For those of you following the ongoing saga of our attempts at killing grass (1, 2, 3), we’ve gotten the flower bed cardboarded and mulched.
Before:
After:
Now it’s time to work on the herb plot.
Tag: home
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My skin is pink and warm. I spent all weekend outdoors, in the garden and on the soccer pitch.
The fresh air, dirt, and blue-sky matches were totally worth the sunburn.
Our neighbor has a farm truck and told us these past weeks that he would soon fill it with a (literal) ton of mulch; he wouldn’t need it all, and would we like to split a truck load with him? He dumped the mulch Wednesday, and on Saturday, our daughter and I drove around town collecting cardboard and newspaper: we were going in for round two of killing the lawn so we can put in a flower bed.
Our first attempt at killing grass with garbage bags failed, so we pivoted. We did some research, and I think we have a better chance of succeeding this time with compostable materials that worms can eat instead of ugly black plastic.
In preparation, my husband lowered the mower blade as low as it would go, and cut a curved shape in the lawn where the flower and herb beds would soon go.
Shorn grass for the front flower bed. Our daughter has been as eager to get out in the garden as I am, and she helped me cover the soon-to-be-dead grass with cardboard and newspaper.
Laying cardboard over close-cut grass to smother it. We watered the cardboard to soften it, then covered it with mulch. The mulch weighs it down and will also hold moisture, hopefully keeping the thick paperboard damp to help speed up the decomposition process. We covered gaps and filled out the shapes with layers of newspaper 4-6 sheets thick, then watered the mulch and papers again.
Mulching over cardboard and newspaper to kill lawn. We ate through half the chipped bark and wood before our neighbor even touched the ton pile. Even though I hated to stop, we got through two rows of cardboard and newspaper before I reluctantly quit working so we didn’t use all the mulch.
Weighting down the edges while we wait for more mulch. Our neighbor has said he will gladly get another truckload to split with us, so I’m excited for next weekend, when I hope to get through another section of the soon-to-be flower bed.
I was so happy to be outside, I barely remembered to eat. I made a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ate it on the front steps. I wanted to look out over the yard, what we’ve done, and what we’ve yet to do. Each time we drove up to the house — after soccer, after our daughter’s hair cut — I smiled and did a little dance for our house and garden.
Stopped. For now. Our daugher and I spent a lot of labor mulching our new plantings, laying biodegradable cardboard and newspaper over unwanted grass, and watering everything in. It’s going to be important that we stay on top of it — keeping everything wet to encourage both growth and decomposition.
I’ve been ignoring those mid-morning calendar reminders to “Water plants” every day for months. We didn’t have anything alive at the time I created the reminders, but I set them knowing this day would come, and I’d need to make sure I made time to nurture plants.
It is spring now, and the weather is beautiful. I’m ready to start taking a break each day to get outside and tend the garden.
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I’ve written ad nauseam about how I’d one day like to have a room of my own. A room where I can write, where I can work, where I can think.
With our new house, it has finally happened. In our first week at the new place, I took a week off of work to help unpack, and to rennovate my brand new office: a room of my own.
Before:
office – before
office – before
office – beforeAfter:
Home office with treadmill desk 
For when my legs get tired and I need to sit 
Home office window I can’t tell you how happy this room makes me 🙂
Specs:
The office is a utility room in the finished basement. I share the space with a window, a water heater, the furnace, and the fuse boxes. Which are handy, since I have plugged in a heavy duty treadmill so I can walk while I work.YEAH BOYEEZ!
My old bones can’t take the high impact workouts I used to do, and in my former “office” setup (in a corner of the rec room) I sat for 8 hours a day. My circulation was terrible, my shoulders hurt from hunching, my knees hurt from scrunching up in my chair, and I was always cold. Now I can get gentle exercise as I age, keep my circulation going, and keep warm, all while also being productive at work. I walked about 25 miles in the first four days of owning the desk. The desk is an Uplift sit-stand-walk desk and can be raised and lowered. When I want to sit, I lower the desk and slide my monitor and keyboard over to the sitting side.
To renovate the office, we ripped out old carpet and painted the cement floors. Eventually we’d like to install cork flooring throughout the basement, but that’ll take some time to save up for. I sanded the windowsill, the trim, and the baseboards, slapped on a coat of primer, and then brushed on two coats of semi-gloss white paint. I wanted a bright room since I spend so much time in there, and I really wanted a happy spring green color. I chose lime mousse from Valspar, but the paint itself is from Benjamin Moore, for which there is a family-owned store here in Blacksburg (they matched the color for me).
The ceiling is not shown in the pictures, but I painted the ceiling with a bright white ceiling paint. Holy crap, that was a pain in the ass. The ceiling is textured. It was not fun. But it looks a million times better than the dingy yellowing paint that was there before.
Today (and this week), I will sand, prime, and paint the doors in the same white as the trim. And then, my office will be complete. Yay!
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View from Old Rag Mountain, Shenandoah, Virginia My husband and I courted in the hills of Appalachia. We backpacked in the southern Smokies when I was still a student at the University of Georgia. We took weekend trips to Panthertown Creek in North Carolina, or Chattanooga, Tennessee, and when he and his hiking partner trekked 500 miles from Georgia to Virginia on the Appalachian Trail, I sent him care packages of homemade trail mix, and met him at little towns on the weekends, where we’d stay in B&Bs and eat breakfasts of hot biscuits.
As we got married and grew up, we moved further and further from the green hills and soft forests of our courtship. We moved to the D.C. metro area, where we sat in traffic on the beltway. In four years we never made it to Shenandoah despite a thousand proclamations, “We should head to the mountains this weekend.”
Then we moved to coastal Florida where we sweated it out in the flatlands for eight years. We bought our first house there, and bore our children there. We learned out how to be parents there, and with a seven hour drive just to get out of the state, we lost touch with the mountains, and our younger lives, completely.
When we moved to Minnesota, where we shivered and shoveled through three winters, we had no idea where our lives were taking us, or where we would end up next.
And then.
Then, as my husband’s postdoc drew to an end, and he began applying for faculty positions in Arizona, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas, and Arkansas, he applied, and interviewed, for a position at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Back in the Appalachians, in the green hills where we met, in the soft forests where we fell in love. Back in the Appalachians where it’s not too hot and it’s not too cold, where it’s emerald green in the summer, blazing copper in the fall; where the world turns bleak in winter, and bursts into blossom in spring.
Back in the Appalachians where we’re raising our children – where we now live. Back in the Appalachians where we’re home.
This is my kickoff post for Photography 101: Home. My ambition is to post a photo a day as part of the course – I’ve got my fingers crossed that I can do it.
Butterfly Mind 