And then it rained

So my DH and I have been getting all enthusiastic about doing some much-needed work on the house, right? You'd think this would make all good things better.

Well.

The last thing we had to do on the deck was to replace two joists. Simple, right? It began as a bit of a chore, because a lot of the screws that held the deck surface to the joists didn't want to come out, and some of them broke off. This is normal stuff for decks. When my mother rebuilt her deck, she came across the same thing.

But then when we pulled the first joist, we found that about three feet of the beam tied to the house that supported the joists was rotten. Not just a little rotten. I pulled out handfuls of sawdust and a couple of termites. On top of that, the wet damage extended down below the beam. I could push my fingers through the siding there. It ran along the family room window.

We have T-11 siding that's tied directly into the framing. There's no intervening plywood.

In short, we have a hole in the side of our house.

This isn't a DIY situation. Luckily, I have a neighbor who's a contractor. When the rain lets up, I'm going to ask him to come over and frown at the damage with me.

Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention. After a long dry spell, it's now raining. And we have a hole in the side of our house. After listening to it rain all morning from about 7:30am, and after the panicked realization that we have a hole in the side of our house and maybe I should like, you know, cover it?, I decided to check the weather report. Intermittent rain after 1pm, it says. Well it's pouring right now. I'm a little afraid to find out what it's going to do in the afternoon.

There's a tarp on the deck now. The section in front of the sliding door isn't safe to walk on, because it's missing a joist and the surface is too soft to trust our weight to it. But at least it's staying dry at the spot where there's a hole in the house.

Weeeee!

I don't know what we're going to do, but I expect that whatever we do will probably be expensive.

Wish us luck!

Staring out the window, wishing

Looks like Kat is going to be fine.  She's had an allergic reaction to something, possibly a penicillin shot or a pain killer shot from when she was messing with her incision.  She's on mild, low-dose steroids and should recover nicely.  Partly thanks to the meds and partly thanks to a draw of fluids from the lump to check the contents, her lump is a little smaller already.

I'm feeling better too.  My voice is almost back to normal and I had enough energy to go out in the rain and put nets over some plants the deer decided needed pruning.  The plants are fine, so far, mostly, but another hit and they'd be pretty sad and might not even recover.

I get weather reports twice a day--once in the morning, once in the evening--a forecast that looks at the weather every few hours out a couple of days.  It looks like the rain will trail away but I don't see any sun as of the latest forecast.  Ugh.  My question is, will we ever warm up enough to make planting the tomatoes and peppers in the ground worthwhile?  Maybe they'll just be in containers in the greenhouse until July.  I've got grasses and herbs to put out and the ground is like sludge--it's better to wait to plant until the soil drains and becomes friable again.  The slugs are rampant.  They love this weather.  They can be out all day and night.  The birds are miserable.  They've got to be having a tough time raising hatchlings in this.  The goats are annoyed.  The dogs are sullen.  We haven't had a river walk in ages.

The second year after we moved here we didn't have good enough weather for me to plant a veggie garden until June.  Back then I didn't have very many perennials and so the garden was a wash except for some strawberries and zucchini.  Thinking about that makes me feel better about the conditions this year.  No matter what happens we'll have a great perennial ornamental garden, heaps of herbs, grapes, elderberries, blueberries, currants, rhubarb, and even if they're just stuck in containers all season, peppers and tomatoes.  I bet I'll even get some nice zucchinis again.  They always produce, even in a short growing season.  Looks like the peach trees, unless the rain makes them mold and mildew to pieces, will have fruit and we always get some apples and pears no matter how bad the year is.  I guess I don't have that much to whine about.  Besides, the weather is a godsend for some people.

So here's me looking at the bright side of things.  I'll try not to be too much of a little kid, forehead braced against the window, staring into the rain and wishing.    

They're Here!

I finally snagged some pics of the grosbeaks.  Today was probably the most bird-diverse day we've ever had.  The grosbeaks mingled with juncos, varied thrushes, house finches, chickadees, robins, stellar jays, scrub jays and our lone nuthatch.  All at once.  Unfortunately it was raining when they all came so I could only sneak out once during a dry spell when the grosbeaks had chased the juncos out of the feeder.  By looking at our feeder it appears that we have only a slightly heavy sunflower seed mix, but looks are deceiving with this mix from Costco.  It includes quite a few shelled sunflower seeds.  It also has peanut pieces, but I don't know if the grosbeaks like those.  They're really picky about what they want as far as feeder food.  If you don't have enough sunflower seeds, they'll move on.  Our flock today was about ten individuals, mostly male but a few females.  I've seen as many as a dozen and maybe this year we'll see even more.  They tend to return to the same feeders on their migratory paths so there's an opportunity to get more and more each year as the chicks accompany their parents.

