It's a Jungle Out There. And Over There. And Over There Too.

Finding a giant Katydid last night reminded me that I have a slew of pictures of our jungle yard.  We've been blessed so far with multiple praying mantises that eat our insects (and each other incidentally) and cicadas.  The cicadas & crickets are so noisy that almost every night I check our window to be sure it's actually shut.  It is, but they sound like they're right inside the room.

We've removed quite a bit of brush from around the house.  We have a LOT of plant life to maintain & because the house was pretty much unoccupied during the busiest plant growth season of the year, we had a lot of work to do.

On the bright side, I got to use our snazzy turquoise wheel barrow.  

 

Where can you find one of those these days? I also have a matching turquoise wall paper smoother (or whatever they're called).  And! They both match my grandma's table.

Well, as I mentioned, we live in a virtual suburban jungle.  Ivy galore:

 

Much of the brush we pulled out was actually ivy we've removed from our trees to keep them healthy and strong.  Ivy doesn't get nutrients from the trees but the vines are heavy and weigh down the branches and block much needed sunlight from the lower parts of the tree.  We were able to get off the bottom portion of our tree's ivy, but on one, we had to wait until it died to remove it any further.  Some of the vines were literally inches thick.

 

Finally we pulled out most of our wood ties.  The plan is to remove them all, but some have completely melded with the dirt below & require some surgery.

There's still more to do, but we got off to a great start.  Thanks to our buddy Andy for hauling this junk away & removing of it so that it didn't go to a landfill.  If you'd like his number, he does all sorts of lawncare & is very good at maintaining yards all over our city.

Thornhurst Friends & Milk

We've been busy the past couple of weeks with visitors to our new home.  First we had the crazy monkey triplets in their family van.  We had a picnic on the front lawn & experienced ants in our pants first hand.

Posing for their big Thornhurst debut...

Then we were graced with Zach's long time friend, Jake, for a two night visit.  We didn't have a room for him ready but luckily we found him a place to stay.  Here they are enjoying the olympic girls gymnastics team competition.

And finally, what would our blog be without an update on the CAT.  She is my absolute best & until I have children, my reason for being home on time every night.  Here I am (making a rare appearance on the blerg) viewing her lovingly while she emminently domains the clean laundry basket.

As Zach says, a cat bed cannot be made, it must be found.

OH! And how could I forget the milk cat.  Seriously. This has nothing to do with our house, but I had to share it.

cat in bathroom

Greta has officially manipulated her way into having her own bathroom.  She likes it so much she took a nap in there last week.

After much ado, she decided that she would much better like it if she did NOT have to go all the way to the basement to potty.  At the advice of our vet, we're letting her get to know the first floor before she's relegated to the basement. 

We're parking in the garage.

That is the big news for tonight!  I realize that I am long overdue for a post, but we have been hard at work getting the garage & yard into working order.  And the yard has a loooooong way to go!  So, I'll focus on the garage for now.

To begin with, we had a very sturdy, solid wheelchair ramp to contend with before we could even think about parking our cars in the garage.  (Oh and a bunch of our own crap too.)

I grew up with meticulously maintained garages - moms that dropped me off were always asking, "Is your Dad reorganizing the garage?" or "Did your parents just paint the garage?".  It was strange, because they always looked so good.  No matter, it's what I learned to expect & so one of our first projects has ended up being the garage.

So this tiny doorstep was residing underneath the big ramp & stairs, thankfully.  Our only carnage was a small piece of molding that tore off in one strip - soon to be restored.

Here's Zach working on cleaning up a light.  

And then my dad, vaccumming up the considerable sawdust created from removing the steps.

He's only asked me about 16 times if we had the garage painted yet.  I was pleased to report that tonight, we finally had it painted & cars in their rightful spots.

So in the end, we had nice white walls & ceiling (I did paint the peg board to start with a clean fresh look).  It took almost 4 days of painting & cleaning, 2 gallons of primer, & 3 gallons of paint.  That does not count the afternoon of demo in early July.  Or the 2nd coat I honestly need on the ceiling.

Close to finished product: