Pergolas, threes, decks and floors

It has been a busy week here at 10702 Norman.  Alan, magic Alan the construction guy (who did the hardwood floors and painted the walls inside the house), has started on the deck area.

He built us a beautiful pergola (below) on which we have already hung the windchimes (one on the right  is a Frank Lloyd Wright model given  us by our friend Susan Brown and the one on the left was made by Frank's Dad many years ago.  The picture on the right is of Frank as Pergola Man hanging the windchimes.

 

The whole neighborhood is awash in flowering trees and the azaleas are about to burst into bloom.  The orange-pink azaleas in the back of the back yard are already blooming, underneath the weeping cherry tree.  The front yard's white dogwoods are all in full bloom.  In the back, next to the deck, is a beautiful Japanese maple that overspreads what is left of the grape hyacinths.

Every morning, I spread peanuts in their shells along the deck's brick walls for the squirrels, bluejays and other small mammals.  By the time I leave for work, the peanuts are gone!  The small mammals don't waste any time getting their share.

Not to shortchange the large mammals, Frank and I visited Home Depot on Saturday where I purchased a double smoker grill (one side gas, the other side charcoal).  It took us all afternoon to assemble but we only lost a no. 5 nut in the process. To prove it worked, we did hamburgers and hotdogs on the gas side for supper last night and invited Alan and Marcello to join us (they are busy reflooring the basement family room to cover the old 1950s era asbestos tiles).  The grill performed marvelously as did the grillmeister (Frank).  And so another weekend of tasks has been accomplished.

Lawncare, gardens, and the Mr Green Jeans Syndrome

Luckily, I am still employed and have to be somewhere else five days a week under adult supervision and control.  That gives me literally an "out" except on weekends.  [And it gives me an hour long commute at twice the price from our old digs in Shirlington (Oh well!).]

Frank is not so lucky.  He is on house and grounds duty 24/7.  That's called a retirement perk!  So Frank has been bearing the brunt of flower-planting, ground maintenance, tree planting, and wondering what in the hell that thing over there in the corner is and what should we do with it?  He has been hosting visits from arborists assessing our inventory of very tall and old trees (and telling us trees need to come down, trees need to be pruned, trees need to be left alone, etc. etc.).  For his birthday, I gave him two fig trees  (the Taylors love everything figgy).   He planted them as soon as he could. (That's our weeping cherry tree in back of him.)

Also for his birthday, Nancy, Frank's sister, gave him an electric tiller, which he wanted for the patch of lawn he wanted to dig up to plant the lilac trees and peonies we had gotten at the amazing Betty's Azalea Ranch (about 3 miles from us.)  So, Frank has been spending a lot of time outdoors reddening his fair skin in the sun and getting things done.  In fact, he spends most of the day time outside working and plotting and planning.  Here's Frank as Tillerman, chewing up the turf with the new tiller.  Lower left are the large patch of grape hyacinths that came with the house - we keep finding all sorts of plants that the previous owners installed.  Those kinds of surprises we like!

There are also the worrisome things, like the little volcano-like dirt cones with an opening in the top, that are all over the front and back yards.  And the imminent deluge of cicadas that will be humming and crawling and falling and dying in the weeks to come.  Here's one of those cone-things (we have yet to see anything come out of them):

Last night I came home from work to find that the phlox I had bought to plant along Norman Avenue had already been installed.  Frank had gone back to Betty's (where they know us on sight) for compost, ended up with sweet earth, then stopped by the Walmart to get a pitchfork, and dug and mixed and planted and watered and ... and ... and ...

Not surprisingly I have been looking online for a set of green bib overalls in his size.  Those of you who are our contemporaries may remember Mr. Green Jeans from Captain Kangaroo days!  I think there is a Mr Green Jeans syndrome at work with Frank right now.  And that's a good thing.

Newbies

At the beginning of March 2013, we moved into our new home at 10702 Norman Avenue. We've never had a yard, much less half an acre and we were moving from an 875 square foot townhouse to a 4200 square foot ranch house and from a two storey rowhouse in Pennsylvania to the same new home.  Two houses into one.  Wasn't that a lot of somethings to put somewhere?  Now 6 weeks later we are still discovering that what we need or want is "somewhere" that mysterious place to which things go when you pack and move.