For most of her life, Wednesday has suffered from chronic ear infections – mostly stemming from her allergies to weeds, pollans, and grasses. It is this, we think, that is the cause for her starting to go deaf. A condition that has gotten progressively worse in the last few years and more prevalent now that we live in a much larger house and TheHusband and I are now much more easily scattered in other locations, where we call for her much more than we used to.
Since we moved to Throbbing Manor, even with her allergies, she’s gotten more accustomed to going outside when we’re outside. Which makes sense as heaven knows no fury when our co-dependent dog is not with her humans. The great outdoors is something that was completely foreign to her for years since she’s been an indoor dog for most of her life.
She’s gotten a bit bolder, a bit more adventurous in exploring her domain when we’re out in the gardens but the downside is that she cannot hear when we yell her name to warn her from the exploring. Tonight was no exception as I was out in the backyard taking pictures when I saw that she had followed me out, when I saw out of the corner of my eye that she had followed me outside and was looking for me. Since I was not in her direct line of sight, and hidden by some trees, I caught up with her waddling down the driveway and stood in front of her to have her follow me back to the backyard, which she immediately did. For the better part of an hour, she hung out on the pathways and the garage while I worked.
Tag: Throbbing Manor
Le mie passioni, parte 3: Gardening
(Le Mie passioni, Italian translation of “my passions,” is a an occasional series of things I really, really love.)
Gardening
As we slip-side towards the middle of July, summer is finally taking hold of us here in Michigan after a long, desolate winter and a very odd spring. I explained to TheHusband recently that my need to be outside and doing something, anything is more towards getting rid of the cabin fever syndrome that is still a carryover from winter, when we could barely leave the house, then actually wanting to accomplish (despite best intentions) something on our grounds. Sad, but true.
TheHusband and I have been at gardening odds at each other since the snows have melted: He’s only interested in working in the vegetable gardens while I distinctly remember that I wholly promised with all my heart to work on the flower gardens to get them cleaned up and prepped for the season. This may not seem like a bad trade off until you take into consideration that we have nothing BUT flower gardens: There is not a single blade of grass, in sight, on our entire property. The previous occupants was a gardening maestro, even my mother-in-law noticed that under all the nearly rotten foliage were rare and expensive plants. The problem, however, was that the previous occupant planted them willy nilly, perennials on top of perennials with the ground cover filled in with creepers such as nettles, English ivy and archangel to fill in the holes, that it is literally a needle in the haystack to get to the good stuff. Our job, my job really, was to sort out the rot, figure out what is underneath the weeds, the creepers and the trash to see what was left behind.
Our first forays into the gardens in the spring, we got easily overwhelmed with all the work that needs to be done. We slowly cleared out English ivy tap roots that weighed in as much as 30-40 pounds and were settled along the brick of our garage, I pulled wheel barrel after wheel barrel of ivy that was settled around the urban garden landscape and part of our backyard. TheHusband chopped down and uprooted junk trees and bushes that were strangling the more expensive flora and blocking out their sun. But it seemed for every weekend worth of work we did, we discovered that more work had to be done.
While our veg garden beds were laid out years ago, the wood used to build the containers is all rotting and will need ot be replaced next year. English ivy is so dominant in our yard that it is also strangling the vegs and before we build the new containers in veg garden, we’ll have to till the fuck of the land to cut up all of the English ivy roots. For weeks now we’ve been hiding in our house, attempting to ignore the wild jungle that is our yard. Every once in while, one of us will kick the other into action to go out and do something in the yard whether it is to water it, tend to the vegetables, chop up some compost or weed.
But again, the more we do, the more overhwlemed we become and the cycle continues to repeat itself. TheHusband suggested a week or two ago that we just say fuck it and hire a landscaper to have them clean out the weeds, the creepers and the ivies and get it looking good again. If that didn’t work, if it would be far too time consuming or expensive, hire them to tear the hell out of yard, till it back to the soil so that we could start afresh, design it the way that we want it. All of this costs money, something we don’t have right now as unexpected costs keep becoming, well unexpected. And personally, I don’t see the point of hiring someone to come do the work we can do it ourselves. Yes, granted, it sucks; it’s getting to be unbearably hot, but if I can weed a fairly large section the yard in under a few hours, think of how much I can get down with a few hours a day?
