Oh, No! Don't Let the Rain Come Down

We have had a water leak in the bathroom since before we moved here. Pat had tried patching it but couldn't find the source of the leak. I know Dad fought leaks in the utility room and bathroom for years because that section of the house has a flat roof. Could the source of the leak be at the joint to the sloped roof? Pat didn't think so, but it had happened before.

When one last temporary measure didn't work, Pat had had enough. He would remove the entire section of roof. Let the leak escape him then!

Mike, our neighbor, came over and he and Pat started stripping shingles off the roof. Pat still isn't sure why some of the things he found were there. The first two layers were asphalt shingles. Then there were two layers of what appeared to be tar paper, but turned out to be sheets of heavy black plastic, maybe a plastic tarpaulin. Under that was the strangest part of all: He found a layer of felt paper, sand, another layer of felt paper, more sand, and then the original wood. He said he first thought the sand and felt paper were rotted wood, but later inspection showed it to be sand and felt. Now, the question is WHY sand and felt??

The black plastic may have been something Dad did to fix that leak at the joint between two roof lines, but the other stuff was before we lived here. WHY sand and felt?? We have no clue.

It turned out the leak was caused by a satellite microwave dish my son Joe had mounted on the roof when he lived here. There was a small leak while the dish was in place, but it REALLY started to be serious after Pat removed the dish. He thought he had patched the screw holes at the time, but there was a bigger problem underneath that he didn't know about.

I'm so glad it's fixed now. Come Spring Pat is going to replace the main roof. That will be a job. There are seven layers there -- going back to the original wood shingles.

Heat! Wonderful Heat!

There are two heating zones in this house. The living room and the West and Master Bedrooms form one zone; the rest of the house is the other. Even though the house is only about 950 sq. ft. and the living room heater is supposed to be able to heat that much space, it never quite makes it to the back side of the house. I'm sure it's all about lines of sight, the amount of insulation in the north walls and other esoteric factors.

Last winter we tried to heat the utility room and bathroom with electric space heaters the way my folks did for years. The folks also bundled up, wore layers, and endured more than Pat and I want to endure.

Dad did a lot of improvements on the house in the forty years they lived here. One of the biggest improvements was adding insulation. It started with tacked-on insulation before they added the siding in the late 1960s. Later they added blown in insulation in the walls. It definitely helped, but my old bedroom (the "west room" now) can still send you dancing for the heater on a chilly winter morning. (Pat insulated under the floor last year, but there is still a draft. He says it's the windows.)

The double pane windows Pat has been installing are making a big difference, too. This summer we had one new window on the west wall in the living room and one old, single pane window on the west wall in my old room. We walked from room to room placing our hands up to the windows. In my old room, the heat radiated from the window and was really hot on the back of a hand. In the living room, the window was cool and no heat penetrated. Nice! Imagine what this house will be like when we get all of the windows replaced!

We decided we would add a second HVAC wall like we have in the living room. Pat blocked off the north window in the utility room and added another wall heater. Come summer, he will cut a hole and install another window air conditioner above it. This unit is aimed directly toward the kitchen. When we remove the wall to the south bedroom, it will have a straight shot to heat the "cold side" of the house.

Kitchen with a Southern Exposure

Pat began work on the South bedroom as soon as we decided we really wanted to convert it to the kitchen. He took out the old closet and began pulling down the old sheet rock. He wasn't surprised to learn there wasn't much insulation there. The blown in insulation had settled severely. (The first picture is of the double windows, but the door is covering one of them.)

Before he put up the new sheet rock, he put in new bats of insulation. If the windows were double pane, I think that room would be toasty. It's still the coldest room in the house. :( But not much longer!By next Spring we'll be able to cut out the opening and put in the new bump-out and double-pane windows. I'm lobbying for casement windows at the sink. We will shorten the east window so it will fit over the counter there.

This is fun! All we need is money... I'll be pulling my Texas retirement soon. We will get a lump-sum payment at the beginning. I see most of it going on the house. That may seem frivolous but I see it as an investment in our future.

