Category Archives: Garden

The Trouble with Trees

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When last we left you, dear reader, Melissa and I were filling up a thirty yard dumpster with all manner of greenery.  Laurels, garden plants that got too big for their britches, and a seemingly unending supply of fir branches, fir cones, fir needles and other fir inspired detritus.

Our nemesis, the 30 yard dumpster

In short, we have a firry yard. Before this week, we had 37 fir trees, two big maples and one scruffy looking cedar tree.  These are all big trees, most are a couple of feet in diameter and the biggest are almost four feet in diameter and perhaps 150 feet tall.

As we prepare the house for rent this fall, one of the biggest, prettiest trees needed to be addressed. With its two crowns, we had been warned that this could be a weak area and might be a danger.  It is very close to our house, near the kitchen and we have worried that one day a winter storm will bring part of it down onto the roof.  That has already happened once, with a branch crashing into our kitchen, smashing a large picture window.

I should add that we struggled mightily with taking out this tree.  It has been standing guard over our house for the last 54 years and in the summer it offers wonderful shade. While I am glad to be rid of the mess that it makes on our roof and the risk that it poses to our house, killing something this old and beautiful is not to be taken lightly.

We haven’t counted the rings yet but we are guessing about 150 years old.

Melissa solicited a number of tree services to take out this big tree plus two or three smaller trees that would give us more light in the yard.  We knew pretty quickly who we wanted to work on our property.  John Sperry is just starting out with his own company, Arbor Services Northwest, after working for years for other tree companies.  Together with his partner, Naomi, they put together an affordable bid.  Perhaps more importantly, they gave both Melissa and myself a sense that they cared about the trees and for the safety of our house and themselves.

John taking down a small, scraggly fir.

In addition to the large tree in the back,  we had John and his team take out four smaller firs and a cedar tree in the front yard.  These trees were not huge but they shaded the yard quite a bit and a few near the road  had grown too close to the fence.  John also limbed up a few trees including our big maple.

This beautiful maple had branches that nearly touched the ground. John gave it a trim.

The big fir, almost four feet in diameter was a challenge.  To tackle that tree, John brought in a friend, Luiz, who had bigger saws and more experience bringing down such large trees.  Luiz also brought a huge chipper to help with the cleanup.  A tree this size creates a lot debris.

Luiz worikng his way up the tree

Just another day on the job for Luiz. This tree had a double crown which gave it really big canopy. Sometimes these crowns are weak and can break off in a storm.

While bringing down big trees is interesting and exciting,  cleaning up the debris, moving plants and taking down fences is just as important and a lot of work.  Melissa and I were out in the yard every day, moving things along as best we could. I think we are both constitutionally incapable of not pitching in when there is work to be done.

Michael saying goodbye to the big fir.

Melissa surveys the carnage.

As you may have noticed, that is a lot of wood.  How did we get rid of it you ask? While it would be lovely to imagine these trees being used as lumber for our mountain cabin, the reality is that you just can’t bring down a whole tree this close to our house, near power lines and all the other structures in an old neighborhood. So, the trees were brought down in sections, none longer that ten feet, and then John would cut them in sixteen inch long rounds that could be split. Then we rolled the big stuff around to the side of the house.  Even cut down to sixteen inches, this big tree was a lot of work to move.

After the tree was down and cut into somewhat more manageable sizes, John put the word out on OfferUp.com and we had trucks coming all day to pick up wood.  In the Pacific Northwest, many people still heat their homes with wood in the winter time; some people have no other source of heat and free firewood is quite a windfall.

Get yer free wood here!

With that big project complete, we can finish making the yard and garden spaces more manageable.  Melissa has been aggressively clearing the beds and giving away plants. I have gotten the greenhouse cleared out and have been repairing rotted fence posts. Which is more work, a house or a boat?

Sistering in new supports for some of the more rotten fence posts. A good excuse to use our new generator. That will be going back to the boat with us.

While we have been working hard on the house, I did find time to try out the new paddle board.  It seems very stable on grass. We have another one on order. We are really looking forward to having these in Mexico.

Our new Aqua Marine Magma SUP. Water not included

Home, Again

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Welp, readers, here we are full circle back in our house in Lakewood. It’s so strange to be back here, doing the things we’ve done for so many years. Did we really sail all the way down the Pacific Coast of North America? Did we really spend months in the Sea of Cortez  snorkeling and running from weather all the time? Did we really hit a whale, hit a rock, break our boom? Yes, we sure did. It wasn’t just an illusion; a dream. And now we’re here at our house for awhile. We feel as though we have literally stepped out of one life and into another. It’s like finding an old jacket hidden in the back of the closet, forgotten there for well over a year, and realizing it still fits.  Here’s an update to the cunning plan.

