Landscape 2

This is a very late landscaping post. I am super exhausted from all that we are busy doing, I would love to blog more but am always running behind. I started the work to sell our property in August, the first thing that we did was landscaping. This was the last, and hardest bed that I did. The 110+ degree temps didnt help.

It was educational, relatively fun except for the heat. I was very glad for a hardworking tractor! I ripped out the old rock bed here, it had a plastic thing along the side to create the bed which I didnt like, and grass had grown up through the old ground cloth.

I was able to get very close to the house, leaving just a small strip to dig out by hand. The plastic butcher board (for chickens) is against the window to protect it from any stones or debris.


This is the pile that the bucket left, I couldnt get any closer without damaging the porch so had to shovel this out by hand. Doesnt look too bad huh? Well, the grass roots, the burried ground cloth and stones were pretty wearing... it took 2 days for that portion.

I just dug it out and filled the tractor bucket and took it to dump it along the side yard. We fished out the pieces of ground cloth and the stones will keep the foliage down in the tree line for some time.

More digging... I did find that the ground cloth ran many feet into the yard. I gave up excavation at about 3 foot out from the bed edge.

The stripped bed, mostly leveled.

The corner that had to be dug out, you can see where I stated to remove the groundcloth from the actual yard and gave up, at the bottom left of this photo.

Tacking down the groundcloth with small pins, they are long and U shaped, they are not hard to put in. This is a heavy duty groundcloth, though I know now that the people who lived here before had no weeds because they used weed control chemicals, I end up pulling weeds because I wont use those. Yes, I know there is graffiti on my house. My daughter is the culprit-she found that the "guts" of old drywall will write on things.

Finished bed! We bought cyprus wood chips from a local lawn and garden place for 20$ per bucket scoop-tractor bucket. It was a good size bucket and all of our mulch cost 100$ total.

Another view, I tucked the ground cloth under to create a longer, better weed prevention. The RR ties are not complete, I need a small piece cut and the end piece shimmed up but the actual bed is complete-the hard part.

Since then I have accomplished a lot of remodeling, 1 semester in college, started homeschool, sold a lot of our belongings, finished paying off debt completely (this wasnt work so much as determination), made our clothes, oh and other things. We have had a good two months!

Remodeling update

I am not on here a lot! Early on in this deployment I did well keeping up with posts, for my poor distant husband. He loves to see what the kids are doing. Change in computer systems and a broken camera, coupled with a larger workload has really hammered my blogging abilities. I have no recent pictures, this bathroom that the guys are working on is now nearly done! Eric came over and spent the day hanging drywall and an assortment of other tasks. He lets the kids help and along the way he teaches them which they love.


The bathroom pictured is one of 4, and only 1 of the 4 wasnt in some state of "torn up." This one is the kids bathroom. Tad and Nathalie both learned to measure, mark and cut drywall. Tad learned how NOT to cut drywall in case the razor knife slipped. He learned what his femoral artery is, and what % of chance he had of living if he cut it. The % was only above 0 because Eric and I are both educated in emergency medicine.


Eric did help with their scoring, but they both have the concept now and appreciate how careful the cuts need to be once they saw the mudding process. Tad has cut his piece with Eric's help here.


Now once it is folded back, he can carefully cut the paper at the other side and has his pieces. I didnt get any good photos of Nathalie helping but she did, in between her art projects. I didnt do much more than cook lunch, the 4 of us dont fit comfortably in a bathroom!

I have some good pictures hidden on my camera (that wont work) of my friends Amanda and Jeremiah (and offspring) here for a wkend. They came up to install a bathtub in one of the other 3 bathrooms. That leaves nothing but tile needing to be done in there which is wonderful! Tile I love to do, installing a bathtub-well I lack education there... Amanda had some great ideas and together they created something that will be easy for me to tile, and very attractive to us and the buyers of our home. I appreciate the help I have had from friends. Eric's drywall work allowed me to complete 1 bathroom altogether, and the next one nearly. I mudded, sanded and painted the one bathroom and laundry room-they are checked off the list.

