Projects both inside and outside this week soaked up some of our energy. On Saturday, a sunny warm day, we journeyed to Abigail’s house to construct a new raised planting bed for vegetables. This one is constructed of 2 x 10 treated eight foot timbers. It ended up being 12 feet long and 4 feet wide, at a depth of 19 inches. We took a break in the afternoon for the bi-weekly Family Zoom call from Abigail’s deck and then finished up the construction project.
On Sunday, Easter Day, we awoke to a warm sunny morning, perused the Omaha World Herald on-line and retrieved the Sunday New York Times from the front yard. Earlier this year, we transitioned from the print addition of the daily rag to the on-line edition. As confirmed local tabloid readers, the electronic method is less than satisfying. It is very hard to sit on the front porch, nursing a morning coffee in the early light, and try to page back and forth on the iPad tablet. The page views keep changing of their own accord, throwing off any rhythm the reader tries to gain. The decision to switch to electronic is the result of an increase to nearly $600 per year for the paper edition. To say we are dissatisfied with this change is an understatement. There definitely are pluses to the Luddite life.
Sunday afternoon we trekked back to Abigail’s to finish work on the raised bed. Mark finished up some minor construction issues while Deb and Abigail did some yard clean up. We dumped a couple of bags of leaves into the bed box and then Mark and Abigail hauled the top soil over to the box, slit the bags, and dumped in the soil. our thirty bags of topsoil barely made a dent in the box. Looks like we are going to need more dirt, so we made plans for another run for the coming week.
Monday morning, the two of us donned our painting clothes and put final coats on the basement walls; in the afternoon,Mark set up his saw horses, miter saw and equipment in the basement, staging for cutting the base mouldings and trim for the basement project while Deb prepared for a client meeting scheduled for late afternoon. Strange how work now seems to get in the way of all our “fun” projects.
Last week, we learned that our friends Dell and Karen were driving in from Phoenix to Kearney, Nebraska to visit their twin daughters for the Easter weekend. On Monday they drove in to Omaha to visit their new great-grandchild and to have dinner with Karen’s sister Cathy and her husband who still lived in Omaha.
Tuesday morning they stopped by our house for a few hours conversation and a cup of coffee. How strange but warmly exciting to welcome them into our home, unmasked and unworried about the COVID. All four of us are well past our vaccination dates, so were able to hug and sit in the same room, sipping our coffee and catching up. In person is so much nicer than Zoom meetings, though because of these regular Zooms, we did not need to recap the year past.
Tuesday afternoon, Mark worked on the basement while Deb toiled in the office area. That evening we welcomed our friends Lee and Howie Needelman for dinner of our favorite LaCasa pizza, some salad and bottles of red wine. Lee provided ice cream and cookies for dessert. We sat on the patio for a bit enjoying our class of wine before heading in to dine at the dining room table. They headed out around 8:30 to go walk their puppy, and we were again able to hug some vaccinated friends. There are clear benefits in this pandemic for being old and early recipients of the vaccine.
Wednesday we were back to Menard’s, ordering another 60 bags of topsoil, a half dozen bags of dark brown mulch and rented another truck from them to carry it all home. The yard crew at the store fired up the forklift and loaded the pallet of soil into the truck. Off we drove to Abigail’s and set up a bucket brigade of the two oldsters and the two daughters to unload the material from the truck. That took a quick 15 minutes to stack it on the front lawn.
Next we loaded the two extra 2 x 10 boards into the truck for return/refund and then loaded Darcy’s queen size mattress, pad and particle board bed frame into the truck. An unknown moisture source (spill, animal accident?) had stained the mattress and started to mildew so it had to go. We drove off on the next leg of our project while Darcy spent a hardworking 45 minutes wheelbarrowing the 2400 pounds of top soil around to the back yard - this a real life saver for the old folks! We drove to the dump/recycling location, paid our $20 fee and drove in to throw off the mattress, pad and broken down bed frame. Then back to Menard’s to turn in the two returned boards and rid ourselves of the truck. We were home and done by 1:00 in the afternoon just as the rain started.
Wednesday morning Mark finished most of the work in the basement and later that afternoon we experienced a two and a half hour power outage due to some faulty network equipment in the neighborhood. We put this enforced lull to good use by dozing off in the family room - everything we work with or read is now electrically powered except for some magazines already scoured. Later in the afternoon, our neighbor and electrician Tom Babb stopped over to hook up the ceiling light fixtures, receptacles and switches in the basement.
Thursday Mark finished up the moulding work, applied the caulk to hide gaps in the finished product and began work on assembly of shelving units that had been purchased from Amazon and stored in the garage during the duration. Deb headed out for grocery shopping required to sustain us for the next few weeks.
As Friday is a bright sunny day, we are now headed back over to Abigail’s this afternoon to dump the 2,400 pounds of topsoil in the box, hoping that this will be enough to raise the level for planting the potatoes, carrots beets and other root vegetables envisioned for this spot.
We still are looking for some time to get our own garden in order, cleaning up winter debris, uncovering the sprouting plants and generally getting things beautiful again. Keep your masks on in public, make your vaccination appointment if you can, stay away from strangers, and wash your hands. We want you all safe.
