Tuesday, February 22, 2011

This Season's Agenda

The temperatures are warming, and though the plants are still asleep, the legions of toads have resumed their nocturnal councils in the adjacent pine barrens. That can only means one thing: it's time to play Sisyphus as I fight to retrieve my house from the entropic clutches of the surrounding dank. Oh yeah, and there may be a toad uprising, so I guess that's two things.

Here's the to-do list so far...
1. Plant more creeping phlox, and a few showy annuals. Our droughty summer and cold winter have killed half of the phlox we planted last Spring. The rest are coming back, but not yet blooming. Hopefully, we'll get something like this going soon :
not our phlox, but beautiful all the same.


not our nandina, just an example.
I'd also like to put something taller with winter interest coming up out of the phlox, but don't have any ideas. Most folks around here do nandina, but that's a little too common. Maybe.

2. Powerwash the north side of the house. It looks like this will be a yearly thing. The siding and patio on the north side of the house grows algae readily in the mid to late winter. Yuck. Maybe someone can invent an acutely toxic house paint that will kill anything living that comes within 3 mm of it. That would solve my solicitor problem as well.

3. Replace the shingle molding (and maybe fascia) on the north side of the house. The molding installed when the house was built is a composite cardboardy stuff. It got wet, and when the ice hung from it this winter, it pulled it down in pieces. Who builds a house out of cardboard?? We found the same crap used in the bathroom trim.
cardboard shingle molding will disintegrate, but a pink work short is forever 

4. Replace fence posts / boards. I've got a number of warped fence boards, and even more ass-painy, 3 fence posts that have rotted away above their concrete footers. So, I've got to pry off the fence panels, dig out the footer and replace the post and pour new concrete for each one. The whole fence really needs to be replaced, using treated posts, 3 rails, and screws, not nails. But can't afford that this year, so it's triage patch repairs. 









Greetings from Fayetteville!