I finished the drywall and mud, sanding and painting in the kids bathroom with some extra help from the kids and Jeffrey (Eric's son). I have spent the last wk mudding the cracks in paneling in my hall and foyer. They are dark areas-no windows, no high ceilings and thus the paneling is overwhelmingly dark. I dont like paneling ever but in the vaulted living room the bit of wall that is paneling is manageable. After 3+ layers of mud, I was able to prime the hall and foyer today. I was excited to be that close to done! My house goals were to finish all that I have listed plus the tile in kids bath. I have that and painting in hall left! Then I will move on to the tile in our bathroom and possibly the paint in the living room.

As for the outside, Tad and I have mowed and brushogged all 6 acres, cleaned out all but 1 barn. On the barns Nathalie helped but on the brushogging-the girl cannot drive! During those times she cleaned house, did laundry and cooked dinner. My 4000 $ (that we did for 200$) landscaping jobs are lovely and I am so glad they are done, they were my biggest worries because I hadnt landscaped before. I have good pictures of the other beds completed but once again... camera troubles. Tad will fix it tomorrow or I will buy a new one before I go farther in remodeling. I dont want Frank to miss one step in the work we are doing. He is sad about not being here and misses this time very much.

We are excited about our upcoming move, and the changes in our lives. As always, we want to remember and count our blessings until we are so full from them that we can make it over life's hurdles with patience and happiness.

Lost camera

I lost my camera, and the other one is broken (my good one) and there is another little one that is both lost and out of battery. None of this is normal for me, I love to take pictures! I will give you an update and find my camera asap.

Because we are moving to Alaska shortly after Frank comes home, there is a lot of work to do. We have a lot of paperwork with the insurance company over the shop burning down. Also, we have to demo the site. For a small amount of money (that I made) a man in a town nearby collected the metal-which was the bulk of the shop rubble. He can turn it in to make money, and I didnt have to do all the work alone. We do get paid for demo, but we rather demo ourselves. Now I need to clean up the remaining chard wood (burn it) clean up any obvious trash (dump) and then figure out the ashes.

The landscaping-it is all done, and the beds are beautiful especially considering my lack of decorating abilities. Our friend Eric helped me with the beds and has one more job to do...I have to have a small piece of rr tie cut down which I am not capable of with no chainsaw.

The property otherwise-almost all brushogged, (Tad and I do this on the tractor) mowed (Tad), weed eating done (Tad and myself) and some hedging where the brushog cannot go (Tad). During this time Nathalie kept the house clean, laundry done and food cooked. We still have a little more cleaning and repair in the barns, but have sold most of our farm stuff and all animals save 2 crazy, wild chickens. A bantam rooster and his hen-they live off the land.

Have 2 rooms to clean out, pump room and jacuzzi room. The jacuzzi was sold long ago but has junk in the room. These things will go to the dump.

Rest of the house has been mostly cleaned and organized, we have a few more things inside to sell. We are selling a lot of our goods because we want to move to Ak without a lot of stuff.

Remodeling-I am almost done with one bathroom. Eric finished the drywall for me, now I need to finish sanding the mud which I did and paint. Bathroom # 2, Eric finished most of the drywall. I need to finish that, mud, sand and paint. Then I have to tile the floor. Bathroom # 3, Jeremiah-friend from south of here- did the bathtub this wkend, a job I couldnt do alone. It had many problems that came up which he was able to solve right away, they would have stumped me. We had a great wkend with his family, and and the bathtub is perfect. I now need to tile the shower walls, finish the drywall around the top, paint it and tile the floor. I pealed the wall paper from it yesterday.

Bathroom # 4 isnt gutted. We gutted part of the laundry room because the pipes broke. Gutted # 2 because it had carpet and no shower-just an old tub. New tub, new shower, but couldnt do new floor because the floor sagged. Why? Because next door our bathroom, # 3, had the main floor supports cut out underneath for the drain. Why? Because people make poor decisions-it wasnt us this time. We had to then gut that bathroom shower-learned there was empty wall space so a full shower/tub would fit, and so that made 3 bathrooms gutted partially. A lot of work, but he didnt intend for us to move so soon.

Now today is our first official day of school, didnt work out 2 wks ago so here we are! Photos later.

