The Dirt on My Green Thumb

Tags

flower beds, flowers, gardening, hydrangea, lemon tree, palm tree, tomatoes, watering

When I arrived home from the hospital after giving birth to my first child, I was greeted by a slew of new house plants sent by well-wishing friends.  While I loved the plants for their color and life, I was overwhelmed by the obligation to keep them alive.  I could remember to feed the baby…wasn’t that enough? The thought of more than Aaron depending solely on me for survival almost sent me into a panic attack.  I still maintain that giving a new mother one more thing to feed and care for is borderline sadistic.  Balloons are equally cheery, require no water, and no one is appalled when they wilt after three days.  Just sayin’…

My grandmother would water my plants for me each week when she came to stay with us, and would frequently ask if I had thought to water them while she was gone.  I would stammer my response and duck my head.  For Christmas that year she gave me a silk African violet plant.  Silk…because, in her words, that was the only kind that stood a chance at my house.

When Victoria was born, Aunt Maxine gave me a beautiful pink hydrangea.  Now, I’m a Louisiana girl who regularly subscribes to Southern Living magazine and would love nothing more than to duplicate the “fresh-cut hydrangea bouquet” look for my dining room table.  I love hydrangeas like no other flower.  But here I was, a new mom again, and the hydrangea sat in a pot in the front flower bed for more than a few months.  The tiny pink petals faded to cream, and then to gray (ugh!) and I feared that Aunt Maxine would see what a terrible plant mom I was after I had sworn to help it thrive in honor of both her and my daughter.  As Aunt Maxine struggled with cancer I could have kicked myself for not keeping that plant alive.  After she passed away, I believed she would know my shameful secret .  I whispered an “I’m sorry” into the heavens and vowed to someday have a pink hydrangea in my yard dedicated to her memory.  This week I bought and planted two pink hydrangeas: one for Aunt Maxine and one for Victoria.

In the Spring of 2011 I dragged my Mom shopping with me at local nurseries where I bought about $400 worth of beautiful plants for my newly re-designed flower beds.  Gardenias, hydrangea, hostas, ligustrum, begonias, an angel trumpet, azaleas and canas, not to mention geraniums, gerbera daisies and lilies.  As [my] luck would have it, 2011 was the year that we had a drought combined with 110-degree days.  I remembered to water some of my plants, but truth be told, it was a pain to go outside and move the sprinkler around.  Plus, I would often forget to turn off the water.  Having the sprinkler run all night long does horrendous things to one’s water bill, and I eventually stopped turning it on altogether.  I lost all but four of the twenty or so plants that I had purchased.  As the year drew to a close and Dom and I were deciding to build a new house I insisted that whatever we did, I had to have a sprinkler system.  With a timer.

I did manage, for two years or so, to host a vegetable and herb garden in my backyard.  It actually thrived — except for my tomatoes, whose 14 plants yielded only about 14 tomatoes all season.  I don’t know where I went wrong there, but I know it wasn’t entirely a reflection of my ability since everything else seemed to grow with gusto.

My Lemon Tree 🙂

I genuinely love plants now, and Spring lights a fire inside me like nothing else.  I spent Easter weekend getting dirty in my new flower beds.  I brought a few plants from the old house when we moved: the Angel Trumpet, various herbs and my lemon tree.  But heirloom plants are the best, in my opinion.  So far I have a yaupon holly and Indian hawthorn from my mother; cannas, lillies and irises from Dom’s Aunt Pam (the irises came from Dom’s Grandma Zern – many thanks to Uncle Harold for digging them up and loading them into my van!); daylily bulbs from my mother-in-law; pineapple guava plants, a peach tree and two fig trees from one of my Dad’s co-workers; and boxwoods and a tulip tree from Dom’s Aunt Bobbie.  (Aunt Bobbie supplied us with lots of great plants at the old house at a time when I was finally taking an interest in my landscaping.)  And the pièce de résistance, my palm tree: 12 feet tall and gorgeous, my builder hooked me up with this one in January.  I only had to pay for the landscaping crew to bring it to me and plant it wherever I pointed.  As my grandmother would say, “You can’t beat that with a stick!!”

