I told you so!

It is not very often that I get the satisfaction of saying I Told You So.  Especially not so quickly.  But seriously, people, I TOLD YOU SO!

Remember when I said that I was concerned about my neighbor’s bamboo, worried that it would come into my back yard? 

Well.

Not only did Josh have to dig out another bamboo shoot with it’s own rhizome (this makes 4 separate rhizomes coming under that corner of the garage), something else happened. 

Josh has been scraping the fence, trying to get rid of the bubbled or peeling paint so that he can repaint and protect the wood from the fierce ravages of 8 months of rain in our not-too-distant-future. 

 

He was showing me what he had done, and I saw something that didn’t look right. 

So I looked closer.

Do you see what I see?  That new bamboo shoot is growing THROUGH the fence.  From the other side.

Now—I saw our neighbor Scott out in the driveway the next day washing one of his fleet of sports cars.  (I am not kidding.  He just bought a new corvette.  He has a vintage Porsche in the garage.  And he has several more in storage.  Though he did decide to sell one now that he bought the new corvette.  But I digress.)  I told him about the fence busting bamboo and he invited me into his backyard to see what was going on.  But we could see nothing.

These fences are double sided fences.  His side looks just like mine (except that it’s not the same color as mine, which is the same color as my house) and there is apparently a small amount of space between them.

Space that is now occupied by an entire bamboo shoot.

Which as of this morning is now taller than the bamboo that was already there—meaning that it has grown at least 2 feet since July 12th when I took those pictures.  Time to figure out how to get rid of that shoot!

(Evidence that the fence was shoot free on June 26th right here.)

Bamboozled

 

(The corner of our neighbor’s garage and their bamboo forest. 
If you look closely you can see our pale yellow siding behind the bamboo.
Also the trunk of their lovely tree that drops crap leaves on Russ’s car all year long.)

Our neighbors have a lovely crop of bamboo between our house and their side yard.  We worried about it (and it’s invasive nature) when we first bought the house, but then forgot to worry about it as we moved in and started worrying about things like “why do we have no hot water” and “why is everything we own in a box in the garage” and “is there really a squirrel having seizures in our backyard???”

Right before we left for Utah I noticed what looked like a very tall corn husk standing in the arborvitae hedge between our driveway and the neighbor’s driveway.  About a 3 foot tall corn husk, to be specific.  Then when I looked closer I saw another.  I realized that the dreaded moment had finally come—the bamboo forest was invading.  We were busy getting ready to leave for Utah and really didn’t have time to deal with it.  By the time I got back Sunday night I was startled to see that the bamboo shoot was now at least 10 feet tall!

Yesterday afternoon I drove to a place in the hills that sells bamboo.  My purpose in going was to take them a sample (pilfered from my neighbor’s grove) of the bamboo so it could be identified, and to ask if I could possibly transplant these new bamboo shoots into my backyard in a place where I would love to have a bamboo screen.  I found out that I probably don’t have to worry that the bamboo will destroy my foundation (good, I was) and that I would have to let the shoots grow for a year before I could hope to transplant them and have them live.  (No, not willing to do that.)  The very nice guy explained exactly how we (read Josh) would need to dig up the bamboo and it’s connecting rhizome in order to get rid of it.

Fortunately Josh’s friend Tyler is visiting right now from North Carolina and Josh wanted to go to a couple of movies without using his little bit of money.  So we were able to do some wheeling and dealing.

I actually think they were both fascinated enough by the whole process that if I could have gotten them going they would have done it for free—it was that interesting.

Here is the bottom of one of the bamboo shoots. 

And here is the top that Josh had already broken off of that shoot.

But this is what is really interesting.  (Besides the fact that in addition to the 2 big shoots I already knew about there were about 4 more hiding in the bushes.) 

Bamboo plants spreads by rhizomes, thick rope like root things that move through the ground, sending out roots and sending up shoots.  They look like this.

Aren’t the roots kind of crazy looking, coming out in a circle all along the rhizome?