And I don’t mind the weeding – there is a zen like state I fall into when I’m out there working. I took a stand and pointed out that part of this problem was our own fault: If we only worked a few hours a week on it, instead of few hours a month, the amount of work would not seem so terrible. So we’ve decided that I would be in charge of the weeding and the planting and TheHusband is in charge of all the removing and the chopping. After my declaration of war against our garden, I spent the last week, a few hours after work each day, working steadily on our front yard. It is beginning to look clean but definitely more bare with the ivy and the creeper gone but now we can fill those bare areas with non-aggressive plants and other pretty flora. I’ve also discovered brick pathways, long covered up by the ivy and extra dirt, that there is a method to the previous occupants madness and it is up to me to decode it.
I’ve also realised, as I keep working outside, that I like weeding so much because not only is it to some degree meditative, but that it is also very much like being Indiana Jones. I keep finding so much stuff in the ground, besides trash, such as Indian arrow heads, broken pieces of random pottery, hat pins, old gardening tools, and accouterments. I keep a little bucket for non-composting items that need to be removed and it sometimes is a virtual treasure trove of strange and wondrous items.
I thought about creating a new Tumblr entitled, “Things found in my garden.” I’ve stocked up on wife beaters, 45 SPF, hair ties and even bought a pair of Crocs. My pasty skin is getting brown for the first time in years and freckles are appearing on my face. While our vegetable garden may not yield much this year, our fruit bearing cherry tree is struggling and the yard looks like a war zone, soon it will look beautiful and I can say it was all done because of me.
To Be Read
Since we moved into our house six months ago, I’ve been finding books tucked into random boxes, hidden under clothes and in bits and pieces across the house as books that were given to me or purchased by me made new homes as soon as they sailed through our front door. And during these last six months, our core collection of books were in boxes in our living room, patiently waiting for a new home while their free-wheeling cousins lived wherever they found a place somewhere in Throbbing Manor. We did not bring any furniture with us when we moved across the state, but several months ago it began getting to the point where we needed to get bookcases and fast as I was tired of shifting large piles of books around the house to make room for more books!
(It also doesn’t help that I’m a huge proponent of our local library and have, on average, 10-15 items checked out that I rotate through on a weekly basis.)
I was overly exicted this week as it was a big week for us delivery wise as pillows we ordered in January (handcrafted with the tears of third-world children) and our bookcases and other bits were all finally delivered after months of waiting. I spent most of last night organizing our bookshelves and saying “Mother fucker!” quite a bit. The M-Fing is due to the fact that after a huge sort and weed before we moved to Grand Rapids (in which I donated dozens of boxes of books to friends and local library system in Royal Oak), there were boxes of more tomes in our storage locker that I only cursory went through and sorted before repacking them before the move. Much of those books, including books I have purchased since late fall, were books I have yet to read.
My TBR pile now extends across most of the top shelf (circled in orange), stands about 3′ high and there are several double stacks of books. TheHusband estimated there were close to 150+ titles there I had to plow through and at my current rate, would take me about 3 years to get through. Now, to be fair, there are a lot of duplicates (and triplicates and even a few quadlicates…) and materials that I would probably never read or even want to keep for reference, so that does help. But oy! I’ll have to curtail my library adventures and stop buying books for awhile.
TheHusband’s stack (outlined in blue) is worse not because he has more books then I do (he doesn’t), but that he hasn’t read a book in a few years. He’s also banned the buying of books for himself on the hopes he can get through his stack and move everything over to a Kindle for future purchases. This is all well and good but at his current rate, we’ll be bluetoothing everything to our brain when he’s finished.
[A click on any of the images below will take you to Flickr for the larger sized versions.]
The gaping hole in the middle (where the arrow for James Bond & Jane Austen point to) is for my complete works of Ian Flemming (which I currently cannot find) and all of my Austen titles which are in my office. Below is the second book case we purchased as a comprise as I wanted two large bookcases and TheHusband wanted one large bookcase so we got one large and one small. The goal is as the books are read and then they are moved onto the small bookcase, but if my calculations are close, we’ll be needing another large bookcase within 6 months to a year.
The poster above the bookcase is of Byron that I got at the Keats-Shelley House in Rome in 2005. We finally got it framed when we moved. The lamp is from WorldMarket and the fan is from South Korea, given to me by my friend Steve! The bottles are from our basement and were left overs from the staging of the house when it was on the market. The photo groupings are some images of me from high school and college.