The palm tree before any other plants…January 2013

Future plans include a vegetable garden in the new backyard, as well as a butterfly garden where I want to grow jasmine and honeysuckle and maybe some knock-out roses just outside of Victoria’s bedroom window.  And I’m also going to attempt to keep a terrarium in my large fish tank on the patio.  (Wish me luck!)  All in good time, I know.  To garden is to practice patience, and we all know I could use the practice.

Fenced and Free!

Tags

back yard, dogs, driveway, fence building, privacy fence, yard dogs

What began in September has finally, FINALLY been completed: the fence that surrounds our new backyard is finished, putting me and The Mabellini on Cloud Nine!!

So, yeah, it only took us five months to build our fence. (No, we don’t hire out. Har har.) Before the autumn weather kissed Daylight Savings Time goodbye, the only time we had to work on the fence was in the evenings after our real-job workdays. We started on the 150-foot stretch across the back of the property because that was the least obtrusive to the construction crews who were still building our house. And after several weeks of that leg, we finally got to come up the side of the yard to the driveway. But then that’s where we lagged. Dom’s one ER visit and my NINE trips to the eye doctor to resolve the hell that began as wood dust blowing into my eye pretty much brought us to a standstill.

After we moved in, we deliberated about where to connect the fence to the house, and how to shape it around the driveway (which has a lovely inwardly-rounded edge nearest the garage). Dom and I each had ideas of what we wanted, but those ideas didn’t always mesh together. Ultimately, the one thing we could agree on was that we just wanted it finished.

For the most part, building the fence was a family affair. My parents and Dom’s dad spent many weekend mornings working on the fence with us. I daresay we would still have only half of a fence if it weren’t for all of them. Dom and I tackled a small part of the fence alone one blistery cold morning. (I live in Louisiana, folks. “Blistery” is anything below 50 degrees with the wind blowing.) We happened to be working in the soggiest part of the yard that day. I think I lasted 45 minutes before I finally huffed that I was freaking COLD thankyouverymuch, that I had stepped in a mud puddle which soaked through my shoe and into my sock, and I was DONE!! We accomplished so much more when the weather was good and we had help.

Dom, Daddy, Pop and Mom in the home stretch!

As much of a pain as it might have been to plan and build the fence ourselves, the bigger pain was walking Mabel on a leash a thousand times a day, especially in the early morning or late evening when the temperature hovered well below what I consider comfortable. She tolerated the leash as well as could be expected, but she yearned to run free. Mason, on the other hand was never a flight risk. At age 13, the biggest problem for him is having the stamina to walk back to the house after wandering so far out into the yard. Both pups would benefit from a fenced backyard where we no longer had to be concerned for their safety.

“Which way is the door, man??”

As the last picket was being screwed into place, Victoria opened the back door to let Mabel out – without a leash for the first time in nearly two months. Mabel sprung out the door like a horse at the track. She raced as fast as she could back and forth across the yard, kicking up leaves as she dug in to change direction. I swear that dog was smiling the whole time.

It’s a Brick…Houuuuusssssssse

Tags

brick, home building, Southern Antique, well house

I’m a little late with the update, but we have brick!!  I was pretty excited when the brick was delivered, but once it was actually put on the house…yowza!  I love the brick we picked out – it’s called Southern Antique and it is the perfect color for my taste.  Not too pink, not too brown, and ABSOLUTELY NO ORANGE.  (Those were my only requirements when selecting a brick, by the way.  I’m relatively easy to please. Er, most of the time.)

When the brick was delivered, Dom called me up and asked me why I got such little brick, to which I replied, “Quit pickin’ on my brick.  It’s not little; it’s perfect!”

Unbeknownst to me, Southern Antique is smaller than the average 9” brick; it is closer to 7”, I think.  That’s potentially one of the reasons that we had to order so much more as the bricking went on.  Combined with a few other significant factors, like my last minute patio fireplace and such, it caused my builder to have several more squares/pallets/whatever-you-call-them brought in.  I took it all in stride because it looks So. Freakin’. Awesome.

And our well house…which looks like a guard booth…which makes us giggle.  Dad says all we need now is the “AK.” I love my well house!