Landscaping bed 1

We are finished with our landscaping except for a small piece of rr tie which I cannot cut myself. Due to my chainsaw being burned up in the fire. Oh, and my lack of desire to use a chainsaw. I am not fond of them. We obtained a landscaping quote, and it was unmanageable so some help from a friend for tree cutting and removal, Tad and I started a long 10 days of (literally) muscle pulling labor. This was our back patio. After some of the work, the weeds between these stones were over our knees. The bed along the house was an old creeping evergreen that had long since died, and under that was a myriad of ground cloth, weeds, and heavy small rocks.

This area is under the deck steps and it is north of the patio just mentioned, still on the back of the house. Dirt and weeds were growing nicely under here.


Why I didnt load the tractor bucket... I do not know. I had to dig out this bed by hand fully, unlike the front bed (not pictured and much more work), I couldnt scrape any of it with the tractor. I dug it out, put it in the this poor old rusted thing (the tire stays flat) and hauled it off (after sifting it for trash) to the tiny tree line we have. The rocks will keep down weeds there for a couple more years.



Mulch, we bought this by the scoop-bobcat scoop and paid 20$ a scoop. Our total landscaping needs were covered by 7 scoops so 140$ in mulch. I made a total of 3 trips to the small town 8 miles from us to pick this up as well as ground-cloth and pins.


Previous post to this one showed pictures of Tad and Eric trimming back this bush. It was much eaiser to work with the bush trimmed, and it will come back much nicer next year.


I laid the ground-cloth. It was at this point, after hitting my thumb with a hammer putting in pins, that it occured to me that I possibly had not googled landscaping enough yet. Maybe I should have read a few more articles. I felt suddenly unsure in this territory. Doesnt this qualify as something pretty, decorative? Purposefully artful in a way that doesnt produce food or functional clothing? This is not my area. Deep breaths. Saving 4000 $.

Once again, working by hand. My tractor bucket cannot scoop it out of the truck bed. I filled the bed with mulch, making sure I kept it below the rock edge and covered the ground-cloth evenly. I began to spread mulch around the AC and the trimmed bush, but these things had no proper edge. Back to the decoration issues.

The fatal error of this small tree was to grow inside of this bed. Tad did away with the small tree.

My little daughter does poorly in the heat, and cannot handle bugs. In spring and early summer, she works well in the yard but we dont often see her mid/late summer. She keeps the house in a constant state of clean, keeps the meals cooked and laundry done and brings us water regularly. This evening was a cooler than average evening, and there were no bugs so here she is happily sweeping. With a broken broom. The good broom was in the shop. Now its still in the shop I assume. Or it went where all good brooms go?

We found the square end shovel to be wonderful for removing the weeds. The dirt somehow piled up on these stones over the years, I do not know why but there were large piles of it on top of some stones and IN the dirt grew nice grass.

The under the stair area after work, I edged/weed eated the edges, scraped out the weeds and dirt and the children swept and clean farther back. oh and we sold our stock pile of 55 gal plastic drums so they are not longer cluttering that area. So I MADE money while I saved the 4K in landscaping costs...

Finishing up the clean up. The area around the AC and the bush now has a nice rock garden surround. I found enough flat paving stones on our property to go seamlessly from the edge of the patio stones, right around the AC and bush. I made this rock garden, on my own, and we will not eat it, it will not produce something useful so I did a very good thing, though it was outside of my comfort zone. My children were astounded that I could do something so, not useful. Tad said, it is a nice rock garden. I said, maybe if we water it it will grow rocks for us and we can sell them and make money. He said, oh you want me to pee on it? Wow. My children need more civilization.

Side view of my rock garden. I am so proud of it! The old plastic furniture was here when we moved in, somewhere in the back field or something. We drug it in and sit on them, or sometimes they provide tent holdings when the children build tarp tents.

And the final view. This bed was a lot of work, though nothing compared to the front (west) bed. This bed is one of the eastern beds, the next one over will be shown as soon as I get the photos up. The north bed is has three tiers and then a flat top portion with stones, flowers and it used to have weeds. We have eradicated those and mulched.

There was a total of 4 beds to work. I have pictures of all of them, and my total cost came to 200$ and some change including fuel to pick up the supplies needed. 10 days of hard labor for a 10 yr old and myself, I am not sure if that translates into 4000$ but either way, we saved it, we learned a lot, had fun, a pulled muscle, a deep feeling of pride and you know, despite the fact that the only function is pretty, I do like them...