Our style is Fauvist color with Mid-Century lines with tackiness thrown in.
While I’m here, I might as well show you the rest of the images of our living room which as of yesterday, is probably the most complete room in the house. We still have a long way to go in terms of furniture and decoration for other rooms in the house, but at least this one looks pretty homey with stuff on it.
The rug, grey ottoman and magazine holder are from OverStock. The leather couch (which is a deep purple), the orange pillows are handmade from ties and both items are from Design Quest. The end tables, bookcases, round stand lamp and the patterned chair are from Stone’s Throw. The frame above the fireplace has an original 1940 Art Deco inspired post of Michigan that was given to Michigan kids in the 1940s. I got it from eBay and had it framed. The sconces, chandelier and the tile work on the fireplace is original to the house.
View of the living room from the north-west corner.
Morris Street Project: May 14, 2011
Morris Street Project, Week 9
Nothing earth shattering to report in the world of our gardens this week other than everything is blooming within an inch of its life after the recent rains, including all the fucking ivy and creepers that keep coming back though I seem to spend a gazillion hours pulling, chopping and murdering anyway I can. We’ve also planted some of the vegetables and began plotting what to do with the rest of our lot as either the former owners or the flippers laid out and landscaped the plot to an inch of its life but did not do any upkeep in the interim until we bought it. This means that various ivys, nettles and creepers have taken over controlled areas and we may end up tilling most of our front and back yards back to soil and starting anew for next year. TheHusband grumbles that our city lot is much harder to tame then if we had bought the damned 22 acres in Ada with the bubbling brook simply because we could have just let everything gone wild. His consolation is that our dream of buying a ruin villa in Italy for our vacation home means that he can get his goddamned bubbling brook with olive trees aplenty. That is until we both see something of a modern condo layout in which, all plans are pulled from the table on the goddamned bubbling brook.
But I digress. In other news, the excavation company has not been working on our street all week, so what you see below has not changed since the image was taken. The talks from the crew that our street will be “finished” by the end of June seems to be a lot further away then they make it seem. I’d just like to point out that since we moved here in January, there has not been a week a port-a-potty has not been installed somewhere on our block. I’d like to think that with this being a historical neighborhood, that is not necessarily “period.”
Morris Street view.
Throbbing Manor view.
Drainage ditch across the street from our house.
Morris Street Project: May 7, 2011
Morris Street Project, Week 8
At first I was going to comment that I wish I had some torrid or interesting tale to tell to accompany this entry when I realised that I already forgotten about Conversations With My Mother (part i), which events occurred over the weekend. Forgotten is probably not a good word, “choosing to ignore” is probably better.
Mother’s Day weekend was almost too beastly hot in addition to the blinding sun which meant TheHusband and I spent most of the weekend in the gardens. I shot loads of images from around the gardens, which are far more interesting then the same street view and Throbbing Manor view I’ve been shooting almost religiously with my iPad2, but I still need to process them and I’m feeling lazy.
The images taken below have a washed out look to them, which I attribute to too much sunlight and I was not able to really color correct. I kind of dig the washed out look, so I’m okay with that. This weekend is such a contrast to last (blindingly sunny and hot, droopy with rain and cold) that the images taken from today (May 14) are looking much more lush.
I have been uploading all the images to a Flickr set and the transformation of our street is much more remarkable when you run it through a slideshow rather than the weekly installments I’ve been dishing out.
Street view.
Throbbing Manor view.
Ciao,x0x0x
Morris Street Project: April 30, 2011
Morris Street Project, Week 7
My mother-in-law and her sister came to visit us this last weekend of April to get the garden kicked into gear (because ultimately, TheHusband and I are lazy sumbitches). Of the photos I’ve been releasing onto the world of Throbbing Manor, you may have noticed we have no goddamned grass anywhere and that our plot was landscaped to death initially by the last owners of the house and furthered along by the flippers.
With the construction still ongoing, we’ve have started to lose most of the easement in front of the house which means the bushes, trees and any vegetation you can pick out in the photos in that area will be gone within the next few weeks. The city will replace the trees, but not the bushes or flowers. I spent hours truffling for tulip, daffodil and narcissus bulbs, eventually unearthing between 100-150 bulbs that will be replanted somewhere on our property, exchanged or given away.
While she was here, my mother-in-law’s identified most of the perennials, shrubbery and trees in the yards (front, side and back); which has been a tremendous help with knowing what we have and don’t have on our grounds.
