Pond, Gazebo, and LOTS of Compost

Do you remember that scene at the end of Four Weddings and a Funeral where the girl who is supposed to marry the main guy looks at herself in her bridal regalia and takes this deep, satisfied inhalation through her nostrils? That's exactly how I feel.

Raking
We raked that yard, my friends. Even with the two of us working together it took all afternoon. Plus, we had to leap on the leaf pile a bunch to compress it down enough the fit in our (actually rather roomy) compost bin. (Do you want to see action shots of Matt compressing the leaves? I assure you, you do. Scroll down to the bottom for a blow-by-blow photo essay on poetry in motion.) But the yard looks SO nice and clean, and the weather was glorious--brisk and breezy and blue and sunny.

This was our main--not our only-- pile of leaves.

Matt was in charge of dumping the leaves (I'm not strong enough to lift a wheelbarrow full of leaves high into the air to dump on top of the compost pile). While he was trekking back and forth to the backyard, I kept getting inspiration for new projects.

For example, I finally took a pair of loppers to that out-control-ligustrum that was eating our pond. Suddenly, I can imagine the pond being a really nice feature, rather than just a weirdly placed anomaly.

The pond, pruned

I dismembered the boxwood so Matt could dig up its carcass and haul it off.

The Twig Formerly Known as Boxwood

In the course of digging, he broke that cheapo shovel I bought for $12 this summer. (I knew it was a mistake while I was doing it, but I was unpleasantly constrained by fiscal realities.) So tomorrow we'll replace it so that we can finally get our camellia, 'Yuletide,' in the ground in lieu of the boring boxwood. Such a trooper, that camellia, and so hardy--it's blooming its little head off as we speak.

'Yuletide'--the only camellia that thrives in Austin (and, we hope, Elgin)

And finally, and most gloriously, we finally sawed the back railing off the gazebo. (How I hate saws! What a clumsy, awkward, barely functional tool! So hard to use, so difficult to control, so slow to complete the task at hand!) You see, the gazebo is about 10' away from our back door. You walk out the door, and the sidewalk leads dead into the gazebo. Which then dead ends 6 feet later in a railing. Even though there's tons of yard on the other side, the gazebo stops you cold, less than 20' from the back door. So stupid.

This gazebo says, "You shall not pass!" (The dark fire shall not avail you)

I've been wanting to dismantle that back railing for months and months so that the gazebo, instead of preventing you from entering the yard, would urge you onward, welcoming you, tantalizing you with views of the pond and the trees beyond. With its (currently non-functional, but nevermind that) porch swing, the gazebo now says, "Enjoy the yard as much as you like! Venture all the way out in search of new experiences, or linger in the familiar comfort of my environs--I accommodate myself to your comfort!" That's what the gazebo says.

Now the gazebo says, "Enjoy the yard as much as you like! Venture all the way, &c." Or it would say that, if we hadn't left a trailer in the middle of the yard, blocking the view.

We also came up with a clear plan for starting our shade patio, a paved area under the cottonwood that takes advantage of the coolest part of the yard. We'll have to do it in stages, of course, but it should ultimately be a great place to have dinner, read a book, or snooze in the hammock that Mattchew and Bianca gave us for Christmas.

AND we made tentative plans to put in a walk from the pond, through the gazebo, all the way to the shade bed, reusing stones that are already on the property.

So all in all, a really great day. I am fairly simmering with a pleasant combination of satisfaction and anticipation.

Here's Matt, perfecting the art of the leafjump. My camera has a setting for taking a sequence of pictures in rapid succession, so I just held down the shutter and chanted, "Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump!"

Yes, really. Not staged--that's what happened. Matt jumped. Matt disappeared. Only his feet were visible. Priceless.

Also unscripted. It's really hard to get to your feet in a leaf pile.