One of the things I knew early on that would cost me more was that I wanted steps leading up to the front door.  The estimated cost was totally worth it, to me, despite the fact that we had to build up the land so much with all that “good dirt.”  (As my luck would have it, my lot slopes perfectly… in the wrong direction.)  I couldn’t wait to see what the steps would look like.  In my imagination they were modest and cute.  In reality, they rock the earth off its axis.

I am realizing more and more that my builder, Dominick, is not like any other builder.  He is on the job site almost every working minute of every day – even on the weekends when the crews are available to work.  If something is going on at my house, he’s there to supervise.  If there is any work that he can do himself, he does it.  (He and my Father-in-law built my shutters so I wouldn’t have to buy over-priced ones!) When it was time to build the steps, Dominick was right up in there.  He didn’t like the way the curvature of the side brick was going, and he made the brick masons rip it out and start over…twice.  One of the men called him a name in Spanish, not realizing that Dominick knew what it meant.  (In contrast, my Dom only knows the Italian curse words!) Dominick stopped the brick masons and said, “Let me ask you something.  If I were building a house for you, how would you want me to be?”  They admitted that if he were acting on their behalf, they’d want him to be just the way he is – making certain that the work performed is superior to any other.

About three weeks ago Dominick asked if we wanted to brick our patios – as in, the floor of our patios.  Dom and I considered all the alternatives, including the option to leave them all plain gray concrete, before deciding that oh-heck-yeah! we wanted to brick them all.  But, my house brick is not solid, as brick on the flooring must be.  So I needed something like Old Chicago brick.  Unfortunately, all the OC that I had ever seen was…ahem…orange, and that simply was not gonna work for me.  One day after a meeting with my builder and the cabinet man I drove myself back to the brick company to pick out a complimentary brick for the patio floors.

I got lost on the way to the brick shop, but didn’t sweat it much – I had an iced caramel latte to keep me company. 😉  As I made my way back to the main road, I wound through a neighborhood where most of my high school friends had grown up.  I recognized street names and was overwhelmed by the Mayberry feeling I got as the kids and moms flooded the sidewalks after school let out.  It made me realize what my kids miss out on by not attending a neighborhood school.  And it made me a bit misty for the kids who walked those same sidewalks thirty years ago, and who I will never see again.  The slow, meandering path I took to the brick company actually did my heart good.

When I got to the brick store the employees were waiting for me, and a really nice man showed me my three options.  Ironically, the Old Chicago brick is running more taupe these days, but it was actually too close to my wall brick color to give me the contrast that I wanted.  The next sample was a bit more red, and the third sample was plain ol’ brown.  (Guess which one I didn’t like?)  I went back to the red, named Carolina, and within two minutes the gentleman was writing down my choice and assuring me that he thought it would look beautiful.  Ya know what?  He was right!

The pic is a little muddy with mortar, so here’s another pic of the side stoop with matching brick:

As for the inside of the house, all the sheetrock has been floated, taped and textured.  My builder is sweeping up the remnants of drywall dust and nails, clearing the area for the trim carpenters and cabinet installers. (Told ya he does it all!) And I’m headed to the tile company to make sure I still like what I picked out six months ago.  I imagine that we will be moving in sometime in November, and I absolutely cannot wait!

Progress Update

It takes me a while to get updates prepared, but I must be on a roll, because I have more pictures from today AND time to upload them!  So here is what things are looking like right now (minus the sun shining…it’s late as I write this!)

First, brick was delivered yesterday.  This is “Southern Antique.”  I picked it because of the neutral coloring, but the name makes me happy too.

Second, sheetrock was delivered today.  A whole bunch of sheetrock! Three rooms are full of it.

And my patio ceiling installation was finished.  We had run out of boards and had to buy more.  The painter will be back to stain the remainder of the ceiling later.

The pad for my front steps was poured today.  Dom informed me tonight that Lady, my in-laws’ dog, put her paws in the cement.  So the pad has puppy prints.  🙂

The windows on the front of the house were framed today.  Shutters and paint to follow the stucco later.

We now have running water.  And the plumbing inspector came by today and gave our pipes the seal of approval.  Yes, that’s hot and cold outdoor faucets.  So Mabel and Mason can take baths year-round! (For those of you who are new to my blog, Mabel and Mason are our dogs.  Don’t call CPS on me, please!)

