CAMP WILLOW CREEK

Clean

It was a little bit chilly this weekend. So I decided to clean a little house both literally and figuratively.

Figuratively, I had to clean up the giant mess I made of this very website when I decided to upgrade the photo gallery. The problem was I failed to read all the words in the documentation, as my attention was also diverted by the discovery that I could copy Goodfellas onto my cellphone for portable entertainment.

Once I managed to get all the parts working together again in peaceful harmony, I decided to go ahead and re-upload all the pictures i had hastily removed in my last “cleaning” attempt. The short interesting part of all this is that if you were missing those pictures of the house when we first visited as prospective buyers and really need to see how awful the teal wall in the master bedroom was, your troubles are over.

Literally, I figured no one would be interested in that boring old story about playing with a website all weekend, so I cleaned up my bedroom and took some pictures to show everyone how pretty it looks. I just bough the finishing touches this weekend – duvet clips and a black tailored bed skirt.

MULCH

That pretty much sums it up.  Pine bark, not straw, if you were wondering.

I went to Target the other night in search of a solar-powered low-voltage outdoor lighting set.  But not just any solar-powered low-voltage outdoor lighting set, an ON SALE solar-powered low-voltage lighting set.  I couldn’t find it.  I was very successful in locating $83 dollars worth of other products, including, but not limited to, this.  I couldn’t wait to fire that bad Larry up this weekend for at least 3 reasons: 1) it promised to make my plants twice as big 2) I am very impatient and 3) my mom scared me into thinking I had doomed my freshly planted mailbox neighbors by using something other than Scotts brand topsoil.

So, I got up early this morning and donned my yarding garb and went outside to play in the dirt.  That’s when I found out it was FREAKING COLD OUT.  I fed the plants and then ran back inside to my warm kitchen to cut up strawberries and marinate some ribs.

Later, when the sun made it round to the front of the house, I ventured back out to work on the mulch.  So now there is mulch to hold in all that yummy plant food they got this morning.  I expect to have some ferocious vegitation in the coming days.

Yawn

Ok.  Maybe this is a little more work than i realized.  I am dead tired, but  Project mailbox is pretty much in the books at this point.  On Saturday, J helped me — after riding 6+ miles on mountain bike dirt trails — dig out the bed and move the dirt and grass we no longer wanted.  It looked like a much smaller area before we started working it.

Then on Sunday, we went plant shopping.  The store we went to was great.  Everyone there was really helpful and didn’t treat us like dirt (pardon the joke) because we didn’t know what we were doing.  The first woman was especially great. She helped us find everything on our list that the store had in stock, replaced the one thing they didn’t have with another suggestion and replanted a plant that was in a mixture so we could complete the list.  The cashier helped us pick out the top soil and additives we needed and then 3 strong young men loaded it all into the tiny neon trunk for us.  For a shopping experience, it rocked.

I will go back….for some mulch. That’s really all that’s left for the project except watching the plants grow and fill out the bed.  And maybe planting a clematis around the mailbox for mom.

Oh and don’t be fooled by that last sentence into thinking I know what I’m talking about when it comes to what I planted out there.  All I know is that everything is a perennial which is french for “you don’t have to do anything next year and there will still be flowers” and that the varieties in the selection are scheduled to bloom at different times of the year.

Goodbye Holly & Molly

…Before and After.

I came home from work last night and Molly was missing. Well most of Molly was missing.  J had the day off and went ahead and got a head start on her.  I was so excited.  I couldn’t wait to check it out this morning and see how it looked.

I love it.

I think this weekend I will work on taking those little shrubby guys out of there.  I don’t know what they are, but just in case there are baby Holly and Molly seeds lurking in their midst, I want them gone.  Plus I am kind of enjoying this destructive side of landscaping.

Is that wrong?

Phase 1 – Days 2 & 3

 The bunny keeper did not make like a bag of pine needles and leave like the rest of our rubbish last week.  She lives now at the end of the driveway.  I almost ran her over today.  Clearly she will need a better home.  We’ll see.  Maybe the troll heads out back will have some ideas.

I raked some more and we cleaned up the top half of the yard and the driveway and that really ugly patch next to our neighbor’s perfectly green lawn.  This time, instead of all that extra work of putting pine needles into countless bags, I found a home for them under the pine trees.  More specifically, I made what amounts to a bear trap in that giant sink hole under the pine trees.  It really doesn’t look that bad.  Just don’t walk in there looking for the Bunny Keeper.

The really big news of the weekend was the brutal murder of Holly I.  Holly’s limbs were hacked off one-by-one, Holly’s roots were severed, Holly’s trunk was shaken and beaten until she finally let lose of the dirt.  Once Holly’s carcass was dragged away, I came close to the house and discovered many things – Like a doorbell and a really ugly light.  Of course, now that we know we can do it, Holly II’s demise is imminent.

We also began a small experiment today.  We put some stuff on the ground.  We’re hoping it turns into grass. Since we can’t read, we really have no idea what we put on the ground, but there was a picture of a pretty green lawn on the front of the bag, so we think we’re headed in the right direction.