Edith Returns; So Does Mr. Ugly Car

Naked Came Edith
We sent Edith off to Elgin Furniture Refinishers to be dipped and stripped. Edith is one of the tall, narrow, painted antique doors that we'll be using for our closets. We retrieved Edith today and sent off Flossie in her place. The cost only came to about $56 each, so it was definitely worth it when you consider the time it would have taken to strip the many layers of paint off by hand.

That's Edith as she originally looked on the left; stripped, on the right.

She turned out handsomely, though the refinishing guy told us she was made of pine, not mahogany. Bit of a downer, that, but she'll still make a very attractive, period-appropriate addition to the house (and I was a little doubtful about the mahogany claim). We'll need to get the paint out of the crevices ourselves (the guy recommended using a dental pick), then hire a carpenter to cut the doors to size, then sand, stain, and varnish them. Then we'll install the hardware and get a carpenter to hang them.

Edith, closeup

So this project could go on for a while.

A complicating factor is that we can't seem to find a bloody carpenter anywhere in Elgin. We have an immediate need for one to make us some built-in shelves in the study (for which Chuck & Ladonna gave us a very generous Christmas present). So far, the only people I've come across are affiliated with "design studios" and cabinetry shops. As you might imagine, these people are well outside of our price range ($3,500 for a bookshelf?!?). I don't need a shop, fer cryin out loud--I need a dude with a tool belt and a saw. So the search continues.


Mr. Ugly Car: 1, Plucky 1st-time Homeowners: 0
Meanwhile, the Battle of the Buick drags on. I may or may not have mentioned that for a while Mr. Ugly Car appeared to have moved out. We thought: divorce! Hurrah! No more hideous Buick! But then he moved back in (and brought his sofa with him). Not good. Once more various cars were parked on our property, wearing ruts in our sod and flipping us the metaphorical bird. But then we hadn't seen him for a while and last weekend some of the women of the house apparently summoned the cops. We though: Restraining order! Excellent! (Not to seem to bloodthirsty: no one appeared in any way damaged during the cop-summoning incident). But now he's back, parked in our yard again, and what's worse, he's been leaving Corona bottles at the base of our Chinese tallow!

The vile handiwork of Mr. Ugly Car

There's a cache of about 4 or 5 empty bottles nestled at the base of the tree where he parks. From this, we must deduce that he knocks back a bottle or two on the way home, doesn't want the Old Lady to know about it, and as a genial 'fuck you' to Matt and me, stashes the evidence in our yard.

What sort of knuckle-dragging barbarian does these things?!?

We ♥ Mother Earth; Mother Earth ♥s Us
Incidentally, we only found out about the Coronas because we finally decided to attack the east side of the house. The pecans and the cottonwood have been shedding like mad--there was a 6-inch crust of leaves covering most of the east yard. There was no point raking until the trees were bare--our yard is huge; it's not the sort of thing you want to do more than once per year. Now that it's January, we figured it was time. So I started dragging off branches (cottonwoods drop branches like you wouldn't believe) and Matt raked. Thus the Corona bottles.

A happier by-product is that the leaves inspired Matt to make a compost heap. It's the sort of thing all gardeners ought to have, but we haven't been able to before now (because of renting, apartment-dwelling, &c.) He knocked it together in no time out of spare fencing components from the partial dismantlement of the hurricane fence. Clever Matt! We're so green! (Go to our next entry and scroll to the bottom to see the compost heap in action)

So today we transport the 5 metric tons of leaves from the side yard to the compost bin. Yeehaw.

Snapshots of Winter in Elgin

The baby Bur Oak Mom & Dad gave us. Check out the fall/winter color!

Glass slag hanging from the gazebo. We get our slag (yes, we have a slag habit) from The Living Desert on Hwy 71, SW of Austin.

Our big, old, not very productive, but venerable pecan.

A little bit of New Orleans in Elgin--I made two king cakes with cream cheese filling (1 for work, 1 for us). I had to make my own purple using blue sprinkles mixed with a lot of red food color. Turned out pretty freakin' awesome, if I say so myself--tender, moist, sweet--YUMMY.