It Begins
We started off April at the ocean with some family. It was nice to get that down time away (mostly) from electronics and just do nothing. But this past week of warmer daytime temperatures has us spinning up a bunch of projects and tasks around the property. So this week’s discussion is another roundtable of topics.
Downtime is hard for me. I certainly get my share of TV watching and social media time, but completely disconnecting is a challenge. I always think about what I should be doing. So the ocean works pretty well as the cabins we visit do not have any distractions. Just the waves and the sand. Cell phone coverage is spotty, so even texts are questionable. We played board games, took our time making meals, walked the beach, and just.slowed.down. But I still got some time to learn, reading about how blockchain works and doing some testing on ham radio knowledge.
I think everyone thinks of spring cleaning as the weather gets warmer and we are no exception. The wife tackled the sunroom, getting a bunch of out of the room that is still somewhat a storage area and scrubbing it down top to bottom. She got our games put in other storage alternatives and got the things we did not want any longer setup for each of the kids. The nice thing is that it meant a day for seeing most of the kids to get things out of our house. We also ended up with a rocking chair from one of the kids they no longer wanted. We got a place to sit in the sunroom to look over the property and they cleaned up a bit of their garage. Win win situation all around!
Bathroom renovation continued with a couple of tasks. In the main bath I switched out the ceiling fan, which will help with moisture from the shower. In the master bath I was tearing out both supply and waste lines that were running through the middle of the shower area now that we moved the walls. It will be a blessing to convert all the different supply line materials over to PEX as I was reminded how “fun” it was to cut copper. I mean it isn’t that difficult until you are under the house, next to a beam, around a joist. Oh and waste/vent pipes right next to the supply line. But I did get my first experiences crimping the copper rings for PEX and the plugs I did are holding! But it is hilarious to see that supply line go from pvc to copper to PEX all in about two feet. Next up is getting the pan rough set to put down the plywood subfloor, getting the drain placement, and setting the level lines for the pan.
Of course spring means gardening and I have been working on hardening off my starts so I can get them in the ground next week. Though there are already some failures. In the photo above you can see my first zucchini and cucumber starts. I think I didn’t harden correctly and I think the sun killed them off. I say that because it has been a couple of days, but today was the first time the sun was out for almost the whole day. I still have others and they are going slower through the hardening process. I had extra, so gave this a shot. It will give me something to compare against I guess. I also planted carrots and spinach in the raised beds. Since I didn’t even think about a garden until May last year (and the plants didn’t go in until the end of May), I’m hoping that the extra time will mean even better results. It is already going to be cheaper with seeds versus transplants and we’re doubling the amount of food going in. Plus another first for me is that 4 of the items started this year were seeds I saved from plants last year that actually germinated. I am most thrilled about those!
The other plant we are thrilled to see coming up is our peonies. I divided and transplanted this year and both sets are doing great. What we really like about these plants is that they have a family history being passed down from my Mom’s Dad’s Mom. I could have said Great Grandmother, but hey. Some other family have some cuttings from the same original plant of my Great Grandmother, so that is a cool bit of history on our property. For us, we planted in at our previous house and that was the one thing from the yard that came with us. And yes, weeding is on the list, but you know I will show you the true state of things. No touch ups here!
Like everyone, we have a ton of things to do this summer season, but this year my wife and I will be working on how to better balance getting stuff done with time for family. One of our goals with the property is to have a place where our family can come together and make memories. We want to start the memory making this year. What do you all do to try to keep that balance?