Miles of piles

I love it when a plan comes together. The last couple of days we have been busy shuffling things around the ole homestead. The garbage can is full. There is still plenty of room in the back yard for more stuff. We are making an effort to keep it as organized as we can. So, right now it doesn’t look that bad. Even though we are far from done, the front yard looks a whole lot better. I’ve been taking pictures as we go. I will most likely put a little album together. I love before and after pics, but I think it will be a while before there is a real “after” situation.
It finally dawned on me why we get the most work done in foul weather. It’s the wasps! One of the days we were outside working, it warmed up, and those suckers were buzzing around like crazy! It was so bad we had to give up and go inside for a while. We have both been nailed a few times, and it’s not fun. So, I guess you could say I’m almost looking forward to more crappy weather.
We are making progress. I still have to be conscious of my attitude.

Sunshine! Well sorta...

Ok, the most sunshine was yesterday. We got a little bit today. Although, it was mostly rain. Randy was off today. So, I put him to work! I had previously moved a bunch of crap into the front yard thinking we were going to have a yard sale. Best laid plans and such. Anyway, we decided that we should give the assholes behind us something to look at (hee hee). Yep, we are going to pile that stuff up so that we don’t have to look at it, and give those meth-heads something else to steal. The other idea behind it is to block off the path in and out. Oh, it will be glorious! We are So not even done! It will essentially be a junk fence. Hah! Hell, putting all the junk in one place could help when we get the opportunity to get rid of it. I don’t know. Putting it somewhere that I don’t have to look at it is all the better as far as I’m concerned. Now, tomorrow is another day. Maybe, I can get some more work out of him! We’ll see...

Attitude Adjustment

No more back and forth over here, for now anyway. I have to keep in mind that it is only five years. Plus, it’s one full acre. That's a lot of space. I guess it’s a matter of perception, perspective, and all that kind of stuff. We are going to have to be a little more creative to get the things done than we would have liked. But, we are going to stay focused on working on this place for a while. So, I‘m going to concentrate on the positives.
The big thing that works to our advantage is that you can grow just about anything here. We already have a few neglected fruit trees (2 apple, 1 plumb, and 1 sad broken down pear). I don’t know if we can bring those poor things back or not. I have a few ideas about maybe taking some cuttings off of those and planting them in better locations. The other thought is to take one of the fruits and start from there. I’m going to have to learn some more about doing that and proper organic care of the trees and fruit. The people across the street have walnut trees. I know they take time to produce, but we can get free fallen walnuts and start from them. I would really like to get some nice trees (not Russian Olive trees) in the front yard. The less lawn the better! I’m already dreaming about next year’s garden. Right now, I’m going to go outside and fill up the garbage can. Tomorrow is trash day!

Flip flop, tick tock.

It’s a daily occurrence for me. Everyday, often more than once a day, I go back and forth on what I should be focusing on. There was a time when I really liked it here. We had a garden. The lawn was regularly mowed. Randy and I were working really hard on cleaning this place up, inside and out. We were both thinking that we could make a pretty good life here. Although, the estate recovery issue was always looming in our minds. After about 3 years of hard work, and hoping the state would forget about this little place, it became a real issue. I have talked about this before, so I won’t go into it again. I think at some point in this process, we just gave up on staying here and making any more improvements. Every little thing that went bad became a Huge problem. (Ok, the van burning up really was a big deal.) But, even before the van incident, I had decided that any obstacle that came in the way of us staying here was some kind of sign to get out. And hey, maybe it is/was? I just don’t know. Crappy stuff happens anywhere you live.

Oh wait, it gets better. So, when the good stuff happens, and surprisingly enough, it does. Am I supposed to take that as a sign to stick it out and try to make this a better place? Here’s another one. Maybe we should be working harder on honing our off grid skills, as well as cleaning this place up. Then, when we do decide to head out, we’ll have good working skills and the place might be worth something when we can sell it. The only problem with that one is that we have to stay here another 5 years or come into a lot of money.