We had 3 different rhizomes in that 6 or 8 foot length of hedge, all of which appear to have come under the corner of our garage.  (And going deeper makes them stronger, from everything I’ve recently read online about invasive bamboo.)  Tyler & Josh pulled and dug everything out, and cut the rhizomes back but left them sticking out of the ground so that we can remember where they are.

We’ll need to chop off any new growth every year to keep them from sprouting in the hedges again.  One day (when I have an extra $50) maybe I’ll go back to the bamboo place and buy a pot of bamboo to screen out that little bit of the house I can see behind us.  And in the meantime, I’m going to be looking at this bamboo on the other side of our back deck, and wondering where the next shoots are coming up…

Good morning, Sunshine

One of the things I haven’t loved about our house here in Oregon is that despite a multitude of nice big windows, we don’t get much sun in most of them.  Our house is generally very shady.

With one exception, now that the season has changed and the sun has come out again and the neighbor behind us has chopped down two super-tall evergreen trees that were behind his house…

5:23 AM

Good thing I can sleep when it’s light!

Last month at Lowes

I walked in to buy a few flowers for my planter and my front yard and saw several HUGE racks of half price flowers.  YAY me!  Our yard is really nice structurally but without a lot of color so I want to add some flowers.  Half price was a great place to start.  And there went my home budget for the entire month…

Do you see those awesome tomato cages?  I’ve leaned away from cages and used more of a lattice in the last few years, but how on earth could I pass these awesome cages up?  Especially since our garden beds are right outside of our dining room windows and we see them all day every day.  (We do a lot of school in our dining room so we spend a lot of time in there.) 

And do you see that last picture?  Do you know what it is?  It’s a MANDEVILLA!  Here in Oregon, a MANDEVILLA!!  Here’s hoping it will thrive here in what is occasionally a sunny corner of my house.

Now if I could just get it all planted…

Work, work, work

We didn’t have any plans for Memorial Day weekend (hooray!!) and we were able to get so much stuff done.  Russ started the day on Saturday by installing some outlets into our outlet-less island. 

I spent my day planting 8 new tomato plants – different heirloom varieties; a black one, a green one, a purple striped one, along with a few that are less exotic.

I can see how why it was a good idea to buy those other tomato plants at Costco—check this out.

My pea plants are loving our cool & rainy spring weather.  Too bad the lettuce & spinach all bolted when we had those warm two weeks… Don’t you love my tomato cages?  They make me happy every time I look at them.

I also unpacked 6 boxes.  That may not sound like much but it took my whole day.

 

Russ (and various other family members at different times) spent almost all of Memorial day bonding with our friend’s pressure washer.  Our friend was thoughtful enough to bring pressure-washing clothes with his pressure washer.

 

Awesome, yes?

He started by pressure washing the moss off of all of the rocks, then moved on to washing all of the sidewalks, patio areas, and the driveway, and then finished up with the big kahuna—the pond.  It’s been looking pretty scummy for months and months, so this was his big chance to Clean It Up.  It was a multi-person affair and took a LONG time.

But when they were done it was so beautiful and clean!

My Welcome Home

When I walked in the door last week this is the sight that greeted me.

Oso the bear just sitting there, waiting to say hi.  Don’t you like our entry without the big dark mirrors?  It’s still not painted—just patched and primed, but I went ahead and put up my new picture.  When I saw this picture in the Ikea catalog I knew this was my personal statement, and I have loved having it. 

Also waiting on my camera card were picture of the kids getting ready to go to the 6th grade social, where they ate pizza, enjoyed the dj, and didn’t dance with anyone.  The girls had such fun planning their outfits and spent so long curling their hair (darn that straight hair gene!) and I was sad to miss it all while I was in Utah.

Can you believe they’re so grown up?

I’m a Japanese Maple Hypocrite

The other day I had my camera in the car and stopped to take a picture of what I consider the unpardonable sin—Japanese maples that look like Cousin It. 

The next day Russ and I were driving home together and I looked at the same house, and noticed that in the intervening time those japanese maples had been trimmed and no longer touched the ground.  I pointed it out to Russ and told him that I’d taken the picture to remind myself of what I didn’t want our japanese maples to look like.

