Home, At The Odd Place

7 June 2011

Home, At The Odd Place

It's "official". . . we're calling our new little chunk of land and home "The Odd Place" (or TOP for short), because of it's odd property lines, odd house (geodesic dome), and well, its residents are certifiably and commonly known to be "odd." Seems rather fitting. There are still some other 'names' we have to assign, and I'm sure the names will come with time. There's no "The Dungeon" at this house, which was what we independantly called the basement at the previous house. But we do have "The Roost," which is a bare-bones place to hang out, fight "Boloney the Retarded Cousin [of B.O.B.]", or sleep over and whatever. We're still working on names for the rest of the property "areas"; the "Lower Half" isn't really half the property, but that tends to be what we call that portion of forested, severely inclined (on clay, no less) bit that is just beyong our house. There's Pear Yard, which is a temp name until a better and more appropriate one can be found. Then there's The Huge Lawn, big enough you could fit a basketball court and a tennis court on it... and some other stuff if the inconvenience of lovely cedars and a huge barn didn't get in the way.

Speaking of cedars, I'm think of the lovely, natural fragrance we have started enjoying-- not the neighbors' horse manure-- but rather the blooms and blossoms of the fruit trees, the rhoddies, and my favorite since I was a young girl, lilac. There's far more lilac around here than I thought, and for which I'm very grateful. In fact, it's quite likely the lilac is older than I am! Oh, and it's been very interesting seeing the kiwi trees develop. We didn't plant them, they were already here, but I really do need to get a trellis up before they get growing too much. Also need to do a bit of research on kiwi trees so we can actually eat the fruit!

Speaking of growing food, the strawberries have been delightful. The ones in the green house have done quite well, and apparently the rolly-pollies like them, too. The race is on. Hubby got his 'rescued' tomatoes going in the green house, as well as two pots of basil that I bought. They're all doing quite nicely in there. I have yet to bring all the herbs and vegetation from the 'old house' that I want here (chives, oregano, thyme). I was delighted to see some mint come up in a potted soil here, and I need to get the 3 lavender plants either into the ground, or into prettier and bigger pots. I think I might keep them potted for on the deck near the doors.

We've (the children and I) have been living here two months now, and we have bee so busy! There is always something that needs done! Dishes are non-stop with the way my cooks-- I mean kids-- eat (and I remind, no automatic dishwasher here!), the food to put away, sweeping, pets to take care of, a huge deck so sweep a lot (and of which has been thoroughly and soulfully enjoyed), a hhhuuuuuuge lawn that takes hours and hours to mow (with a riding lawn mower), the barn work we had done (cementing the lower portion so we can set up... kind of like a garage-- there is no garage here.

Our most recent outside project, aside from the barn work which we hired out, is the buying of and transplanting English Laurel. First trip we got only 13, and it's not nearly enough for what we want to cover! But, is should give us some nice coverage rather quickly, it's not terribly expensive-- actually, at $30/plant (a fast-growing, 'privacy' hedge), well, if they survive, then it will be money well spent. We're very excited to get the rest of them up, which brings us to...

Kind of wish I hadn't sold Hubby's truck. We need a truck, at least for a bit, to finish what needs to be done-- somehow we'll manage.

We've also come up with a rough plan of how to manage the "stuff" of both houses, and how to continue w/ the down-sizing of "stuff" (seeing as how this house is smaller than the other). The 'easy' part of that is just 1) the stuff won't fit, and 2) there's too much to do to be occupied with "stuff".

The kids have made some good progression in getting back on track with their work, though we'll likely have to employ summer school. Not a big deal there, really. After these past couple of years, well, Hubby and I know we aren't the only ones who suffer through the deployments. To my surprise, it seems deployments get harder on the kids the older they are, which is the opposite of what I expected. Good thing he doesn't have long to go for retirement!

Hubby's been home for... a little over a month. He's been on "R&R" or "decompression" leave, which is much needed. The nice part is that this place has provided a predominately 'safe' place for our reintegration to happen, for healing our spirits, and re-uniting our little family. You'd think I'd be sick of the man being around all the time, but truth is... it's not bad. Maybe because he helps so much and he needs his alone time. So he'll go outside and do yard work, usually with the kids helping on their "breaks" from curriculum work, or do some muscle stuff for me. I've done the plumbing work, and still all the other managements, but he has really stepped up to the plate in helping me where I have... not done so well. My Strong Man, my Brutus, is home, different, but the "who" of him—though changing-- is still there. We all change. Pretty important to learn to adapt to the changes-- yeah, I'm not so great with that, usually.

~Cedeham~