The English Laurel

Ever since we moved into this house the front door has been blocked by greenery.  I've always had a thing against arborvitaes, and the English Laurel (I had take a piece of it to the local nursery to identify it), does its best to take over our entire house. 

Getting rid of these monstrosities and the giant circle of rock that highlights them has been on our list of Dream Projects to accomplish at the house.

Now that the roof is done, the house is painted, and our living room and dining room are painted...it is finally time!


My Dad gave Josh a chainsaw, and he has been itching to use it.  Josh started hacking up the arborvitaes, and the Laurel, and we got them to the point where we could start pulling the stumps out with the truck.  The arborvitaes were easy, but of course the Laurel gave us a hard time, it was a long process of: pull with the truck, cut newly exposed roots, and repeat, until this!

Victory! Take that you house eating monster!

The rocks had to go too.  It was such an 80s addition to the house, and in all honesty, it was done very poorly.  Unfortunately the rocks were huge and there was no way we could lift them, so Josh rented a chisel from Home Depot to break them up.

The rocks were granite, and although Josh gave it a valiant effort, there was no way that was going to work.  So, I did my part and called in the big guns.

After the rocks were removed, Josh cleaned and leveled the area.  He got a little carried away, and ended up turning it into a zen garden.

While the area was in this phase, we had three separate neighbors mention how much they love that we took out the Laurel.  Turns out we weren't the only ones who hated it!  Leonard did his own celebration.  He loves the new dirt spot.

But, we do live in an amphitheater, see previous post, so some sort of privacy screen is necessary.  We picked out a green Japanese maple from my favorite summer place, the Frager farm stand.  Only $145!

Josh dug a great big hole.  We may have used a tape measure to get the placement exactly right, but since that would be neurotic...I'm not going to confirm that.

I helped by stomping down the dirt.

Now the difficult part - moving the tree.  We were told originally that the tree would be 200-300 lbs.  Doug, from the farm stand, was excited that he was able to pull the tree for us with so much root still attached because it meant an easier transition for the tree, but this meant that now the whole mess was at least 400 lbs and probably more.  Josh worked out a very clever winch system.

It mostly worked.  We were able to get to the point where we were almost there, but then we got stuck.  Our neighbor took pity on us, and a third set of hands was exactly what we needed to get it the rest of the way.  Thanks Scott!

After making sure the tree was oriented just right, Josh filled in the hole.

A little bit of cleanup, and a pic to show exactly how tall the tree is on its first day in its new home.

Add sod....and we're done!

You can see a second trunk to the right of the main trunk of the tree.  There is one branch on our new tree that I want to train to grow at a different angle.  I used a stick from the old Laurel to pull that branch in the right direction.  Poetic Justice.

We could not be any happier with how it turned out, we love our new tree and the way the front of our home looks!  What do you think?

May - no TV

May without TV went well.  It got us eating at the dinner table almost every night, something I love doing, and try to do as often as possible.

It started off a little rocky.  On May 2, Josh and I were watching Jeopardy, and a light bulb switched on in my head.  I said "I don't think we are supposed to be watching TV this month".  I'm not sure if we forgot what May's without was, or if we didn't realize it was May, but either way we added two to the tally for May 1 and 2.

Then there was one night when Josh was exhausted and just wanted to veg out to the TV.  I don't blame him - his favorite spot to sleep is the couch, and there is no better way for him to sleep on the couch than to watch TV - but, I held strong.  He fell asleep to Treasure Quest, and I read in the other room.

Full disclosure: we did watch Netflix toward the end of the month.  We talked it over and decided it didn't count.  With TV, we found that we just watched whatever was on.  It sucked us in, and took up the entire night.  With Netflix, we are much more mindful about what we watch.  Netflix requires you to actively select what  to watch - meaning you don't get drawn into some celebrity dive show that comes on after Jeopardy and you really don't care about it, but it has lots of shiny costumes and similar to a train wreck you just keep watching until its over.  Although unlike a train wreck, in five years I won't remember how that one celebrity I don't recognize totally rocked her dive, but I'm sure I'd remember the train...motivation to keep avoiding TV.

