hellooo ~ this & that

Hello and happy July! I recently finished repainting the little table on the porch. I've this table for at least 30 years - a cast off from a neighbor. It's been several colors. The last few years it was yellow and it was fading and peeling. I was tired of the yellow anyway.

The Chicago area has been hit hard with the smoke from the Canada wildfires. I took this photo last week, when the sun was trying to peek out through the haze right before sunset. That was the day we had the worst air quality in the world.

My little veggie garden is doing great. There's two tomato plants on the left, then red onions, and purple beauty bell pepper. 

Exciting to see the first fruits.

This beautiful purple flowered perennial has turned out to be one of my favorites. It's in the geranium family (geranium pratense); more commonly known as Meadow Cranesbill. I purchased this plant at least 25 years ago with my then next-door neighbor, Thanam. She had recently moved here from Malaysia and didn't have a car. I took her to the garden center with me and we each bought one of these plants. For some reason, she thought the name of this plant was Heavenly Death. That's what she always called it. Did it have that name on the plant tag? I don't remember. I've Googled to see if any variety of Meadow Cranesbill has this name and don't come up with anything. But to this day, I still call this plant Heavenly Death because of Thanam. It reminds me of her. (She moved back to Malaysia 20 years ago.) 

Another interesting thing about this perennial is that it's been moved several times and has always done well. It loves where it is now, nestled in-between coral bells. It gets a nice mixture of sun and shade.

Our new(ish) next door neighbor never did cut down the mulberry tree like he told us he was going to. We even left him a nice note on his gate last month, offering once again to help him pay for having the tree cut down and to let us know if he needed any help finding a tree trimming service. We left our phone numbers and also told him he was welcome to stop by and talk to us. Never heard from him. *sigh*  

So, you guessed it, we're once again having to deal with millions of mushy mulberries falling all over our patio, in the hostas, and all the other plants that run along the privacy fence ~ not to mention the walking path to the patio and in all the fresh mulch we lay down in the spring. We haven't been able to use our patio in for three weeks, so far. And when the mulberries are done falling, Brian will then have to power wash the patio to get all the stains off. Have I ever said how much I hate this tree? 😜

INDOORS:

I got tired of looking at this squished space in "my" room. (I never know what to call this space. I have several names for it: Phil's room {used to be my son, Phil's bedroom}, the guest room, my room, my office.) 

I cleared the space out, including the bookcase so I could move it.

I started by moving the bookcase underneath the mirror. Clementine immediately took up residency on the chair moved to the side. I stashed my yoga and exercise equipment into a basket in the corner.

In this view, you can see the opening to the room, as well as how the wall next to the door juts out, creating a little nook next to the bookcase. 

I decided I didn't like the basket of exercise equipment in the corner. The corner needed some height. So I moved the exercise stuff into a smaller basket, tucked the yoga mat and bolster next to the other side of the bookcase (as seen in photo above), and put a stool with a plant on it in the corner.

Took the framed cat art print from the kitchen and moved it to this wall. 

I think this space looks much better now. Less cramped.

The white chair got moved into the living room across from the couch. The chair has become Clementine's new favorite napping spot. Funny, because she rarely napped on it when it was in "my" room.

For those of you in the US, have a happy and safe 4th of July. (Clementine doesn't like fireworks ~ and neither do I.)

curtains and a new rug

Hello, friends!

In my last post I showed you how I was getting the guest bedroom put back together. But before I forget, a couple of people had asked me the name of this paint color that we used. I'm ashamed to admit that I don't remember! All I remember is that it was Behr paint that has primer in it. I looked on the paint can and the name is not on there. We used this color in our kitchen and in Brian's office, too, so you'd think I'd remember. If I eventually find out, I promise I will let you all know.

I finally got the curtains hung in this room. I still need to have Brian hang the iron "chandelier" in the corner above the dresser and we might possibly hang a heavy mirror on the other side of the room. And I found some pretty contact paper on Amazon for the closet shelf which came in the mail today, so that will be another small project to work on. Slowly, but surely.

I wanted some kind of tie backs for the curtains to hold them together in the middle. Previously, I used pieces of ribbon I had lying around. I wanted something nicer-looking this time. I went looking on Amazon and found these magnetic curtain clips.

 Aren't they pretty? They were easy to use and look much nicer than a piece of ribbon.

Here's the other window in the room where I have my desk.

I liked these magnetic curtain clips so much that I ordered another style for our bedroom curtains. I always had the gray curtains pulled to the side (closed at night ~ they're blackout curtains) and just the sheers hanging down over the blinds, but I like this new look. I would've taken a photo of the entire window ~ the curtains look the same on the other side ~ but I have a standing fan in front of the window and a pile of clean, folded on Brian's nightstand, so I left that reality out of the photo. 😉 The two framed photographs on the wall are our son's work.