Trees and tractors

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As we are getting ready to move to Ak, my "TO DO" list is long and daunting. Our friend Eric was on leave this week and helped us for 2 days. He says I am a slave driver, but we got a lot done! Eric and his family have helped us with many of the things we have here, barn building, house remodeling, plumbing, tree cutting, log splitting, probably some roofing, the list goes on. He helped us Monday with landscaping, we pulled out an old creeping evergreen in the back patio landscape bed that was dead long ago and he and Tad trimmed back a flowering tree next to that bed.

Then we carried all the brush and branches to the burn pit, and Eric and Tad cut down/cut up a tree. Eric cut it down and then helped Tad use the chainsaw to cut some branches. Eric has a saw that goes on the end of his weed eater, its like a tiny chainsaw. It is a wonderful tool that I think I need, oh wait I need ALL of my tools again!

Many low branches were cut, as I couldnt brush hog under the trees with low-hanging branches. Eric said that we could move all of the old dead trees (they were the parts that were too large for us to cut with our small chain saw and split with our tiny log splitter) to one big neat pile. We did this with the tractor, Eric (sometimes with the help of the children) attached them to the bucket with rachet straps and then I followed his directions on when to raise/lower/tilt the bucket, back up/go forward etc. He is a good ground guide. There were only 2 times that I covered up my ears. For me, covering my ears signifies fear or worry. I hate the sound of things breaking, cars crashing, loud people, I have always covered my ears even when what I fear isnt a noise. I did fear tipping over, because I mean-the tractor DID go up on one side but as Eric explained, it wasnt going to tip over. The tree would right it when the tree hit the ground, because it was wider than the tractor. Which is reasonable.

I still covered my ears the next time it happened. One log was so heavy, we couldnt lift it so I had to drag it backwards, and then turn hard right when Eric said and deposited the heavier tree in the pile of other trees. Then Eric flipped it over. Alone. Which made the tractor feel a LITTLE bad about her abilities!

Nathalie is always bummed that I wont let her use a chainsaw, not even the tiny chainsaw on the weed-eater, and she cannot drive the tractor. But people, honestly, she cannot drive a barbie car without hitting at least 2 trees. She did find plenty of things to do though, she manned the fire after getting the hose, helped with limb pickup and got to help attach trees to the tractor. Oh and ride on the brush-hog. No, the PTO was not engaged. That would be irresponsible parenting.

Wednesday will be shown in another blog post, Eric helped us (he and the kids did the work) finish most of the drywalling in one bathroom, and all of it in the other. Tomorrow I am off to lowes to get the tools and supplies that I need to finish the bathrooms and paint in the rest of the house. I have a good landscape post as well! I was given a quote of $2300 to do half of the landscaping that we needed done, so I spent $75 so far, and MANY man hours and am about 3/4 done with all of the landscaping. It will cost around $200 total so thats better than $4600.

Thats all in updates. I missed a lot, blogging has fallen by the way-side with the move. Am sorry for that!

Identity

I have a lot of photos to show you of a yard work day with our friend Eric. I have uploaded them, but I am too tired to get them in order. We got a lot done, which is great because we are trying to list the house.

My TO DO list is longer than both of my legs plus my arms. I am hopeful that it will shorten, either by my hard work or my hard work and some good karma.

We have done school for 2 days, some book work was completed, 2 museums and much work.

Also, I just wanted to say this. Not to complain just to let you know.

If you have a tornado you may lose your children's birth certificates as well as their consular reports of birth born abroad. Someone may steal their social security card along with a few of your leftover belongings.

When they catch the guy, they will tell you he is in jail but we cannot give you the ss cards. They are by law his property. Justice.

If you do not have a shot record AND school record OR photo ID you cannot get a new ss card. You cannot get a mil ID for a child under the age of 10 (N), and homeschool paperwork doesnt count as school records.

You cannot get a birth certificate without a consular report of birth born abroad. I need both parents signature for this and it takes 8 wks. I have only one parent here.

I can get new passports because I have their expired passports, as long as I have birth certificates or consular reports etc. Which I do not.

