Weekend in Review: House Hunting

This is my latest WIR post since I started writing them.

Ornery arrived home late Thursday night, a full day earlier than he thought he would.  I had made an appointment with a mortgage lender for Friday morning, and we went and filled out an application for a loan on an investment property.  We haven't found the property yet, but we are approved and know what our limits are now.  After we left there, we opened a new account for our investment properties, and looked online for properties to see.

Saturday we looked at four houses with a Realtor, made an offer on one but didn't get accepted.  We will continue looking and learning more about being landlords.  Ornery mowed the yard -- first time in two weeks, but since it has been so blasted hot it hasn't really been growing much.  He also pulled out the last of the holly bush I cut back several weeks ago by the driveway with the help of Big Red, and trimmed back the boxwood bushes in the front.  Trim is a kind way to say what he did to them--they are now about 1/2 their former size.

The framing around the garage door was somewhat warped leaving a rather significant gap between it and the wall, and Ornery had been intending to secure it better to the house from the time we moved in last May. He finally got around to it this weekend.  The sound of him hammering on it could be heard all over inside the house.  The nails he used were more like spikes!  It is now repaired, and we are contemplating the need for exterior paint this fall or spring and I have been deliberating color schemes.  Enough of the boring taupe... I am thinking about painting the main part cream and the shutters and front door green (surprise!)

He also made numerous (at least 5) trips to Lowe's to replace a sprinkler head. It needed a riser to work in the new bed he built a few weeks ago.  Who knew there were so many different sizes and pieces required for the job??!  Once that was finished, we planted the two abelia bushes I had gotten at the first of the summer.  One may or may not make it, but the other looks to be faring okay so far.  We had originally planned to put them in the front bed after removing the boxwoods, but rather than let them die altogether, we decided to get them in the ground and at least give them a chance to survive.

The bed certainly will accommodate more than just those two bushes, so I took all my old flower seeds and broadcast them over the surface.  I plan to keep the ground wet so we shall see what comes up.  I wanted a bed full of flowers, and that is what I will have if even half the seeds come up!

I spent some time in the studio Monday morning covering some little mint tins with more scraps.  I completed three of them before I got so sleepy I could hardly keep my eyes open.  I don't know if it is the heat or something else, but all of us were very tired on Monday.  I will say that house-hunting is an exhausting occupation!  I also threw away all the dead flowers that didn't survive last week.  There were four hanging pots that were dry and crispy.  There are a few more that need to be emptied, but they are not the eye sores that the hanging pots were.  I also swept the back porch and cleaned up a bit out there.

We have invited Ornery's sister and her husband for dinner this evening, and plan to fix hobo dinners with steak (as opposed to pork chops which we used to prefer before we quit eating pork) and a variety of vegetables.  There is a statewide burn ban in effect, but it is okay to use a gas grill on the patio.  It has certainly been hot and dry, so I can see why there is a high fire danger.

This morning I spent a bit of time out in the yard applying fertilizer and watering.  My ferns are simply amazing--so lush and green.  I had to kill a grasshopper that had been dining on one of them rather prodigiously, and since then I have found many new tender shoots.  NOT that the plant minded sharing some of its foliage--it is truly an excellent specimen of an asparagus fern!  I also planted some cuttings from one of Elizabeth's philodendron plants.  I am truly amazed at how well those things are doing.  Too bad some of the other plants haven't produced as well.

I still have four more empty tins to cover, and then I think I will move on to the journals I have to cover.  I am going to use maps on a couple of them--that will be different from my usual fare.  I still need to finish painting the little table for the sewing machine, and I might get to that tomorrow.  Life seems to be inordinately full these days. I don't mind a bit!!