Kitchen Plans

One afternoon about going home time, I stopped to say hi to Kathryn as I passed through her department at SEKLS. We got to talking about cooking and kitchens and she happened to mention that her kitchen is a former porch. One benefit of this is a great view of the yard. I chewed on that thought all the way home that evening.

When I told Pat about Kathryn's converted porch kitchen, he got the same gleam in his eye that I had. The south bedroom used to be a porch. It was really too small for a bedroom, but it would be a great kitchen. What if...?

We started grabbing scratch paper and scribbling diagrams. Before you know it, we had a plan. Move the kitchen to the south bedroom. Put the sink under the double window. Create a shallow bump-out so there is room for some of my plants over the sink, a bit like the bay window we had in Texas. The refrigerator could anchor the counters on one side of the U-shape and the upright freezer we were planning to buy could anchor the other end.

Thoughts were flowing and it was all good until Pat said, "but what about the stove? Where will you put the stove?"

Now, I have my heart set on getting another gas range. I don't like cooking on an electric range, even if I have used one a goodly portion of my life. I particularly don't want an electric range here because Kansas is subject to ice storms that knock out electric power for days on end. Our gas heater doesn't require electricity (it has radiant heat; no blower fan.) With a gas range we can get by even if the power is out. Pat knows all these arguments, but he was concerned about running the gas line to the new range. There is an old cistern under the south bedroom. My folks converted it to a root cellar/tornado shelter. There isn't a lot of space under there for water and gas lines.

All of our ideas crashed.

About that time I went to toss something in the trash can, and spied the capped gas line beside the refrigerator. Pat had left it there when we switched places between the electric stove and the refrigerator to have room for our side-by-side fridge. Hm... That pipe came up right by the wall to the south bedroom. What if we didn't have to move the gas line? How could we have the kitchen in the south bedroom and leave the stove where the gas line already exists?

As background and a digression, I have to mention the living room. It was once two rooms -- probably the parlor and the living room. Someone way before we got the place decided to remove the wall and make one large room. Oops! It was a load bearing wall. Fortunately, whoever it was scrambled into the attic and put in an extra large brace to support what that wall used to support. The result is we have a nice large living room which is the heart of this house.

So-- if it can be done once, why not twice? Why not cut up part of the wall to the south bedroom, leaving a stub across the top that can be disguised as a beam and putting in large pillars in the center right where the gas pipe comes up? Those pillars can help support the wall and define an island for the gas range? Mission accomplished! And there will be more open space and more light everywhere!

Pat looked at things. Pat chewed on his lip and ran calculations in his head. Hm... I think we can do it.

Now, all I have to decide is where I will put my rocker. I've always wanted a kitchen big enough to have a nook for a rocker in the kitchen. This one should be able to do that.

Papa Jones' Pizza

We have been hosting four grandchildren for the last few weeks. Lala and Reyes from Texas and Kayleigh and Emily from Indiana. They have been having a blast, but the house is bursting at the seams -- particularly at bedtime. We've been stacking them like cord wood to get them sleeping places! Lala has the daybed; Reyes has the trundle that stores under it. Emmy sleeps on the couch and Kayleigh takes the air mattress. After a couple of nights of the air mattress, she decided to share the daybed with Lala. That looked less comfortable to me, but for them it was a slumber party.

The kids have learned to drive the riding mower and help Grandpa mow. They walk the three blocks to the swimming pool for an afternoon's fun in the water. Of course Grandpa takes them to the local library for programs and books to read. Sometimes we let them play computer games on our computers. One of their big collaborations was an all cousin band called "New Girls on the Block" who sang a newly composed song for us on July 4. Reyes was an "honorary girl" for the occasion.

And where am I? I'm the working stiff in this family. I'm on the road doing library visits and other consultant work.

Reyes found the suitcase of my old comics. It's on it's third round of kids now. My brother's children and my children read them, and now my grandchildren are reading them. I never knew when I was running over to Dewey's Sundries with my pocketful of dimes that I was buying comics for my grandkids to read!

Lala loves the garden. She and Kayleigh have picked lettuce for salads twice. Lala wants the tomatoes and corn to get here nearly as much as Pat does.