And finally, the work of our own hands, we have fence posts lining the back of the property.  Running boards and pickets come next.  That is, after we recover from this part of the job.

So there we are – two and a half months in and a whole lotta progress to note.  Onward!!

Excuse Me While I Bare My Ceilings

Tags

ceilings, home building, lighting hardware, rafters, roof shingles, roofing

It’s been a little while since I gave a full-fledged update on the new house.  I don’t think there has yet been a single development that hasn’t thrilled me to my very core.  As the frame went up and the rafters were positioned, the home started taking incredible shape right before our eyes.  Some insulated boards, a little home wrap and a bit of tar paper gave the structure some Little-Engine-That-Could character.

In the midst of the raftering and the structuring, I loved walking through the house and memorizing its bones.  I know it will look completely different when the sheetrock goes in, but for now I love looking up through my ceiling area and seeing the intricacies of the rafters.  (Hey – it’s intricate to me.  I can’t manage to fasten two popsicle sticks together on my own.)  My favorite part of the bones is this portion of the roof’s underbelly as seen over the entry hall from my living room.  It reminds me of a cathedral, and when the evening sun peeks in and reflects off of the insulated boards it looks downright ethereal to me.

Electricians came in and did their thing, giving my rooms and ceilings a little more character with the lighting hardware.

And finally this week the framing crew returned to install the ceiling boards I had selected for the porch and patio ceilings.  I got really excited when I saw this above the front porch:

Tropical Storm/Hurricane Isaac threatened Louisiana right as we were preparing for shingles to go up.  Given that my home sits on good ol’ down-home Louisiana red clay, my builder was very cautious about letting anyone up on my roof with mud on their shoes.  The threat of bad weather meant we waited a few extra days before the shingles were added.  If you ask me, it was totally worth the wait.

So you see, things are definitely “looking up.”  We’ll be plugging along until the next update.

Today’s Update

It’s a house now! Shingles were delivered yesterday. Now if Isaac will just stay out of the way…

Sticks and Starbucks

Tags

home building, paint colors, Starbucks, stucco

This week the official framing of the house began.  Now we can start to see slight room definition.  While placement of the rooms is now clear, relational size of them still eludes us.  But that’s okay – we got us some sticks!!

One afternoon I drove out to the site via a different access road.  As I drove over the interstate overpass I glanced in the general direction of my house.  All I could see were trees and studs.  I mean, I could really see my not-even-half-constructed house through all those trees!!  My hand flew to my mouth and I think I actually said, “Holy crap!  That’s my house!” Out loud.  It just looked so…big.

Someone please remind me of that if I ever whine about how small it is.  Or better yet, just give me a good ol’ Gibbs head slap.  I’ll totally deserve it.

It all feels so very real now.  The dream is starting to take some actual physical shape.  We even have stairs already!!

As the frame started to come together and I began to actually envision the outside of the home in slightly more concrete pictures (haha – get it? Concrete? Oh, nevermind…) I chastised myself for not yet settling on a stucco color for the front of the house.  I already chucked the whole idea of picking my own interior color, and just uploaded a pic of paint samples to my Facebook timeline and let my friends pick the wall color.  (It was a rough day and I was taxed!)

Anyhoo, I was happily riding along in the passenger seat of my Dad’s car when we pulled into a Starbucks location that I had all but forgotten.  While sitting in the drive-thru it finally hit me: I LOVE the color of the building.  It’s a dark latte color, or maybe a…mocha frap?

I’m here all week, folks. 

I emailed Starbucks’ corporate offices to ask them if they could possibly research their files and tell me what color was used on that particular building because I wanted to duplicate it on my house.  They kindly replied that they could NOT tell me the color because it would violate the confidentiality agreements they have with their contractors.

Okaaaaayyy…

I assured them that I am not above standing outside the coffee-house with a stack of Sherwin Williams paint swatches – which I have already done (twice).  But thanks to a Starbucks-loving Sherwin Williams employee and another who thought the confidentiality excuse was a load of bull, I was able to learn that the exact color is SW7695, Mesa Tan.

