This Girl’s House

I think I caught a bug either in or just after getting back from Mexico, so I’ve been kind of weak.  It’s been real hard for me to get out there and do some work on the house.  Still, no matter how weak I feel, I do something.  Even if it’s only spending 15 minutes raking rocks, or maybe I’m only on my hands and knees for a half hour mixing soil amendments in the dirt.  Maybe it’s not even everyday, maybe it’s only 3 or 4 days a week.  Eventually, you start seeing progress.  Eventually, your efforts start paying off. 

We picked up another yard of rock this weekend, along with some large boulders to use in the landscaping.  It was raining rather wickedly so we waited till today to rake out the rock from the truck.  By now, Steve and I have a system in place when it comes to raking out the rock in the truck.  We can get the job done in 15 minutes.  We figure that we’ve got another 20 loads of rock to pick up before we can call the job done for another year.

Today, Steve worked the chainsaw on the downed trees that fell across the driveway during the storm of December 2006.  He’s been working on these trees for months.  So many came down, and some are still hanging and still dangerous.  As he cuts, he splits, and I move and stack.  We will have many years of seasoned wood for the wood stove.

One thing I learned long ago is that Rome wasn’t built in a day.  The same can be said for the process of building my house, improving my landscaping, and making other changes to my home.

That said, things don’t get done by just thinking about it.  In these days of busy lives, 60 hour work weeks, and a social life, making a house a home, and making home improvements take some doing, but with planning and perservence, progress can be made.

Take the work I’ve done to landscape my driveway.  I have a 200 foot driveway.  And I would like a sweeping entrance, a graceful view from the street.  I definitely want curb appeal.  But what I’ve got now is scrag.  You look down the road to my driveway and you see the scruffiest site ever.  But I’ve been working on this project for a while and I am seeing progress.  Sometimes it means just digging a hole, moving a rock, planting a few flowers or bulbs, shoveling or turning soil, or just filling in holes.  It may mean just working on the project a half hour 2 or 3 times a week, and it may mean occasionally redoing, because sometimes my efforts don’t turn out so well.  But eventually the job will get done.

I remember when it took me (with the help of my sister) 3 months to dig a utility trench under a 70 foot stand of tall cedar and fir trees.  We dug it out with hand, so I wouldn’t disturb the tree roots.  Trust me.  I know a lot about perservence.

Even though we had 20 yards of rock delivered 3 weeks ago, we knew almost immediately, that we would need more rock.  So today, we made a run in the truck to our local gravel yard about 10 miles away.  While we know that the truck can only hold one yard of one inch and a half cleaned crushed, it’s worth it to make a trip one yard at a time.  We paid $21 a yard, and we also purchased three boulders to use alongside the driveway for $5.  Together, we both me and Steve raking it out of the truck, it took us about 20 minutes of hard work to rake it out of the truck into select spots along the driveway.  Then Steve spent 5 minutes rolling the truck over the rock to compact it.  I figure that we will need to make a rock run every other week for a while.