personal family decompression chamber.  For the first couple of days we were delirious and oblivious, which was nice.

The ceiling is still wide open to the upstairs joists and subfloor, which is fine.  It's a tall "ceiling" -- 10+ feet -- so it's not as obvious   And we're planning to put in some radiant heating (Ultra-Fin) for the bunkroom (later to be our Master), move some plumbing around and play with the positioning of a whole bunch of recessed lighting.  I also want to play with some gel-stain products to lighten up the super-dark, creosote-tone beams (and not have to mask while I'm doing it.)  Essentially, the room looks great, as long as you don't look up.  Or down.  I havent' finshed the floor yet.  But I am going to need a week of kid-free, well-ventilated time to do that.  Maybe this summer sometime?  No biggie.  See, I can picture what it's going to look like in my head.  The color of the floor.  The tone of the light once there is a ceiling and a floor in place...  The reat of y'all will just have to... not look up... or down.