Also new today, hyacinths.  I'm sure they've been around for quite some time in the valley, but seeing them in full bloom here for the first time gave me one of those yay moments.  The low-growing tulips are stretching their necks, and all the early daffodils are open now.  The daylilies are tall enough that the fish don't look silly.  Roses are sending out their first leaves.  The tree peonies are opening their first flush of purple leaves and the regular peonies have buds peeking out.  Primroses are going crazy.  Hostas have their noses poking out.  Pansies have got their faces painted on.  The daphnes are getting ready to pop open while the lenten roses have been open for a good month and are wondering what everyone else is waiting for.  The place is starting to look up.  Maybe someday I'll have a garden that looks good year-round, but for now I have to wait until spring for my show and I'm so glad the opening act has started.

We had just enough sunshine that I managed to dash out and get our Christmas tree from this year planted, and I yanked more baby blackberries and put out slug food.  I know every year I lose quite a bit to slugs and most of the time I shrug it off, but this year I was very disappointed to see that slugs had destroyed several of those kewl tulips.  I don't know what's more heartbreaking--seeing a bud eaten down to just a little color showing or having the stem chewed through and the blossom laying in the mud.  The stub, I guess.  At least I can bring the blossom in.  Die slugs die!  I need to encourage more snakes, although this time of year the snakes are still napping most of the time and won't be eating much in slugs.  

The equinox is the day after tomorrow.  I don't know if I'll be doing anything special except welcoming the day.  I have to work, drat-0.  Maybe I'll celebrate by coming home to a clean house.  That means lots of work tomorrow.  Cleaning out the house is a semi-tradition here at the household on the equinox, not exactly a party, but really rewarding.  The mini-cleans I've done over the past weeks will help set the stage for a great spring cleaning, I hope.  Yay clean house, yay birds, yay spring!  Even when it rains, when the flowers are blooming it's a beautiful day.

Lots Ahead

I've done a lot of critiquing over the past few days.  First pages, Lucky Lab manuscripts, cowriting.  I've also done some polishing on Masks, but not nearly as much as I'd like to.  It's wild, but the dreary kind of wild like when you've been camping for ages with no one else around and all you really want is a home-cooked meal, a hot shower and your own bed.  I'm slowly crawling out from under my backlog, keeping up on the new stuff coming in, and I hope by the time Wednesday rolls around (my guesstimate for when I'll be done with all this) I can sit down and write uninterrupted.

I missed a critique meeting on Saturday.  It started to snow, and snow, and snow.  It was one of those snow storms that dumps several inches in a few hours.  If it had snowed steadily all day and night at that rate we might have seen accumulation that could be measured in feet rather than inches.  As it stood it was very off and on and had mostly stopped by 8pm.  Just a few minutes ago it started raining, which will take our three inches of slush and melt it all away in short order.  I'm surprised that we still have snow--it's about 40 degrees F out there.  The ground is really cold, though.  

Anyway, I'd already missed one Lucky Labs meeting because of work and I was really looking forward to making a meeting for once.  I find critiques so valuable, not just for the feedback but the inspiration.  I try to change locations when I write periodically.  When I write in my office I tend to write writing-in-my-office prose.  The prose freshens immensely when I hand write at work, or tap away on a laptop somewhere, etc.  I haven't had a chance to jostle myself out of this physical comfort zone for quite a while, so it makes critique groups even more valuable.  When I come back from one I feel as if I've been run through a wash and dry cycle.  My mind has had all the dingy grime washed away and the tangles have been brushed out.

Coming up, Radcon.  I've had a chance to pitch informally to coworkers (though I doubt they knew that was what I was doing) and although I'm still not very good at it, I'm starting to find my feet.  I don't think I'll be pitching Masks at Radcon, but you never know.  If an opportunity presents itself I think I'll go for it.  Chances are high that Masks will come back with a 'thanks for your sub but this doesn't fit our needs' note.  It's out of the slush pile, which is really fabulous, but now it's competing with nothing but promising novel concepts.  It feels wonderful to have gotten this far.  I have to be careful, though, not to let my subconscious settle me into a 'far enough' mode.  I'm outside my comfort zone and I'm sure all kinds of little status-quo demons will be busy at work trying to either stuff the worms back into the can or at least building a new, bigger can to keep the worms in.  Heh.  Out of the can and into the compost bin?  

There's lots ahead of me right now.  My life has turned into a page-turner.  I can't wait to see what's going to happen in the next chapter.

Gah!  Weather update.  It looks like this right now (4:36pm):

I was just getting ready to head out to the Olive Garden for a birthday party, too.  Denied!!  The temp was 40 degrees only a half hour ago, and it was raining, like I mentioned earlier in this post.  Now it's at 36 degrees and dropping.  I shouldn't have said anything about the snow melting away.  I have only myself to blame.

Blend

Still tired from this weekend. Tomorrow I have a day off, and then it's back to the retail trenches for a couple of days. I'm really, really looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. Whew!

