Spring Cleaning

I managed to pull off one of those rare energy-filled productive sprees this past weekend, consisting of paring down and trimming away the old, and encouraging growth of the new. I guess I have spring on the brain.

NEW GROWTH
I bought a bunch of seeds and planted our garden (some directly in the container pots, some in what passes for “ground” here, and some in a seedling starter tray). With luck, we’ll have tomatoes, onions, French heirloom green beans, heirloom Chinese Giant bell peppers (I love that name!), zucchini squash, pickling cucumbers, jalapeno peppers, blue star morning glories, sweet pea vines, and coleus. I’ve been reading “Under the Tuscan Sun” by Frances Mayes (I haven’t seen the movie but apparently the book is very different) and I think that part of the reason that I’m in a gardening mood is her beautifully simple, poetic language about fresh food.

I think that I may have overextended my reach with this garden. I have four long “windowbox” style containers, and three of them are full of beans, squash, and cukes. My starter tray has everything else in it… but I only have one container left to put seedlings in once they’re ready! I have a feeling I’m going to have to invest in more containers in a few weeks. Also, the instructions on the seed packets direct you to plant the seeds pretty far apart. I’m not sure exactly how this is going to turn out, because I bunched the seeds up in the pots. I guess that if any of them do take off, I can thin them out once they’re established.

I put the morning glories in the red containers that the giant rosemary used to be in (those finally got transplanted to their nice ceramic pots), and set those on the bench by the fence in hopes that they’ll trail up the fence and along the top. I raked a lot of the leaves from the only patch of ground we have in our backyard — underneath the neighbor’s Bradford Pear tree — and attempted to dig a shallow furrow along the deck railing for my sweet pea vine seeds, but the ground is mostly clay and rocks, so I ended up tossing the seeds on the ground and covering them with a thin layer of compost, and hoping for the best.

I noticed that the poison ivy plants behind our back fence have started to sprout again. The city came through and mowed the whole area a few months back, but it seems that they didn’t actually do anything to eradicate the plants themselves. I guess we’ll have to do something ourselves. Again. This time I’ll wear full body protective armor.

Some day I would love to have a house with a backyard big enough for me to have a real garden, where I can grow directly in the ground.

TRIMMING THE OLD
I cleaned out the attic, despite the oppressive heat and lack of circulation up there. I really wish that we had a finished attic, but that is not in the cards for us with this house. We do want to add more flooring, though, so that we can have a larger area to store things in. The way it’s configured now, we have pull-down stairs in the ceiling outside of our master bathroom, and the only way you can actually step into the attic is by hoisting yourself up and over an air conditioning pipe that runs to the bedroom. We want to re-route the pipe to run along the other side of the attic entrance, the side that only has a tiny storage area under the eave. Why the contractor just didn’t do it that way in the first place remains a mystery.

Anyway, the cleaning out part. I have been in a mood to throw stuff away lately. We have way too much unneccesary crap. Much to Doc’s relief, I have been restraining myself from tossing out everything we own, but the urge is strong. Mom will arrive in a few weeks in her new truck with a load of items from her house, and we’ll hold a garage sale. I’ve started piling up our own stuff in the garage as well. I now have three paper-boxes of books to sell to Half-Price Books (I’m getting rid of books! Can you believe it?!), and some old dishes and pots and pans and various other old unused things to start tagging. I have a “to sell” box on the bar counter to which I’m gradually adding things from around the house.

When I finished going through all the attic boxes and sorting what to keep and what to get rid of, I was covered in dust and my arms and legs itched like mad. I’m sure that I am now full of tiny fiberglass insulation punctures. I hope that’s not hazardous to my health. Maybe I should have worn a breathing mask.

After two days of 90-degree gardening and going up and down the attic steps a million times, most of the muscles in my body hurt. I think that tonight I’ll have some therapeutic yoga and a nice long herbal soak in the bath.

THINGS THAT REMAIN TO BE DONE

• We need to get some plywood for additional attic flooring. Prometheus is now our transport car for things like this, but it’s going to look pretty strange with plywood tied to the roof.
• We also need to sweep out that attic. It’s crazy dusty in there. Also I’d like to install a fluorescent light to replace the standard bare swinging bulb.
• And of course, reroute the air duct.
• More vegetable containers!
• Kill that poison ivy before it attacks me again.
• Clean and restain deck
• Get new fence
• OK, now this is getting expensive. I’d better quit while I’m ahead, otherwise I’m going to include hardwood flooring and a kitchen remodel on this list.