Have you all been having fun visiting other blogs for To-Do Tuesday? I hope you’re learning something new about the guest hosts and getting to know other crafty bloggers!
The Mister and I have been super busy trying to get things done around the new house. (Disclaimer: I’m uploading unedited pics because it’s late and I’m super tired.) We were pretty disappointed to find that the previous owners acted more like renters than home-owners in that there are a bazillion little issues that could have been fixed with just a moment of thought and fixing things that go wrong as they cropped up. The Mister is pretty meticulous about fixing things before they become a problem, so he was probably the most let down by some issues. Our two major issues were finding that the electrical box has live wires just folded up in the bottom of the box and that other wires were spliced in with wire nuts. IN. THE. ELECTRICAL. PANEL. BOX. That’s a serious code violation if there ever was one! We’ve also got a kitchen faucet that leaks so badly I have to keep a towel behind it and wring it out in the morning. The cause is a cartridge in the faucet that went bad. It’s got a lifetime warranty for the original owners (which we are not) from Delta, but Delta graciously offered to send a replacement cartridge for free. The upstairs bathroom faucet? The nuts were put on backwards, so the entire faucet moves back and forth about half an inch every time you turn the water on and off. Those kinds of issues have driven the Mister a bit crazy lately. All fixable, but unnecessarily so if they had been addressed in the first place. And those are just the big issues (big because the contract had a “No” next to the questions as to whether there were plumbing or electrical issues in the house).
Anyway, on to better things. I have lots of pictures of the yard around the house to share! Some things are a bit overgrown and I have been working my hind end off (I wish it were literally!) to clean up the yard. The Mister’s son used to do landscape work, so he came over to teach me how to prune the rhodies out front. The picture above is the before and after.
I also tackled the north side of the house. This area had a lot of ivy crawling up into the bushes and pulling it all down. There was also a lot of dead wood in the bushes here that we cleared out. It ended up looking a lot thinner in the pictures, but it’s all much healthier now. You can see the Hosta on this side of the house now too!
Plus, there is the weirdest, but coolest, looking hydrangea I’ve seen. The flowers in the middle are blue and super tiny, while the outer ring of flowers are white and a lot larger. I’ll have to do some googling on this variety of flower.
The north side of the house also has some herb garden beds (that also have rhubarb and garlic growing in them) right across from the rhodies, hydrangea, and hosta. They’re way overgrown, so I’m cutting those back this week.
This is the back of the house (west side) and we love sitting on the deck. There’s a gorgeous breeze that blows through there and we enjoy watching Ginger and Mugsy romp around the yard. (They literally romp. It’s adorable!) When we re-side the house we’ll be putting french doors where the big window is so we can walk right onto the deck from the dining room, rather than through the garage/laundry room area.
This apple tree is the best part of the back yard. It’s one of the original trees from an orchard that was here in the 1920’s. It’s been spliced several times, so we have a couple different varieties of apples on it. Since neither of us are arborists, and the tree has not been maintained for at least 10 years (BIG surprise to us…not), we’ve hired an arborist to prune it in the fall. Hopefully we’ll get to figure out the variety of apples by then.
We’ve got two raised garden beds that are back behind the workshop (that’s behind the tree in the picture above). There’s also a Marionberry bush and Raspberry bushes (that I’ve already trimmed back). The previous owners left us the composter too, so that was a great surprise!
We’ve also got a gorgeous blueberry bush. We just picked about a quart of them on Sunday, and we have so many more still to ripen. So many berries, I just love it!
There’s even a bed of strawberries against the house and just off the deck area in the backyard. They are the sweetest strawberries I’ve ever eaten. And that’s not hyperbole either. The first strawberry I tasted was like I had just prepared the strawberries for shortcake. As in sugared up. That’s how deliciously sweet they are!
There was a bed of raspberry bushes against the fence line to the neighbor’s property when we bought the house. They looked great then, but when we moved in they looked like this. And the grass in front of them was dead too. The Mister, our realtor, and several other people agree that it’s a chemical burn. If that’s true, I’ve no idea why anyone would RoundUp these bushes, and it makes me sad. I’ll be cutting them back to the ground this week and see if maybe they come back next year. I keep giving the previous owner’s the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to the big heat wave that hit right as we moved in. Who knows.
Well, I think I’ve blabbed on long enough about the yard and all the growing things. It’s been overwhelming for me to get a crash course in all of this gardening. I am enjoying some of it, but I am seriously missing my sewing time. I have no idea how people who garden have time to sew! I’ll have to get my sewing fix when I run around visiting your blogs this week!
This week’s To-Do list:
- Continue working on the house
Don’t forget that next week, June 28th, will be hosted by Amy of Swimming in a Sea Of Estrogen.
The To-Do Tuesday Summer Schedule:
June 7th: Sarah of Georgia Girl Quilts
June 14th: Myra of Busy Hands Quilts
June 21st: Here – Stitch All The Things
June 28th: Amy of Swimming in a Sea Of Estrogen
July 5th: Here- Stitch All The Things
July 12th: Bernie of Needle and Foot
July 19th: Myra of Busy Hands Quilts
July 26th: Amy of Swimming in a Sea Of Estrogen
Now it’s your turn! Write up your post and link up using the InLinkz linky below.
Rules:
- Link up to this To-Do Tuesday blog post using the InLinkz linky below. Don’t forget: you can link up Instagram photos! The link up is open all week, and you can link any post for the week even if it’s written on the prior Sunday or Monday. It simply needs to be related to setting, working on, and/or completing your weekly goal(s).