Things and stuff:

While shopping for wine for the ABBB, Rory found Jest Pink wine. I'm so saving that bottle. When I put together the jester's garden hopefully I'll find a way to have it out there without risking the destruction of the label. Ideas are welcome. The Jest line of wines is a series of blended wines. For more info on what's up with that read: http://www.winereviewonline.com/splendid_blendeds.cfm

My family has discovered that there can be such a thing as too much chocolate cake. Anyone who wants to come over and help us eat (and drink) leftovers, btw, is welcome.

Yak pot roast is yummy.

Our friends are very tidy and considerate. Despite this, it will still take several days to clean up after ABBB. My mind boggles at the thought of what cleanup would have been like had our friends been wildly messy and inconsiderate.

The scent of summer rain after a long dry spell is very distinctive. Note to self--shamelessly evoke this in my next novel, Signet (working title.) It just happens that it'll be summertime, too, when the novel starts. Yay! But that wasn't the best part during the rain today. The best part was listening to the rain hammer the store's metal roof and remembering the kewl rain storm clapping game that Jill lead at the ABBB firepit circle and then right after work stepping out into that incredible scent and being outside myself completely, a part of the air.

Wizard is fast becoming one of my favorite kitties ever. When I come home he trots up to me and curls his tail into a question mark while rubbing against my leg. When I scratch his back and tell him what a nice face he has he bends down and rubs his chin on the ground, leaning over against the scratch until he rolls onto his side. It's become an elaborate greeting between us and he becomes confused and insistant when I don't follow through all the way to the roll.

The cricket songs are multiplying. Summer is growing late. Noooooooo!

This is the end of the blend, my friend.

Will it Rain?

Sometimes it takes me forever to get around to doing something new. If I've done it before, I tend to just heave a sigh, commit and go. If not, I go pathetically slow.

Today it was finally 'drip system' day. It's actually comprised of low volume sprinklers, not a true drip, but it was ideal for the rock garden, which is just under the maximum 600 square feet that the system can handle. After edging the grass side of the rock garden (a good delay tactic) and some weeding (yet another excellent stalling technique) I finally got out the 1/2" main line and strung it through the garden's backbone, the highest point on the slope. Then I read the instructions again. If you read the instructions often enough, it's possible to stall out on the work progress until dark. But it wasn't dark by the time I stopped reading. The fact that I started reading just after lunch time and that the instruction book is only 50 pages long and comprises mostly of illustrations and that many of the pages were not relevent to my situation probably has something to do with it. I set out my stakes and screwed in the little sprinkler heads, pointing them in roughly the direction I expected they'd need to point. and then I got the 1/4" feeder lines. At this point I almost read the instructions again, but severe boredom with the booklet was setting in. I got the punch thingy and started at the lowest end--since I left myself slack, if I made a mistake, I could just cut off the end and try again. But the punchy thingy turned out to be super easy to use. In about twenty minutes I had all the feeder lines in, the sprinklers hooked up, and bam. I flushed the system and then turned it on.

And it worked!

Now I want to set up the other dry places where I have to hand water. There's a couple that I couldn't justify a system because they're so small--I'll pick up a soaker hose for them. But the rest I'll get a drip system set up for them. Now, I could save a heap of money and just keep hand watering. I've got the hand watering areas down to a minimum. There's just one catch.

When we go to Victoria at the end of September, will it rain? If it doesn't the whole time we're gone, the garden will have to be watered. If it's hot, it'll have to be watered several times. Whoever ends up playing caretaker for the house needs to have a simple way to take care of the watering without memorizing where the important plants are among all the weeds. Once upon a time when a good friend played house sitter for us, we went for a walk around the place (it was all hand water back then) and he took notes and I was sure all the important bits would get done. There wasn't nearly as much developed and most of what was developed was in discreet, clear sections. Now some of those areas are overgrown or in partial use, like the veggie garden where some of the areas are fallow and others are in use and you can't always tell one apart from the other. And there are plants on slopes that need to be watered slowly or the runoff will strip away the topsoil, exposing their roots. I can't expect someone to stand there with the waterer in flat or mist mode, watching the water very slowly soak in.

The answer is to get as much of this stuff on water systems where the settings are correct for the plants' needs, and then our caretaker can just go from section to section, plug in the hose, water for a few minutes (or a half hour in the case of the soaker hoses) and then move on.

Or maybe it'll just rain and it won't be an issue. Then it'll just be a matter of feed the animals and go back home. Or go back to watching movies, if we have a house sitter, which would be the ideal. The place is more self-sufficient than it used to be, so a house sitter isn't an absolute necessity like it once was, but I'd sleep easier knowing that someone is there to quiet the dogs if they're barking at night or they'll hear a goat bawling if one gets stuck, etc.

Most of all, though, I hope it rains. At least a little. Because even when it's all set to go, it'll be a long chore. Mother Nature does a much more thorough job than the sprinklers and soaker hoses, too.