Lesson:
Don't waste time on something that is not worth remembering.

Tally:
Josh: 3
Kiki: 2

Update on TV as of June 14 - we still aren't watching TV.  And we don't miss it.  Its wonderful!  We still watch Netflix, right now we are totally into Wilfred and Arrested Development (we realize we are late to the party on both of those shows, but they are great!), we only watch 1 or 2 episodes a night - that's only 40 minutes of TV and no commercials.  Instead, we spend our evenings doing fun things, last night we decided to go see the new Star Trek in 3D, earlier this week we went to Leonard's favorite dog park.  Most of these nights we end up chatting and eating dinner at the kitchen table.  It feels good to connect, catch up with each other, and enjoy the lovely centerpiece my husband brought home.

April - no drinking

Unlike March, April's without went swimmingly!  Avoiding drinking was very easy, and Josh and I both succeeded with flying colors.

The only time Josh or I felt challenged was when we went skiing.  After finishing up our ski day, heading down to the camper, taking Leonard for a long walk and getting dinner together, it was 7 o'clock.  Then we realized we didn't have anything to do.  We might have gone to the Elk for a beer, but that was out.  None of our other friends brought their campers up that weekend, and UNO is only fun for so long. 

It was actually really interesting to learn how hard not drinking at Crystal was.  I didn't realize how much of the fun of taking the camper up is the ability to have a few drinks after a ski day, and that skipping that part changed the experience.  Its something we could get used to but it was an eye opener.  And that, is the entire reason we are doing the year without, to be more aware of these types of things.


That said, I did go to Boston and visit Belle in April.  I see her 3 times a year if I'm lucky and I can't be expected to have a girls weekend without sharing a bottle of wine with my best friend.  I visited for 3 days.

April total:
Josh: 0
Kiki: 3

March...in June

March update!

It took me so long to get to this because I am ashamed of how awful we were on the withouts in March.  The goal was to get rid of one thing every day, and we thought it would be easy.  We were so wrong!

I took a piece of paper and wrote the days of the month on it.  Every time we got rid of something I added it to the list.  Every day we missed, I wrote an "X" on it.  Here it is.

I tried (in vain) to continue this without through April and beyond, which is why some of the "X's" have an item next to them.  It didn't work.  "Cleaned out fridge"?  I got desperate...

If I do this one again, it will be get rid of 31 things (or however many days there are in the month), but not one thing every day.  Its very hard to come up with one thing each day, it would be easier, and probably more effective to do a couple of mass clean outs where we come up with a bunch of different things to get rid of at one time.  Lesson learned.

Bad month for us, good month for charity - Add to the Tally:

Josh: 28
Kiki:  21

Lime Kiln Trail

Over the Memorial Day weekend Josh and I went for a hike with Grandma, Papa, Dad, Kelsey and Leonard.  Grandma, an avid hiker, selected an awesome hike - The Lime Kiln Trail in Granite Falls.  It was a 7.5 mile round trip out to a great spot on the river for lunch with beautiful views and lots of cool artifacts on the way.

This spot was a little hairy. There was a thin board you had to cross, but we all made it just fine!

In the early 1900s this was an actual lime kiln site.  There were all sorts of neat artifacts along the trail.  I really enjoyed the old saw blades.

There were a ton of them, and it makes you think about what it might have been to use those giant things out in the wilderness.

This was a piece to an old stove.  I thought it seemed awfully pretty to haul out to a work site.

Here is Josh with his best Chandler expression, next to the actual Lime Kiln.

Here is me starting to climb it.  This is before I realized it'd be impossible to get down safely, and before we saw the sign telling us not to climb it.

Here is Dad - I think he is telling us how tall something was?

 Kelsey and Leonard, leading the way.

I'm happy we went, we really enjoyed seeing everyone and it reminds me that even though it can be hard to find the time to get together.  Its always worth it, and we need to do it more often!