September 2019 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Bricks and mulch and backache, oh my!

It’s been a busy pair of weeks here between the shed removal and preparing the garden for winter. When we demolished the shed, we found a stacks bricks hidden behind it. I couldn’t tell how many bricks there were, since the stacks were at an angle, partially because the dirt there is uneven. Some stacks were higher than others, and some bricks were fairly solidly sunk into the dirt. I hoped there would be enough to brick around the star-shaped bed in the front yard; with a solidly defined line, I’ll be able to tell when the grass and weeds begin encroaching on the mulch (as opposed to when the mulch has spilled out onto the grass).

Mission accomplished! And then some… the star used about 80 bricks, the mulberry bush another 60, and I’m now working on ringing other garden areas, such as the hibiscus plants. By the time we finished those, there may be enough bricks left to ring the peonies.

Top left: star-shaped bed with old mulch and partial circle of bricks; top right: star-shaped bed with new mulch and full circle of bricks; bottom left: mulberry bush with a small circle of mulch and weeds; bottom right: mulberry bush with new mulch and a circle of bricks

Once the bricks were in place, it was clear something else was needed… fresh mulch! Most mulched areas need refreshing at least once a year, both for look and weed suppression. I frequently stop at the city’s mulch pile for a couple buckets at a time, but I knew I needed more for this project. I had several yards of mulch delivered and am quickly distributing it across the yard, with a goal of clearing the entire pile in under two weeks. After all, it’s technically fall, and we have no way of knowing when the temperature will drop.

Guess where the backache comes in…. Hauling bricks and mulch around the yard is not light work. Fortunately, the bricks are right by the raspberries, so we can stop in-between for snacks.

Demolition!

One of my goals for the year (that I didn’t list here) was to demolish and replace the shed that came with my house. We’ve known since we moved in that it would have to go eventually – the base board is supported by a few bricks rather than a foundation, the doors didn’t quite fit together when they closed, and one side of the roof had retained moisture to the point where it grew mushrooms along with other molds. And that wasn’t the side where water dripped in!

When I opened the shed in the spring, I discovered that somebody had been living in it over the winter, courtesy of a hole dug through the far wall. This, on top of the many hard to spot hornet or yellow jacket nests (all abandoned by this point) was the tipping point. The yellow jackets were a problem the first summer here, leading to this little tidbit one morning:

“So this morning, I took a big bucket of soapy water outside after layering up really well and proceeded to totally whiff when flinging the water at the shed door. I aimed too low. On the plus side, I didn’t disturb any of them, so I was able to refill the bucket and try again.”

The yellow jackets had built nests on the inside of both shed doors, which made retrieving gardening supplies … nerve-wracking. Having discovered them just after a trip to Menard’s, I looked online for options other than bug spray, and found out that soapy water adheres to their wings and prevents them from flying, even once it’s dry. And the water dissolves the nest.

Now, three summers later, we finally reached the demolition stage. The upper left photo shows the roof after I started peeling shingles off – the wood was damaged enough it was breaking during the process. The upper right photo was taken during the fun process involving a pry bar and sledgehammer, with a controlled approach to make sure the shed fell into the garden rather than the neighbor’s fence. The bottom two photos are the remnants, with the smaller pieces lined up against the wall waiting for the city’s semi-annual trash day; the big pieces will take a couple people to move. The base board will come up as well – there’s a rotted section just before the bricks.

The bricks? Yes, those came with the house too, hidden behind the shed… who knows how long they’ve been stored there. I have plans for them, though not for the rolled up fencing that’s entangled with raspberries at the moment.

Brookfield ZooRunRun 2019

It’s five-thirty on a Sunday morning. I woke before my alarm, pre-heated the oven, and showered before feeding the cats. In fact, the oven beeps to tell me it hit three-fifty as I walk back into the kitchen surrounded by the offended felines. I grab the tray of sausage biscuits – prepped the night before – from the fridge, shove them in the oven, and move towards the cat food.