So the next time you have a latte, remember the crazy chick in Louisiana who wants her house to look like your coffee.  🙂

Migraines and Margaritas

Where do I even begin?  How ‘bout I just start at the point when everything took a nosedive toward Hell?  That’s as good a place as any…

So, you know we “sold” our house, right?  An email from my closing agent on Tuesday stated that we weren’t hearing back from the buyer’s lender, so we might not close by month’s end.  To which I basically replied, “Aww, HELLLLLL to the NOOOO!!!!!”  For reasons I don’t fully understand – and probably shouldn’t be privy to anyway – it looks like this buyer wasn’t going to be able to get the loan.  Within half an hour, my house was back on the market.  Five minutes after that I was leaving work early for fear that I would either burst into tears or upchuck on diocesan property.  I got in the car, dialed my mom and whined to her the whole way home.  When I got home, I crawled into bed – still on my cell phone – and continued whining and crying and laughing with mom while trying to come to peace with the fact that my house is not “sold” and I basically wasted the last five weeks locked in a contract and bending over backwards to make everything work out for this dude.  It took my Mom, a lot of prayer, and a too-full glass of wine to bring me enough sanity to focus on the next step.  And now I know…it’s “Sale Pending” until the dotted line is signed!

Wednesday morning as we were headed our separate ways, Dom laughed at our situation and remarked, “Hey – today can only get better!”

Wanna bet??

Work finally started back up on our new house after a solid week of rain.  Dom got a call from our builder sometime during the morning on Wednesday and was told we needed more dirt.  To the tune of possibly $2,000 more.  I was fit to be tied.  Because, really…if I end up spending $2,000 more on this house, I want it to be for something more impressive than dirt, yaknowwhatImean? Dom tried to wrap his head around how in the hell they missed the estimate by 230 yards of dirt, and our builder tried to come up with ways to keep us from needing that much more dirt – without sacrificing the steps I want at the front of the house.  It was finally agreed that I needed to meet with the builder at a home with 5½” front steps so I can determine if I like those as well as I would have liked the 7” steps I was originally scheduled for.

As if I would know the difference!!

And our builder said as much to Dom, but was kind enough to let me in on the situation and allow me my input.  I like the 5½” steps just fine, by the way.  After leaving the step-house and deciding that I could indeed make it back to work on time, I got a call from Dom…

“You’re not going to believe this!!!  Somebody wants to see the [old] house today.”

Holy Mother of Pearl!!!!  My home is a wreck, there are beds in my dining room and I am certain all three toilets need to be scrubbed.  Oh Em to the Double Gee!!

I had two hours to get the house “show-ready.”  So I sped home, gobbled lunch, vacuumed random dust that had been stirred up in the moving of furniture and cleared a path amongst said furniture.  Then I realized I had already packed and stored the only toilet brush we owned.

And here’s where I get to sound like Heloise:  In a pinch, a Swiffer duster substitutes quite nicely as a toilet brush.  It really does.

With less than a half hour before people were scheduled to arrive at my house, I scrawled a note of explanation for the dumpy, shacked-up, box-riddled appearance of this home I need to sell.  And I felt the pounding of a headache.

A conversation with Dom an hour later revealed that he would be meeting the Foundation Man (and final authority/judge of our dirt) and our builder at the site to discuss why we are 230 yards short and who is going to pay this $2,000 to right the wrong.  The meeting was scheduled for 3:30. I decided on my own to show up unannounced and get the scoop in person.  After all, it’s my dirt too…

I shared my situation with coworkers, who all agreed that I just needed to drink.  The consensus was that I should stop at Tony’s Liquor and get a frozen margarita on my way to the meeting.   In hindsight, I really should have because I sweated my butt off in the 100-degree heat while I looked at my dirt.  And my head still hurt.

I’ll spare you the details of dirt fluffing and compression factors, sand and clay and just-the-right-mix theories, and just tell you (as I was told) that we do in fact have just enough dirt.  No more is needed, after all.  The Foundation Man assures us it’s all good.  I don’t know where in the hell the 230 extra yards came into play, but they are a memory now and all is just as it should be.  I don’t exactly have to understand it to be happy with it.

So, we have enough dirt for the house and enough wine for me.  I’m sure Tony’s wouldn’t mind keeping me stocked with frozen margaritas, either.  At the end of the day I came home to a sweet reply to the hasty apology I left on the kitchen cabinet:

Awww…I wish I could offer them a drink.