I can’t even remember what I posted last because there has been so much ‘living’ between then and now. The word ‘living’ ,as used here,  means maniacally attacking our landscaping, which has grown to jungle proportions, then falling into bed exhausted and old. Honestly, maybe it’s because we’ve been in Mexico, and then Arizona, but when we drove into the driveway I immediately felt trapped by the sheer amount of greenery we deal with here. I began to make considerable plans to rip things out, cut things down, hog things back (an activity where refers to taking a hedge trimmer and cutting the blazes out of overgrown shrubs), give things away, have trees removed, and basically just remove vast quantities of light absorbing leaf material and weeds.

From this…

To this.

As usual, my goals and my stamina are not necessarily of one mind. Mike can work harder and longer than I can, but even Mike has worn himself to a frazzle in this yard.  We should have hired a landscaping service when we left. It got out of control without my constant attention.  At this point, we have quickly filled a 30 yard dumpster with tree debris, sent it off on it’s way, and now we can both pace ourselves a little better. It’s getting into a rhythm and we’ve got some time. The outside of the house is our working territory until after the wedding. Then we’ll hit the interior. Hard. And by the way, word has it that houses are a lot of work. Here’s what I’ll say: owned a boat lately?

Mike would 100% rather be in a cockpit than a yard waste dumpster.

Yes, we have some time so we don’t have to do it all today. We are ‘home’ for a few months. Yeah, this still feels like home. We still love our house and find ourselves dreaming about what we might do to it if we ever live here again.  I remember when I was anticipating leaving to go cruising,  lamenting to more experienced cruisers that I was going to miss being ‘home’. They would so many times say, ‘Don’t worry. Soon the boat will be ‘home’.’  Well, know what? They were wrong. Right, but wrong. I do feel ‘at home’ on Galapagos. But I think my roots are much deeper here than I knew. That’s interesting coming from a woman who never thought she knew how to have a root anywhere.

Maybe it’s possible to have two homes? Is that like having two spouses? I hope not. We both miss Galapagos a lot and look forward to returning to her and our cruising life as soon as we can. But one thing cruising has already taught me is that I can be happy a lot of different places, even the ones that don’t feel like home at all.

Anyhow, for the most part we are enjoying being here in spite of our anticipation of returning to cruising again.  Our Andrew and his Jill are here with us and we won’t get that opportunity for… well who knows how long it will be. So we are soaking in the energy of being with them as long as it lasts. They are getting ready for their own travels and we love being part of the planning for that. Not to mention the upcoming wedding.

Like I did for Claire’s wedding, I’m doing flowers for Andrew’s wedding. So we got to go to the local flower market and play with ideas.

Our Claire and her Dan will be coming from Ecuador for Andrew and Jill’s wedding at the end of August, so we’ll have lovely whole entire family time; time that becomes even more precious as kids go off into the world on their own as they should. I can’t believe all 6 of us will be in one spot for a couple of weeks. It makes a mom giddy with excitement. And by the way, yes, that’s two weddings in two years. Thank goodness we have only two kids.

If you have been reading between the lines, you may have guessed that after two years of perseverating on it,  we’ve finally made the decision to keep our house for awhile. Sure, the market is good now and we’d make a profit if we sold. But then what? We don’t know where else we’d want to buy. So it seems dumb to take money out of what is, after all, probably a decent investment given the location. We’ll be listing the house for rent with our friend who manages properties in the area. With that in mind, we have so much work to do that it’s blowing our minds. This time, when we leave, another family will be in our home. And we will have landscaping services to care for the yard.

Aside from yard work, wedding planning, hanging out in our back yard watching the bats, and continuing to buy little gifts for Galapagos, we’ve been enjoying a little bit of our old life. I slid right back into my coaching practice, which has been very nice. I am seeing a few clients at the house; just enough to make me feel useful, which is a good feeling. I remember how much I was loving my work before we left.  Mike hasn’t yet started working but he has some irons in the fire and we’re hoping something will pan out soon. If you know people who contract with web based database development professionals, shoot us an email. He’s got the goods.

We’ve been enjoying crewing on Blue Moon again during Wednesday Night Races. Too bad we signed up for a Spanish class that will meet on Wednesday nights. Fun while it lasted.