I finally found a new rug for Brian's office! I've been looking for about six months. I've looked online and in stores. I've even purchased various rugs and ended up returning them because they didn't look good. This is a small room and we didn't want a rug taking up the entire space. We also didn't want a thick rug, as Brian's desk chair needs room to roll back without getting caught on a rug. His desk and desk chair are to the immediate left as you look into this room. You can see a peek of his desk chair wheel in the photo, if you look closely.

 I was at TJ Maxx the other other day and was not even looking for rugs. I happened to walk by a display stand with folded rugs on it and this cotton one caught my eye. I unfolded it and thought it might work. Brought it home, laid it on the floor and thought, "I think this is it." Brian got home from work, took one look at it and said, "Yes!" So it's a keeper.

As always, thank you for visiting and for your kind comments. They are much appreciated. 

Be well and safe.
💓

getting the guest room put back together

I managed to sneak in a photo of the guest room just starting to be painted while the painters went outside for a break. Here you can see they had already painted the window trim white and were starting on the yellow walls.

 When the painters were done and had left, I vacuumed and mopped the floors. We had to leave the windows open even though it was hot because they used Zinsser primer on the window frames which smells really bad. Running the AC made things worse because it carried the odor throughout the entire house.

At first I thought maybe the painters only put on one coat of paint, because the walls still looked light yellow to me. Also, I had a few people ask me about the flooring. It's Bruce engineered hardwood from Home Depot. We have it throughout the entire first floor (kitchen, living room, hallway and three bedrooms) of our house. We had the kitchen done first, about 20 years ago. And it still looks great. The only downside to these floors is that they do dent and scratch easily. So I would imagine if you had dogs, this flooring wouldn't be a good choice because of their nails.

 The next day when the paint had settled down a bit and the light wasn't shining directly on the walls, I could see that they were indeed a cream color. This color of paint does have some yellow undertones, but we knew that before we bought it. It's the same color we have in our kitchen and Brian's office.

We spent all day moving furniture back into the room, hanging a few pictures on the walls, washing blinds and getting those hung up. 

I wanted to arrange the furniture differently in the room this time, and we tried about five different arrangements and none of them worked. So back to the way it was. I'm really liking the cream colored walls instead of yellow ones. And what a difference white window trim makes instead of brown! The whole room looks so much cleaner. I washed the curtains for the windows and ordered some curtain clips from Amazon to keep them cinched in the middle. Those just came in the mail today, so I'll be hanging the curtains tomorrow.

I'm still deciding what to put on the walls in this area. I had Phil's memory shelf above the bookcase before. Now I'm thinking of hanging a large mirror (that used to be in the living room) above the bookcase instead and making the top of the bookcase the memorial area. I'd like to get some new prints of Phil made and then find some beautiful frames.

 Lest you think I'm organized and have everything in place...take a look at the closet! It's mostly my scrapbooking and art journal stuff, as well as boxes of photos and my bulletin board. I need to find some pretty Contact paper for the shelf and paint the closet rod. I didn't want to put everything back into place until that was done.

We've been having weather in the 90's with heat indexes of 100, so indoor projects are a good thing to get done right now.

Have a good week!

💗

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.

cat bite, around my yard, and the snowball effect

KITTY

There's an orange and white cat that roams the neighborhood and frequently comes into my backyard. He drives my cats insane when they see him through the windows. Our county has a leash law for both dogs and cats, but I had no idea who this kitty belonged to, so I couldn't go talk to the owner.

This past Monday, I was snipping herbs and pulling weeds in the backyard, and orange kitty sauntered up to me and rubbed up against my legs. That's a sign of affection, so I reached down and petted the kitty on his back. That's when he turned on me and attacked my leg so quickly, I didn't even see it happening. All I felt was a knock into my leg and immediate pain. I lifted up my pant leg (just thin yoga pants) and saw blood dripping down both sides of my calf. I started yelling (OK, and swearing) at the cat and he just sat there staring at me.

I washed the wounds with soap and water then went to an Immediate Care center. They flushed the wounds with saline, took an x-ray to make sure there weren't any broken off tooth fragments in the puncture wounds - which was going a little overboard, I think - bandaged me up, gave me a tetanus shot and a prescription for Augmentin.

Turns out, the Augmentin made me sick, so then I was prescribed Doxycycline - which also made me sick plus gave me a raging headache. So I saw my regular doctor yesterday for a follow up. Since my wounds are healing nicely on their own with no signs of infection, she decided not to try a third antibiotic. I do have a hematoma under the main puncture wound, so I have to massage it and use heat on it to try and break it up.

Isn't my calf lovely?! That's the bites. The other side of my calf has scratches.

It's been a nightmare dealing with Animal Control who have claimed they never got the faxed report from Immediate Care - who claim they sent it right away and can't do so again because they no longer have the hard copy. Then Animal Control wanted me to try and find the owners of this cat, so I took a ride over to the street behind me. A neighbor was outside in her front yard. I asked if she knew anyone on that street who had an orange and white cat. She said yes - and pointed to the house across from her. There was a man on the driveway, so I went over and talked to him. He claimed it was his teenage granddaughter's cat and invited me in to talk to her. She was mortified and genuinely apologized. I told her that Animal Control would be contacting her. I believe they quarantine the cat for 10 days and test it for rabies.

The thing is, even if this young woman then tries to keep the cat indoors, since it's been an outside cat, it will easily sneak out. It will fly out the door the minute someone opens it. I'm not only scared of this cat, but the neighbors behind me have two little kids plus babysit three others. The children play in the backyard. I talked to the mom the other day and warned her about this cat. She said the cat is in her yard all the time and even in her garage! Imagine if one of those little kids petted the cat! I'm also trying not to freak out that this cat could have rabies. From what I read online, the incubation period in humans after being bitten by an infected animal is anywhere from five days to over a year!

AROUND MY YARD

We finally got one day of beautiful weather yesterday in-between the non-stop rain. I was outside practically the entire day except for my quick doctor visit. I even had my neighbor-friend over in the evening for wine on my patio. The sun was still present, there was a cool breeze, and all the birds were singing. It was glorious. We're back to rain today and looking at the 10-day forecast, there are scattered thunderstorms EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I just wanna cry. My friend and I were saying last night that we feel we'll never get all our flowers and veggies planted. That it'll be mid-June before they'll even get in the ground or in containers.

 So yesterday, I only got a few pots of flowers and herbs planted before I ran out of potting soil. 

My neighbor's bushes hang over onto our patio and this time of year, they are so pretty with the pink flowers. They don't have any scent. Could they be honeysuckle? The branches are very heavy right now after all the rain.

I'm afraid this is the last of my lilacs. They also weren't as colorful this year as they were all the past years. They were always a pale purple, but I don't remember them being almost white. Again, probably way too much rain.

I don't think I ever showed you our new front porch/deck. Last November, we had our old, rotting wood porch/deck taken out and a new Trex deck built. I know in this photo you can't see the entire thing - I had too much gardening stuff piled up on the right side of the porch...all the plant pots and flowers...so I purposely took a photo off to the left. And because of the construction, there is mud all around the deck where we need to put down grass seed. But can't do so right now because - no surprise - too much rain. We also need a new sidewalk that leads up to the deck. It is old and sinking sideways into the ground. Anyway, we are loving our new deck. Best part is no maintenance - no staining or painting, no pressure washing or scrubbing, no sealing, no splinters!

THE SNOWBALL EFFECT

You know how you change one thing in your house and then it leads to more? That's how my house is right now. We got a new rug for the living room (that'll be another post) and also moved the old rug into the second spare bedroom - which is being made into an office and TV room for Brian. After moving the rug into the spare room, we realized it was too big and also didn't look good. So now we'll need a rug for that room. We also need a floor lamp, curtains, and are looking for an antique desk chair.

Then we decided we needed a twin bed in one of the spare bedrooms in case we ever had an overnight guest. My friend from Ohio was supposed to visit me the first week of June, so that prompted me to get my butt in gear. Turns out she isn't able to visit me, but at least I'm now prepared. I ordered this beautiful bed and a foam mattress from Wayfair, found pretty sheets at Target, and used an old quilt that was passed down to us from an elderly family friend. He slept under this quilt as a child.

So now "my" room - the first spare bedroom that used to be Phil's bedroom - is also a guest room! However, like I mentioned about a snowball effect....the side table with the lamp and plants will need to be moved elsewhere. There's too much furniture in this room now and it's very crowded. I'll be replacing the table with a small nightstand that my mom is going to paint for me.  (I guess I'll have to find somewhere else to put all those plants, too - see what I mean by the snowball effect?!)  And the metal "chandelier" over the bed will have to be moved. I don't think anyone wants to lie in that bed, worrying about the possibility of the chandy falling on their head. 😧

Here in the US, this is Memorial Day weekend. It usually means barbeques and get-togethers and sun...the unofficial start to summer. A friend of mine is having a barbeque this weekend, but looks like she'll be grilling in the rain and we'll be eating indoors instead of sitting outside on her patio. Whatever your plans are, have fun and be safe.

Until next time ~ thanks for visiting! 💓