As we drove in the driveway Russ pointed something out to me—

I don’t know how that happened—it must have been when they finished leafing out while I was out of town.  (Except for their bald heads—what’s with that?)  What I do know is that there is most certainly a youtube video on pruning japanese maples in my very near future…

 

PS—Even more than lollipop trees, japanese maples are very popular here in Oregon.  There’s practically one in every yard.  Why???

Using what you’ve got…

I was looking for the girls this afternoon and heard something from the garage.  When I went and looked out the laundry room door there was Rachel, singing Christmas songs at the top of her lungs with her ears plugged.  When I finally got her attention and asked her what she was doing, she said that she & Jenna were playing hide & seek.  I looked up and sure enough, there was Jenna perched up on one of the stacks of boxes…hopefully they didn’t break anything!

We’ve reached a kind of equilibrium in the house…most things have a place that they belong now, but it’s been so stressful getting to this point that I’m kind of afraid to bring anything else in.  We’ve lived without all of this stuff with so long that part of me thinks that it can just stay out there…but the garage is completely unusable this way, and eventually we will want our books and tools and fabric and at least some of the other stuff…what a work in progress.

Overwhelmed

and this is why.

But at least I have a great view from my toilet…

Our Last Meal

I am, in case you haven’t noticed, a super nostalgic person.  I form strong bonds to people, and as it turns out, places.  Because of this I didn’t want for us to just straggle out of here without taking any real notice of what was happening.  That has happened too often with too many other things in my life, and I didn’t want it to happen this time.

So tonight when I came home from church I changed into my comfy pajamas and then I whipped up what we normally call “Dad-Hop,” but tonight was “Mom-Hop.”  I cooked a whole package of bacon (a cause for much celebration!), made a batch of pancakes, scrambled some eggs, and mixed sliced fresh (from the farm yesterday thanks to Ken & Alisyn) strawberries with sugar and covered them with whipped cream.  I even used the good plates.

I called the kids down to dinner and we started by kneeling to say a prayer of thanks to Heavenly Father for giving us this wonderful home to live in for the last 10 years.  Then we ate, and it was as delicious and satisfying as I’d hoped.  I tried to get the kids to pose for a picture, but they were too sad to all cooperate.

Finally I bribed or threatened or begged and they all looked in the general direction of the camera.

 

I know I have a couple more days of work before we’re out of here altogether, but I will say it now anyway. 

Goodbye, dear home.  I had no idea how happy we were going to be here, and you will always hold a special place in my heart…

Freshened Up

 

“Freshened Up.”  You have no idea how much those words have bothered me in the last week since I saw our MLS listing.  Freshened Up.  Other houses say “Pristine Condition” or “Beautifully Elegant.”  Ours just says “Freshened Up.”

There is no way to describe the amount of time, energy, and money that have gone into getting our home ready to sell, and it is discouraging to me that this is the best way it can be described.

The reality is, though, that for 10 years we have lived in this house FULL TIME.  We are not a family who gets up in the morning, eats, dresses, and leaves for the day while our pristine house sits empty and untouched during the day.  We are a family who lives here, 24/7.  We have cleaned and painted and repaired and cleaned and painted some more, but there is no way to change the fact that this house has been lived in, and then some.  It is almost 30 years old.  It wasn’t new or pristine when we moved in, and it certainly isn’t now!

Understanding that has helped me have peace about this process.  Our house is not the right house for someone looking for pristine.  Our house is not the right place for someone looking for new.

But it will be the right place for someone, and I just have to keep trusting that at the right time, that someone will come along.  Someone who will want the huge kitchen and enormous rooms.  Someone who will be so lucky to inherit our great neighbors.  Someone who will be able to appreciate that we have, indeed, “Freshened Up.”

More Extreme Home Makeover Pictures

Now I want to say up front that some of these pictures resemble less Extreme Home Makeover and more Home Minimalist Today.  But apparently that look is all the rage in the multiple listing system circles, and it is their approval (and $$$) we covet.  So here you are…