In conjunction with all the outdoor gardening we’ve been doing, we’re also repotting a number of plants given or bought, including an indoor herb garden that is currently blooming in the solarium and will be replacing the outdoor herb garden the flippers marked off in the urban garden area in our backyard (aka the patch of land with chain-link fence around it, complete with beds constructed out of untreated wood (which are now rotting)). The solarium is going to become a poor man’s greenhouse, with the hopes that we can keep the temperatures in the fall and winter times warm enough to continue growing vegetables all year round as well as growing fruit trees.
We refer to this as the landing strip and TheHusband pulled out two wild rose bushes, dug up annuals that were left for dead and replanted some of the truffled bulbs. In addition to a hybrid rose bush growing at the back of the strip (near the brick of the house), we also have tulips, fairy pants, crocuses, daffodils and hostas.
One of two containers with my truffled bulbs. Currently we have shifted dirt on top of the bulbs to keep them happy until we replant.
Morris Street Project: April 09, 2011
Morris Street Project, Week 4
The purpose of the Morris Street project was to catalog the coming of spring and if continued, the changing of the seasons. Instead it seems its going to be chronicling the construction taking place in our neighborhood. A week before these photos were taken, the neighborhood was given notice that there would be no parking available on the streets from 7am-7pm. That\’s it. No commentary in regards to driveway parking. What they (meaning the construction crew and/or the city) failed to say or even warn was that access to our homes would be incredibly limited and no provision for parking was indicated (if our driveways were being ripped apart). A few days before the photos below were taken, there was a 15′ deep x 10′ wide trench in front of the house. Our driveway remains the only inaccessible driveway on the block, with other houses at least having dirt laid down to allow occupants access.
The purpose of the city’s project was install new water and sewer mains. According to one of the contractors, they should be done with our block sometime “soon,” which soon literally means June. I shall expect loads of the upcoming weeks to be filled with construction process and hopefully, a new bud or two blooming in the background. Yay for spring in Michigan.
Construction season (also known as spring), has started in GRap.
We lost a driveway due to the pillaging.
Throbbing Manor – Gardens
TheHusband and I have been trolling Home Depot, Lowe’s and Mendard’s almost every weekend looking for garden/outdoorsy based things, impatiently waiting for the weather to break so we can start work on our yard. On one hand, we’re extremely lucky as we have no grass. No grass means no lawn mower needed! Instead, we have English Ivy and a yard that was landscaped an inch to its life. On the other, the clean up (since the flippers did not pull any of the plants not destined for hard snows and winters) is going to be long, tedious and incredibly overwhelming. I’ve got nearly a dozen planters, filled with various dead plants that were left outside all winter long, sitting on our veranda making it look like a dead plant cemetery.
While most of our friends have been hard at work on their gardens for prep for the upcoming season, we’ve been a little lax on that. But even in our laziness, flowers and buds have started to bloom. I took my DSLR (Pentax K-X) out for some fun yesterday afternoon, using the standard macro lense coupled with the toy camera filter (a digital filter available on the camera), took various shots around our front yard. You can see the entire stream here. I plan on updating that stream more as the spring and summer days progress and you can get a better sense of our gardens.
Birdbath in our front yard.
Mixed crocuses.
Veranda bank wall and water spout.
SnowMIGeddon 2011: 14″ and still falling
Drift and fallen snow on our front porch.
The argument about Michiganders and snow can run both ways – “OH MY GOD WE ARE GOING TO DIE!” and “It’s Michigan. In winter. Of COURSE it’s going to snow.” While it has seemingly felt like it has not stopped snowing for the last month, we were caught in the snoMIgeddon of 2011, a storm front that ranged from southwest diagonally across the midwest and heading to the north-east. In Grand Rapids, coupled with the lake effect, we’re at 14″ and counting in the last 12 hours. Last night, when the storm started, TheHusband and I watched enthralled as the winds (clocked between 30-40mph) were bending some of the smaller trees nearly in half. This morning it was eerily quiet and the world was completely blanketed in white.
I have a small set onFlickr of the snow and our extreme shoveling from this morning. We haven’t attacked the driveway as of yet and that may wait until tomorrow.
Throbbing Manor: Exterior, Backyard (during, staged)
SnOMGeddon is coming, of course, starting tonight.
Of course.
Spring, where are you? Please hurry!