before the snow flies

The weather has finally changed enough that I think winter may actually be just around the corner.  This long warm fall was a blessing, but as is typical with projects, I still failed to get my punch list finished.

As I mentioned before, there's little in the way of helpful photos in this post.  Organizing and transferring photos has been an onerous task, and I was so disgruntled over the summer I just stopped taking them...

 On the "before winter list" were a bunch of long overdue pile consolidations, with buggy wood trashed or burnt, a bunch put on it's respective surfaces where it belongs, and cutoffs given away as wildly desirable barnwood (strange, school wood doesn't carry the same cache).  I also got around to winterizing the basement doors - and while I didn't get a chance to paint them, I did paint a bunch of other bits and pieces.  Included in those bits and pieces were the smallest gable, and the pair of dining room windows.

Check out that vinyl!
I'm not exactly sure what possessed me to rip it down, but my gut was right...

Money ran out for new storm windows, so the window restoration of the bay will wait.  Getting the existing broken triple tracks out will be hellish, and is just not worth doing until we have something to replace them.  We also need to replace many missing bullseyes, but again, it'll have to wait...

Also done is the onerous digging of the french drain.  There seems to have been a stream that once came down the hill, which through the years now translates into a torrent of groundwater that was keeping the new brick floor of the schoolhouse perpetually damp.  We dug down and put in a small retaining wall of cinder blocks we've dug up from around the property about three feet from the schoolhouse, and installed the french drain up against the sonotube foundation.  There was nothing special about the install - landscape fabric, gravel, perforated pipe etc...  but it wraps around the side and back of the building and seems to be doing a stellar job.  We still need gutters, but at least we can push them back a couple of years.

The wall used up the last of the block, for which I'm beyond grateful, and it doesn't look too terrible.  At least, comparatively I suppose.  The rest of the super huge blocks (which we think were the foundation to the most recent garage on the property) were stacked to finish off the retaining wall where Mount Trashmore once was.  It'll have to be redone as some distant point, but for now seems like it'll be fine.

There's been a bunch of other happenings, hopefully I'll be able to catch you all up in the next couple of weeks, before turning attention to porch planning and interior winter work.

schoolhouse update

As usual, let's just skip the acknowledgment of how long it's been and just get right back into it...

We've been really busy, just not busy taking pictures since we've been finishing up after dark.  With the spectacular weather we've finally hit our stride with the schoolhouse (only 3 years into the project).  After all the hair-pulling about how best to use the original materials it's wonderous that things are actually going exactly to plan, and the siding is about 80% up.  I had intended to take some pictures this morning, but naturally everything's covered in snow again.  The most exciting development however is that we'll be laying the brick floor next week.

Laying the floor requires excavating some of the gravel we put down as a temporary floor, then laying and leveling the layers of stone and sand.  Given that neither of us are back in shape after babies and surgeries, we'll be happily paying our neighbor who did the foundation to do the heavy lifting for us.  We'll save money buying the stone by the truckload, which means our driveway will get a much needed refresh as well.  

As usual, one of the most satisfying parts of getting this done will be getting materials out of the way for good.  In this case, the bricks are the quintessential hard yellow brick Pittsburgh is known for - they and the sandstone came from a demolished mansion that used to stand behind us.  Previous owners dragged everything to the property line, where they proceeded to sink deep into the soil and get covered with decades of leaves.  Some of the piles are now sunk two feet down, and even with the warm days the most we can get out is the topmost layer that's melted, and then we need to wait another warm day or two for the next layer to melt....  We're hopeful that this project will use the majority of the brick (we'll still have a considerable amount of red brick and sandstone to contend with however) so that clean up and landscaping can begin this year.  

Another highlight of this project?  It'll mean that as soon as the floor is in, the huge yellow carport can go, although I dread the mudpit it will leave behind (and the malamute that will find the mud utterly delightful).  

And as an aside, I'm finding it easier to post real-time updates on instagram, so if anyone would like to follow along there you can head to  https://www.instagram.com/mayfairmistress/.

lofty

With fall coming at us full force (it was in the 40's last night!) we've started our yearly attempts at clean up and winterization.  First on the list is always getting the yard in order, which is easier said than done.  But we're off to a good start!

Mount Trashmore, the gift that keep on giving

mostly gone!

We got someone to haul away most of the mismatched cinder blocks we've unearthed from the hill, glorious!  There's more still buried, but we'll get to those later.

I know I haven't mentioned the schoolhouse much this summer.  It's been slow going, to say the least.  While we've put up siding a few pieces at a time, there's such a fear of running out of the oak for the upper section that it makes it hard to maintain any momentum.  Not only that, each piece is incredibly time consuming - don't forget, these are nearly 150 year old oak planks with uneven edges, widths, and thicknesses, full of holes and cracks, and badly warped.  The installation process includes sanding all the edges, priming the exterior side, clamping and shimming the board in place to minimize cracking, pre-drilling, then nailing with stainless spiral shank nails.  It's been about twenty minutes per board, at least they're blissfully short lengths.

