I took out two trees and a thorn bush to allow parking three feet closer to the building on the side road. I hated to saw the things down but they were a definite safety hazard. If you turned that corner thinking it went into a regular traffic lane you would backend a parked vehicle. I was finally able to crawl into the bushes to see what was there. Old tree stumps, trash, weeds. Most of it is a spindly vine-like plant that will have to be hacked out of there by hand. When I try to cut it with the saw, it just vibrates at the same speed as the blade.[Author's note 2021: This post refers to the second of three "trailers" that are the namesake of this blog. To refresh, I moved into a mobile home in 2006 to save money for a house. That led to this larger unit known as "Wally's Folly", then then to the smallest unit which I overpaid for but it was a rush decision when Wallace broke his promises. This third unit was the confortable one where I lived when I bought the sidecar, drove to Colorado, played in my last big band, etc. What was supposed to be five years of saving up turned into a month short of ten years, but I bought this cabin for cash.]
I put the paving stones along the front exterior wall as a temporary solution to the water pool that forms in the rain. But that was major work and really weighed down my car. It took me an hour to pry up, load, move and place just 9 of the 35 blocks in total. The neat part is they look like they belong on the street when the cars are not parked and you can’t see them when they are. Again, this is because a two inch deep puddle eight feet wide forms across both my doorways when it rains.
An afternoon storm cooled things and I got out another couple wheelbarrows of clippings, leaves and branches. It is very time-consuming and I see now that the garden was put in by the previous owners, and Marisa kind of did as little maintenance as possible for the last eleven years. There are branches tied back with little strings and various similar shortcuts to a proper pruning job. The perimeter is definitely a candidate for a hedge, a very slow growing hedge.
Predictably, the intense heat created an afternoon thundershower that dropped the temperature 25 degrees which allowed me to get after the deck for an hour anyway. The worst part is ripping out the old construction with buried nail and screw heads. That area was really home-made and covered with indoor-outdoor carpet so you couldn’t see how half-assed it was. The water leak was worse than I first thought so I’ll have to get up on the roof and patch from the outside. I also guessed right about the depth of water and those paving tiles, so now to see if I can get away with it.
So here it is, a month into the new place and I’m still not unpacked. That means I have to go looking for stuff as I go along. What do they call that? Living out of a suitcase? As soon as I have the studs and insulation up, I’ll start doing a decent job of getting organized. The exterior security light on the patio quit working and it seems to be shorted out. I checked it for nearly an hour today as I always treat such incidents as highly suspicious.
A phone call from Colorado and it is Marion now in the new place. This time for sure. The moving people will be getting a long list of all the broken and missing articles. At this rate, one more move and she’ll be living in Boca Raton. We two have the worst record of keeping in touch by e-mail but she has promised me some photos. So stick around and you might see something besides this place.
