answers to your questions about the mulberry tree ~ and a new project

Hi everyone ~ there were a lot of questions in my last two posts about my neighbor and her mulberry tree that's dropping mulberries all over our patio and walkway, so I thought I'd start out by answering those questions.

Here's me one morning last week, surveying the mulberry damage before cleaning it up. Notice the patio is now cleared off except for one chair and the grill. That one chair has now been moved into the back yard with the rest of the furniture.

Can you attach a big net from the roof of your house to the fence?

No, we can't because the fence isn't ours. It's the neighbor's fence, so we can't attach anything to it. Also, the berries fall along the entire length of the house, not just over this patio area. There wouldn't be any netting big enough to cover the area.

When do the mulberries stop falling?

They fall for 4-5 weeks.

Do you know if she uses the berries?

No, she doesn't. They are all over her yard, walkway, staircase to her deck, and the deck itself. Obviously, she and her daughter and granddaughter (that live with her) don't care.

I wonder if moving might be in your future?

Not in our immediate future. We've lived here 30 years and have spent a lot of money these past few years fixing up the house. Housing in our town is inexpensive. If we sold this house now, there is nowhere else we could move in the Chicago area that we could afford. We can't move out of the Chicago area, as Brian still has five more years at his job until he retires.

Could you set up your patio table and chairs elsewhere in your yard?

There is nowhere else to put them. We live on a very small piece of property. The set is currently in the back yard, but it looks "funny" back there in the middle of the grass.

Later PS: I received a comment and another email about trimming the neighbor's tree branches that overhang our property. Yes, this has been done several times. I talked about it in my previous posts. It barely did any good. This is a huge tree that even with trimmed branches, manages to drop mulberries all over our property simply because it is so tall and wide.

On a more positive note, Brian and I worked on totally clearing out the guest room yesterday. It's currently yellow, which I initially loved, but after about eight years, I'm tired of it. It's too bright for me and I also think it brings out the yellow undertones in the wood floors, which I don't like. Painters are here right now, painting the room a cream color. They are also painting that ugly, faux wood window trim white.

Everything from the guest room...the mattress, bed frame, dresser, desk, bookshelf, pillows, bedding, curtains, blinds, everything from the closet, plants and knick knacks...are now in the tiny room next door, which used to be Tim's room and is now Brian's office.

Somehow, Brian managed to squeeze into the room to get his work clothes out of the closet.

After a long day yesterday, this is what we both felt like! Besides cleaning out the guest room, we also did yard work and washed windows. But washing the kitchen window proved to be a bit disastrous...

We have windows that tilt in for cleaning and long story short, something happened where one of the hinge pins inside the track broke off and Brian couldn't get the window back in. After fooling around with it for a long time and hearing a lot of swearing, I texted our nice neighbor that lives on the other side of us, to see if he could help. He came over and helped Brian for about 45 min. I was losing hope as they were working, especially as this neighbor is a DIYer who put in windows on his house and is also a roofer. I thought they were just going to have to leave it and put plastic over the window until we could get a window repair person out here. We certainly couldn't leave the window open as we're running the AC constantly. It's been 90F here and will be even hotter this coming week. 

They finally got the window temporarily put back into place and Brian called Home Depot where we got our windows from. We won't even be getting a call back from a service person for 3-5 business days. Good thing we're not living with plastic over an open window!

Have a wonderful weekend and a safe Fourth of July.