So... I went on post and got a temp ID card for N, and a permanent for T. Because I do have shot records, and deployment orders. They put the date wrong on Ns. It is already expired. I have to go all the way back to base. But at least I can get an ID for her, for now. She cannot have a permanent until age 10.

I can now get SS cards when I get her card fixed.

I will send off tomorrow for a consular report, this will need signatures, so I have to have mine notarized. I spent 2 hrs today filling out paperwork and finding answers on this. So 8 wks from tomorrow, I will have this report and can get their new passports with the consular report. Then I can send off the consular report to obtain new birth certificates.

When everything comes in (bit by bit as some bits are needed for other bits so cannot be sent off for next bits and still other bits need the bits that the one bit has been sent off to get), I will have birth certs, ss cards, consular reports, passports and ID cards (T now, N temp but a regular one in a few mo) on my children! Hopefully in time to move. Because it is guaranteed that DEERS will lose their info, AGAIN and we will have to RE-ENROLL them in Tricare, which means we need ss cards, and bcs.

And to cross Canada, we need passports. That is easy for mine, I have my expired but for children under 16 even with expired its a whole new process... or a long one at least.

Now really, I am not complaining. It is a lot of confusing work but at least someone else will have a hard time "becoming" my child, at least some care is being taken despite the thief-criminal being able to keep our ss cards. At least I have time to get all of this done!

First day!

This is our back patio-all of these stones were grown up in weeds, some of them were spiny and hurtful. We have been pulling the weeds, and scraping heavy piles of dirt (from using it as a seed starting spot for my pots which eventually spilled), and relocating all of this. The area around the AC and under the purple flower bush will be mulched today to prevent the problem again. (growing up of weeds in unwanted area). The areas in between each stone has been/will be salted with rock salt as you dont grow things between patio stones on purpose. No other landscape beds will be salted, just layered with ground cloth and wood chips so a new owner can always plant in the beds.
This is just one of our many outdoor endeavors in preparation for selling. We worked 8 hrs a day the last 2 days, Tad and I on landscaping/mowing/brushog and Nathalie on house cleaning, errand running/water fetchign and cooking/cleaning up from both lunch and dinner.


Tad's first time weed eating, we have a very heavy weed eater. It was a bit more expensive,we wanted a 4 cycle engine (no mixing, just separate oil and fuel) and we wanted it to edge. Its edging capabilities are amazing and it is easier to use than other edgers I have tried. However, being larger and stronger makes it heavier and Tad cant use it for long before his arm is numb. This kid will work until he falls over, I have to require breaks! He has cleared nearly an acre of weeds/reeds by hand with a machete and a hedger. Sometimest he hedger isnt usable and he has to do it by hand. We are getting the whole 6 acres mowed, cleared, cleaned, brush hogged, landscaped, trimmed, edged etc. It will look wonderful for photos and be a good starting point for new buyers.

In other new today is our first day back to school! The kids are not quite excited, its nearly 10 and they are just getting ready for the day. We have always schooled year around, we didnt this yr and they are having to adjust now. Our school day will start in a few minutes adn looks like this:

History: story of the world on disk, work book questions read/answered out loud.

1 history topic chosen by turns that is researched and read about. Today's was done during breakfast-Nathalie's first question was "where did dog tags originate and why are they called that.

Science: Apologia Zoology of flying creatures 4-5th grade. I read the text they do some fun hands on work book stuff. Tad gets to choose the science video today. (we have DVDs and also use Netflix/National Geo and watch sci videos/series)

Handwriting: brushing up on cursive, will be for first month of school.

Spelling: Sequential, on board with me.

Math: Mammoth for Nathalie (she is in 4th this yr and is 3/4 way through with Singapore 4th grade starting to struggle so backed up to do a few mammoth's to get back on track) Tad is finishing up 4B in Singapore.

Reading: Mcguffey

French: Rosetta Stone, some days we also watch a DVD from other sources.

Bible: definately not last, but we do this at night. We have our bible reading in the evening because we always have. We are right now in Egypt, Moses is leading his people out of Egypt starting tonight.

So thats it! We are off to start, and then we have chores ahead of us. Tomorrow we have post first, to get ID cards (Tad is 10), and passports updated to go to Ak. So school is tomorrow afternoon.