- Try to visit at least one or two other blogs and leave a nice comment.
- Include a link back to my blog. Feel free to grab the blog button from the sidebar to show that you’re participating in To-Do Tuesday.
- You do not have to follow my blog to participate, but if you do decide to follow me… thank you! I appreciate it!
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Stitch ALL The Things 
We have a hydrangea that is called lacecap, that sounds like the one you are describing. I look forward to seeing all the home improvements you make!
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I just spent way too much time at this website: http://hydrangeashydrangeas.com/lacecaps.html reading about hydrangeas. It looks like mine is the Blue Billow variety, and not only that half of my leaves are variegated and half are not. How cool is that?! I have a mophead hydrangea too, and I absolutely love it. I’m going to have to cut it back to within 12 inches of the ground because there is a LOT of dead wood right in the middle of the plant. And, I just learned I need to do it soon since it’s getting ready to bud, even though there are lots of flowers on it still. So much to learn about gardening, I feel like my brain is going to explode some days. Ha!
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Wow! That is a lot of work getting a new locatiom into ship-shape. I hope to be in that situation in about a month! Congratulations on a great new home!
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Thanks so much! It’s a bit more work than I was expecting, but very satisfying too. Sounds like congratulations will be/are in order for you too! Very exciting!!
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Wow, Christine, moving to Oregon! I had no idea! Sounds like a wonderful change for you? Was the house inspected? Anyway, I’m sure the Mister can fix everything 🙂 Have fun exploring your new town! Sounds awesome!
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Hi, Ivy!! This is more just a summer home for right now. We happened to find the right house, in the right location, at the right price about three years earlier than we needed it. It will end up being more a 6 months in Oregon/6 months in Arizona thing three years from now. Or we may end up making it our permanent home and just traveling to the south when it gets too cold in the winter. We don’t quite know our plans yet, but we do know that despite all the little things to fix up we love the house! Thanks so much for stopping by!
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You and Mister sure have been busy! The yard is looking great – I’m super jealous of your apple tree!
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I thought we were going to catch a break this week and have things calm down. Instead, in usual Slaughter style, the Mister decides to buy a car! What the what?! And on a day when we have company coming to say hi and see the house. We left the dealership at 5:00pm rush hour and had to be home by 6:00. And the salesman left his cell phone in the car so Brad had to turn around and go get it. Sheesh! It’s been a crazy day/week so far. Maybe tomorrow will be better (I say that every night…LOL!!).
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Wow! That is a lot of work to whip your new home into shape! But your yard sure is looking good! Yum! Berries! My hubs and I can relate to some of the problems you are finding in the house. The first house we bought – previous owners left dirty pots in the sink. Disgusting. I threw them out, but when I turned on the faucet to wash out the sink, it came off in my hand! Might be why they left their dirty pots?? Hubs replaced the faucet. (The washing machine had a tub full of water. Hubs baled it out, it only needed a new belt. Worked fine for all the years we lived there.) The second house we bought had a live wire in the fuse box. How does this stuff get past the inspectors?
Say! Set up your sewing machine and give yourself a little time of play!
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Oh wow, Sharon!! I have zero to complain about when you talk about your experiences. I can’t even imagine walking into that! It’s great to have a handy hubby, isn’t it!! I like the way you think about sewing time… I need to find a table and I’ll be ready to sew!
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Your place is looking great with all the work you’ve put in. You’ll surely enjoy the sliding glass door to the deck. And oh, the fruit plants will be wonderful to have! Maybe one of those upstairs windows is a sewing room!
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Thanks, Myra! It’s been a busy week, but I’ll tell ya… those fruit plants make it easy to love to work out in the yard! I have to confess to sneaking over and snacking on them while working. They’re just too good! And you’re absolutely right, the sewing room will be in the far right upstairs window! I can’t wait to get to work on setting that up!
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The house is lovely, and I am super jealous of all your berries! Seedless Marionberry is my absolute favorite jam, and it is super hard to find on this side of the state! My parents have a hydrangea just like that one, I will see what I can find out from them. Enjoy the garden time, there will be the typical valley showers soon and you’ll have some sewing time then. 😉
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Thank you! I am not sure if these are seedless Marionberries, but I don’t feel any seeds when I eat them so maybe they are! They are delicious, for sure! It turns out this variety of Hydrangea is lacecap. I’ve never seen anything like it before moving here. It really is beautiful, but I have to confess to loving the fullness of the mop head hydrangeas. I guess I’m just a simple kinda gal! Ha! I’m definitely looking forward to finding some time to get sewing in. My first order of business is to find a sewing table so I have some place to get to work!
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I am sure they’re not seedless, but there are only a couple companies I have found that make seedless jam from marionberries, so I tend to buy out the store when I do find them!
I love the mop head hydrangeas, as well!
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The hydrangea could be a lace cap variety where you don’t get the huge round cluster of blossoms. I had one of those a while back but we sold that house. Buying a new house is like a treasure hunt in the garden, figuring out what will bloom and when and how to take care of them (if you haven’t had that before.) Enjoy the berries. We have boysenberries and blueberries. So yummy. Good luck with the home repairs. Hope you guys don’t find much more that needs to be done.
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You are right about it being the lacecap variety of hydrangea. I am learning so much about all of the different plants. I was really glad that the hubby’s sister and son both came over and talked to me about the different plants. They were both really helpful in identifying the plants and in telling me how to maintain them. As someone who has had a black thumb for all of her life, I’m glad the plants are still surviving AND that we’re getting yummy berries off of the bushes! LOL!!
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