Our timeline is flexible, but the goal is to get back on board Galapagos. The wedding is at the end of August. We’ve secured a storage unit in low-humidity Yakima, across the mountains from here, beginning in September. It’s cheaper over there, and our furniture won’t rot or mildew. When the wedding is over, we will swing into action clearing out the house, which will feel weird and good all at the same time because it will mean forward momentum once more. Then the work begins on the interior of the house. Painting, possibly some new appliances, all the things you want to do to a house to make it a home for someone else for awhile. I feel good about it. We are really hopeful we can make this plan work. A lot is still up in the air but we hear November is a good month to be in the Sea of Cortez. We’d like to be there by then, all other things considered.

A little bling for Galapagos we’ll be bringing back with us. These portable generators are sold at Costco and get really good reviews.

 

 

‘Waiting’ is an Action Verb

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I’ve been hanging around our house a lot lately. On the days I don’t work,  I just kind of drift from room to room, looking for something that needs doing right now. I’ll bet this is a little like what a surfer feels like, floating in the water waiting for the next set of waves. Except they are having more fun. There is too much ‘waiting’ going on around here, and I’m right in the middle of that.

Perhaps you haven’t really thought much about this, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, but ‘waiting’ is actually an action verb. Remember third grade? There are two kinds of verbs: action and being. And in spite of how passive ‘waiting’ sounds, get real. Sure, there is plenty of sitting around associated with ‘waiting’, but if you’ve ever ‘waited’, you know that there is a lot of activity associated with it. There is foot tapping, pacing, random speed thinking, fear-based storylines running their loop in your head, planning strategies to deal with those fear-based narratives in your head, hand-wringing, and generally the driving of yourself crazy.

The inner narrative goes something like this:

“When will people come and rent our house? What if no one wants to rent it? When will we move onto the boat? How come no one has contacted us yet? Is this going to work? Maybe we should sell, but I’m not ready to sell. But this house is a lot of work, and a lot of money. Maybe we should sell. But it’s our family home. Damn we could be saving so much money if we didn’t have this house. Galapagos still needs a lot of work. We still will spend a shit ton of money getting her ready to go. Damn it! (I use a lot of ‘language’ in my head. It relieves stress.) What is plan B? Maybe we could do a long term rental. No, the rental market in Lakewood is flooded. We can’t cover our costs with a long term rental. I wonder how long it will take before we know if this plan is the right one? Thank goodness we haven’t wasted our efforts getting the house ready because we’d have to get it ready to sell anyhow. Is that our Plan B?  Damn, I hate these kinds of decisions. ”

Do you see what I mean? 

I am not a good ‘waiter’. Good ‘waiters’ are like the roots of these Hellebores. They lay quietly during the dark of winter, softly preparing to burst forth in vibrant color when their time is right. They grow bigger, deeper, and stronger, preparing for the day when their many stalks will shoot up toward the sun, cheerful faces aglow with glorious spring color. They are completely ‘at one’ with their mission in life.

I try to be all ‘Zen’ about it, and I do have moments of that simple peacefulness that happens when you actually succeed in focusing on the here and now, just breathing deeply into the present moment, knowing that you, too, will bloom with the timing of the God.  (See how soothing those words are? Kind of hypnotic.) But I’m not the Buddha. Not even close, even if I do know how to do deep breathing and can actually teach others to do it. Big deal.  No, most of the Zen moments I have are really just because I made my inner voices shut the hell up for just a few minutes. 

So right now the house is filled with this action-based ‘waiting’ to see if our plan A is going to work. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. But I sure would like to know so I can move on to Plan B if I need to. There is no way to hurry this. And I should just accept that by finding my inner Buddha. I’m a work in progress. What can I say?

Soon, we’ll be riding another wave of real activity as Claire and Dan return to Scotland tomorrow, after some weeks with us. We’ll do the final ‘moving stuff out of the house’, as though we actually have people waiting to move into it. At least we will be ready then, and it’s stuff we eventually have to deal with anyway. It will feel good to have something to do that makes me feel like there is forward momentum, even though we will miss them. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s packing boxes. hellebore

In the end, when I step back from the waiting, I realize it’s all good. We are housed, and fed, and healthy and happy. The rest is just cake. File this post under ‘here are all the thoughts and feels you will have if you, too, make this huge life change when you are in your mid-50’s. ‘   Maybe you might want to consider doing it sooner.

Meanwhile, here are your yearly Helleborus photos and some snowdrops. They look really nice this year.