3/23- Today we moved all of the flooring boards again. Twice. Then cut two more holes in the sub floor, one big and one small. The Wee Girl and I planted spinach and my Middlest Boy and I worked for about and hour by star and porch light at clearing more garden space.

We’ve been sidetracked again. This is the way that it always seems to go. Isn’t it amazing how interrelated the things within a house are? Much like in a family I think. If one person is suffering then the others will feel it in some way. An individual person can’t be altered without affecting others and an individual project can’t be undertaken without consideration for other projects. We started to paint, which lead to thoughts about the baseboards and their relation to the flooring, which lead to shifting our focus to flooring, which lead to considering what we should do before the floors go in. Like, for example, installing overhead lighting on the first floor. It’s much easier now just prying up some plywood and dropping them down from above then opening up the walls after the fact. Oh and those holes in the floor? One of them needed to be right under that nicely stacked pile of floor boards, hence the moving. But we are all ready now for the electricians to come next week.

I’ve been sidetracked as well by the weather, it’s kept me from progressing with my bathroom goals. This unseasonably warm weather has all of my perennials thinking it’s time to get growing in earnest. They are all squished together in pots (in some cases there are tubers and roots stacked on top of each other!) that get easily dried out in the sun. They need to be in the ground, but getting them in the ground means creating gardens from sod. And so I go out to dig instead of staying in to paint.

Before:

complete with a bit of snow and a sled

On Friday afternoon the kids and I went out and tore up the sod, double-dug an approximately 14′ x 9′ plot and planted 20 shrubs and perennials.

at work

well,

some of us anyway!

and “after”, only it’s not really after because this is just a start!

I have big plans for this area and this is just a little start, but it’s a start! Steve got home very late, just as a call came in from the septic guy that he could make it out Monday morning (yes, we finally did make that call!). Since our weekend was already booked, he went out to do his own share of digging, while I served banana splits on the porch for dinner, twenty minutes after bedtime. Only as it turns out, we weren’t exactly sure where the septic tank was, exactly. I joined in with the digging after coconut ice-cream, closely followed by Boy One and Boy Two. Let’s just say that a good portion of the soil in our back yard is *very well* aerated now. Which made me think that it’s been a long time since I’ve read any Chris Bohjalian (pick up Idyll Banter: Weekly Excursions to a Very Small Town and you’ll understand the connection). I think that’s something I shall have to remedy.

Update: the septic guy arrived Monday morning and announced that he had just pumped that tank a couple of months ago.  Presumably *after* our inspection.  doh!