It’s six-twenty when we hit the road, ten minutes earlier than planned. We drive towards a brilliant sunrise, but don’t take a photo because we know a phone camera from a moving vehicle won’t do it justice.

The packet pick-up runs until seven-thirty; we arrive just after seven. We park in our preferred area, the Lions section, and pick up our t-shirts and race bibs. There are people warming up in the parking lot as we drive in, but many others haven’t arrived yet. We change into our race shirts and drop our original shirts in the car before walking into the zoo itself.

I do my morning hip stretches on the floor of the Discovery Center, then we visit the promotional tables. If we had just picked up the Off the Eaten Path samples, I would have shoved them in my DuPage Medical Group ladybug bag. But Nicor Gas has energy saving kits for current customers, and I do actually want to replace my showerhead… so we walk back out to the car because the bag has gotten heavy. We skip the spin a wheel opportunities at the Cane’s and White Sox booths; I’m not a fan of either and the lines were long.

If you’ve entered Brookfield Zoo through the North Gate, you know it’s an extensive walk just to get from the gate to the parking lot. It was seven-thirty-five by this point, still most of an hour until the race started, and the theoretically closed packet pick-up has a huge line. We visit the bathroom and move towards the line-up, stopping at one booth we missed before. At this point, constant motion is key, so we’re fidgeting and semi-dancing to the music blaring over the speakers. Eventually, we move into the corral for the 12 minutes per mile and up group, the next to last group to start, just before the people with strollers.

Ten minutes after the official start time, our corral launches through the arch, bib sensors recording our individual starts. We start at a jog to get out of the crowd, then slow to a fast walk around the curve. We hold that fast walk in the light rain until the final stretch, as we come around the corner by the snow leopards and start to run the final leg. We’re both jogging until she sees me pull ahead; she sprints forward and I get stuck behind a stroller, grinning as she beats me to the finish line by at least ten seconds. We both accept the proffered water, banana, and Kind bar, and eventually decide that the line is too long for exact times; my watch says we walked the course in about fifty minutes.

It’s early enough that the zoo is largely deserted, so we head to Wild Encounters to meet the goats, wallabies, and parakeets. After all, part of the point of participating in the ZooRunRun is that we like the zoo.

Indoor trees filled with parakeets in a variety of colors.

Home maintenance decisions

Owning a home thrusts you into a constant process of making difficult decisions. When a problem starts, do you fix it yourself or call a professional? Do you repair it or replace it?

At times, that decision is obvious. When I bought this house, I knew the windows would need replacing. None of them were broken, they were just an older model of casement windows that weren’t particularly good at insulating the house. Newer windows are all double-paned, and the frames are meant to last longer. Additionally, the casement windows were a pain to open – I had to remove the screen, unlatch the window, push it open, then put the screen back in.

This summer, my dryer stopped spinning. Looking at the notes from my home inspection (always get one before buying a house!), it stated that the washer and dryer were dated and should be replaced at some point. While I debated between a replacement and repair, I improvised a stand for my clothesline and started air drying my clothes again. The dryer has since been repaired – the belt had broken, which isn’t a terrible expensive repair – and when I had my water softener serviced for the year, that guy commented that you can’t get durable machines like my washer and dryer anymore. That made me feel better about my decision to repair them.

On the other hand, I have a wooden door out the side of my attached garage with a crack in it. And while it’s neat to look at the light shining through it and make Doctor Who references, come winter it will reduce the efficiency of the heater in the garage. The garage is home to my washer, dryer, well pressure tank, full-size freezer, hot water heater, and boiler, plus occasionally my car, so maintaining a proper temperature in the winter is somewhat essential. So that’s on the replacement list.

Meanwhile, the lock on my front door just needed a bit of WD-40 when the key wouldn’t go all the way in. It’s a never-ending process of updating the house, the garden, or both, along with deciding whether to do it yourself or hire a professional.