Although that's been slow, we did finish installing the loft in the building.  We chose to put it in the back third (about 15 x 10), so it will serve as a ceiling to our workshop.  It's made up of three different homes worth of tongue and groove fir porch boards.  The age of the unpainted undersides of the boards blends in perfectly with the rest of the wood of the schoolhouse, while the uppers are a mix of colors which I find charming, although no one else will ever see them.

We needed to get this section finished for the storage it provided, at the moment we're moving up all of our salvaged tin ceilings, and I think my stash of wavy glass will end up here as well.  It's a shame, I had wanted to move our old king size mattress up here and snooze away the last nice days of the year....

paint it black

If I learned one thing in Charleston, it's that anything in a garden looks better painted black.  Were it not so late in the summer already I'd be playing out a goth version of Wonderland's Queen of Hearts, only with a black paintbrush instead of red.  Being that we've made little progress on the schoolhouse, that little fantasy will have to wait until next year....

Although we've been getting back into a new routine around here without Jack, I'm too lazy to try and formulate an actual post.  But in an effort to not let the blog whither and die, some pictures from Charleston's Magnolia Plantation...  I still owe them a letter after nearly choking at the sight of the docent walking, and rocking back and forth, on the cracked Victorian hearth tiles (yes, of course I said something) - but other than that it was enchanting, and worth a visit, if only for the adorable petting zoo (I almost took a friendly bantam rooster home in my purse)!

  

 

  

bees and thieves...

Two swarms in a day, whatever I've done to the Gods to deserve these ongoing plagues I beg their forgiveness, I repent, I REPENT!

So lots of bees, and some nefarious soul decided they needed one of the cobblestones from my front stairs.  Not just any stone, but one that was supporting quite a few of the other stones that made walking up to the house possible.

bottom center, you can still see the squished mud where it sat...

A least no one has stolen my black irises this year.

I somehow forgot to take pictures of the majority of my flowering shrubs this spring (you know, probably because spring lasted about a week this year). Although they were hit hard by this crazy winter, the ongoing pruning and weeding has made them quite lovely and robust, and I'm glad I gave them a few years to recover from the decades of neglect.  The winter also decimated the ivy covering our front berm.  While I'm not a huge fan of it, there are far worse things - for instance, the honeysuckle that I've been on a three year campaign of terror against.  The out of control honeysuckle was one of the main culprits for all the dieback of the original shrubs back when we bought the house, and it's taken the opportunity provided by the mostly dead ivy to come back with a vengeance.  Luckily the ivy's starting to recover, but it will be a long summer weeding...

irises blooming for the first time since
owning the house (divided them last year)

diablo ninebark

delicious mock orange!

I wish I could insert the smell!

Poison ivy?  I guess there's worse things than honeysuckle

I have been doing things other than weeding though, and I'll attempt to provide some photographic proof later this week...

and all that we want is a shady lane...

Last year at around this time we were having the Dr. Seuss' garden conversation (http://www.sparrowhaunt.com/2013/04/the-color-purple.html).  With that pressing issue resolved we were left to find street trees that fulfilled MANY criteria, including maxing out at 20 feet, non-destructive roots, high crown, indestructibility, and some level of uniqueness/beauty.  We had thought about planting hawthorns to match those on the other side of the street - but those trees are doing terribly, so it was obviously a poor choice.  What we came up with instead was Amur maples (flame cultivar).  Incredible fall color in addition to all the other requirements, plus pretty leaves and persistent red seed pods.

 The problem was, I couldn't find them anywhere!  Once I make up my mind I'm fairly stubborn, and even online these were not only small, but very expensive as well.  So we had resolved to leave our sidewalk bare for the time being.  On a whim I looked them up again this spring, and lo and behold Lowes said they were stocking them at all their stores.  This ended up being a lie - but we tracked down one store about 45 minutes away that was the only Lowes to get them in the region.  The drive was well worth it, we found three highly branched, 10 foot tall trees for $34 each.  Sometimes the big box stores really come though...

This leaves our sidewalk with 3 Amur maples and 2 Grace smoke trees which flank the stairs.  There are two tree wells that are too close to the telephone poles for trees, so we'll probably plant more of the Wine and Roses weigela that flank the stairs if they do well this season.  The rest will just be planted with free daylilies and irises (hurray for craigslist and freecycle) as they seem to be made of steel and maintenance free.  On the house side of the sidewalk are the existing ancient mock oranges, roses and lilacs, blooming again after a few massive prunings since we bought the house.  At 11:00 last night we also picked up 5 beautiful boxwoods and about 20 huge variegated hostas (thank you mystery craigslister).  Three of those boxwoods are now planted on the new section of the berm that was created when we closed off the driveway, with the hostas serving as edging.  Although none of these plants are that exciting on their own, the fact that after all these years the house is beginning to have a cultivated garden again is more that exciting enough for me.  

Today - don't mind the chunks of concrete the trash truck wouldn't take

Before we closed on the house - ivy and "driveway"

right after closing

November 2012 after finishing the driveway and sidewalks

There's a lot more that needs to be done over the next couple of weeks (before it gets hot!), but I'll wait until things have leafed out a bit more so you can actually SEE the lovely new plants in question unless of course the cat eats them first.