And there it is, I said it… Money. I know it’s not all about money. But, it sure can make things easier. You know how it goes. “If we didn’t have to spend money on this, then we could spend it on that.” “If we didn’t have to use the money to do this, then we could spend it doing that.” “If we had not spent it on this, we could have spent on that.” And so it goes. on and on.

It all makes my head spin. Or, is that the beer?
I’m sure I’ll be writing on this topic again. Because, as I said, I flip flop on this issue everyday.

New resident?

The other night while I was waiting for the one picture to load up on the blog, Ruby starts freaking out. She was sniffing and scratching at the bottom of the screen door, high pitched scream barking, the works! I was sure something was out there. We have had a problem with skunks in the past. Don’t want to let her out if one of those critters is hanging around! So, I decide to take a peek before I let her out. Good thing. It was a big ole’ raccoon! It was the biggest, healthiest looking ‘coon I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if it was a big male or a soon to be mama. It seems we got a little lazy about picking up the cat food we leave out for the neighborhood cat, Thomas. He’s the only outsider Ruby lets hang around. No problem. We’ll just pay more attention, and pull the food in the evenings. As much as I like raccoons, I know they can be trouble. It will just have to find somewhere else to get free grub. Sorry, no pics. Hopefully, I won't get another chance.

The joys of fall in eastern Washington.

It seems like everyone is having weird weather in their areas. Ours isn’t too off. We had a long soaking rain yesterday. It is the first one in a long time. You might be wondering about the hole in the roof left after we took out the chimney pipe for the pellet stove? I was too embarrassed to say what we did as a temporary before. Well…We stuck an upside down bucket up through the ceiling. Don’t judge too harshly. Hey, it worked pretty good for a while. Plus, remember, Randy almost fell through the roof the last time he got up there. Anyway, we’re going to have to do something else, and soon. Of course, it leaked. But not too bad really. Don’t think I was kidding about the big blue tarp! I seriously do not want to spend any money on fixing this place up. Money would be better spent having the thing hauled off. Hell, I’d be happy with a FEMA trailer, formaldehyde and all. Open the windows, let that sh*t gas off. Then, sheetrock it. Oh, I don’t know. I’m just sayin’ …

Oh yeah, I was talking about weather. Usually when we have a front come in the wind blows like crazy. It does the same as it goes out. It’s funny like that here. I’m used to (in Houston/Austin) it getting breezy as a front comes in. Then it just kind of goes away. Today was a fun filled day of wind and little bit of a sand storm. See below.

That's not rain or fog. It's the middle of the day, very dry, and windy. After I ventured out and took this picture, my eyes were crunchy and I was chewing on grit in my teeth. Yuck! Finally, it has slowed down.

October ?!

What happened? Have I been asleep this whole time? Nah. It’s starting to get chilly at night. So, we’ve been doing a few things around here to prep for the fast approaching winter. It’s boring stuff so I haven’t posted any of it. I have however, been keeping up on the blogs I read regularly, plus a few others. I have also added a some that seemed interesting to me. I’m sure I’ll add more as I find them.
Given that we will be staying here at least until the spring. Things need to be taken care of in preparation for a long cold winter. So, we’ve been doing some long needed work around here. The last few days have been spent on working on the back porch area. The wind blows right through there, so there was a lot of sweeping, spider web abatement, and general organization. The porch is also the walkway to the shop. We worked on cleaning/organizing the shop a while back. It actually has stayed in pretty good shape. Unfortunately, when we were cleaning up the shop, a lot of stuff got shoved out on to the porch area. It’s been a lot of work.
Randy has more of a hard time getting rid of some of the stuff than me. I seriously purged a bunch of my crap before I moved here, and before I even knew Randy. My mom dumped a bunch of her stuff on us when she and her husband moved into their motor home full time. So, when they got a house, I returned the favor. Now we are having to go through what’s left of the things that were left here by Randy’s parents, his sister, and worse yet, all the junk his brother in law accumulated while they lived here. And, of course, not all of the stuff my mom left got sent back. It’s not as easy as they make it look on TV. At least, not without professional help. The majority of the stuff is truly garbage. Getting rid of trash isn’t free. So we’ve been pecking away at it, little by little, one garbage can at a time.