Last Thursday when they were cycling through the shower to get the chlorine off after swimming, I began stirring up pizza dough.

"What are you making, Iris?" (The Indiana grandkids learned to call me Iris when Pat and I were dating.)

"We're going to make pizza tonight."

"Make pizza? We just call Papa John's." 

"There's no Papa John's around here. The best you'll get is your Grandpa showing you how to put a pizza together. He used to run a pizza parlor when he was in Oregon." 

"Oh! Our's will be Papa JONES Pizza."

Reyes decided to make pepperoni, hamburger and black olive pizza. Kayleigh made pepperoni. About the time their pizzas went into the oven, I remembered to grab my camera.

The first step in pizza making is to fit the dough to the pan. Emmy had a gentle hand with the pizza roller.
Grandpa explained the best way to add pizza sauce was with a pastry brush. 

Cheese made the next layer.
finished by crumbling the cooked hamburger on the top.

Emily was gentle with the pizza roller, but she had a good, heavy hand with the cheese. Leave it to a cheese pizza lover to know that the more cheese, the better!

The best part, though was the eating.

I Can See Clearly Now

We're getting new windows!

Pat knows windows. He worked close to 15 years in construction supply. His specialty was windows. So, when he told me he wanted to replace the windows in this house, I knew he would do it right.

Oh, yeah. He ordered double-paned, double-hung windows for the "regular" windows of the living room. I had mixed feelings about the new windows because Pat wanted good ones that are energy efficient (no complaints there) but he doesn't like the mullions that divide period windows. I wanted energy efficient windows that looked like period windows with mullions dividing the top into three sections above and having a solid window below. We compromised -- he got his way. He purchased Symington Prism double hung, insulated vinyl windows. Eventually we will have this style window all around the house.

The large window ("picture window") was the problem. I was quite willing to replace the window, but I wanted to keep the colored panel ("transom") across the top. It's original to the house and has a bungalow feel. But how could we keep it?

When Pat started looking at it, he realized the large pane and the colored pane were set up as double-hung windows. Hm... we did more looking. He could put a complete picture window into the space, then rehang the transom outside it. It would look very much like it did originally.

Of course the process was a little more involved than the plan. I presently have the transom out back where I'm stripping it for repainting. It's a slow process. (I may get it finished after I retire!) If you look closely at Picture One, you can see the transom standing under the air conditioner.

Picture One (at the beginning of this post) shows Pat removing the original window. I was impressed by the window sashes. They were still in the walls -- two long (2 foot at least) weights hanging from 1/2" rope kept the window open when it was raised. Unfortunately, one side broke some time in the 1960s so we quit opening this window. It was a lost cause, anyway. The rise was only about six inches when the window was open. Because it was so large and heavy, it was a pain to lift. Mom did it a few times when we first moved into the house. Then she declared this window would be kept closed. (Pat solved the problem. The new window doesn't open.)

Picture Two is looking outside after the old window was removed.
Can you see my peonies blooming on the left side of the porch? Mom always struggled to keep fresh peony blooms to take to the graves on Memorial Day. She would set them out in old fruit jars. Now the cemeteries don't want jars of flowers. They wilt too fast and the jars break. They want you to bring artificial flowers that last longer.

Notice too the shabby porch rails. Dad planned to replace them from the time we moved into the house in 1960. He never did. Pat plans to redo the porch when we redo the roof. Boy! I can't wait! Then on to new siding... Okay. One project at a time. Back to the windows...

Picture Three was exciting. Pat put the new window in place.


Picture Four is doing the final touches -- pushing insulation in the spaces between the new window and the opening in the wall. We have purchased red oak to make the woodwork around the windows and door. We won't do the baseboards until we have laid the new floor. That's a long way off. We still have horsehair plaster to remove from at least three more rooms.

Square Foot Gardening

It's been colder and wetter this spring than usual. I guess it's global warming at work. Someone said the ice caps are melting, making the oceans colder which is affecting our weather. I believe it!

At least that's our story, and we're sticking to it! And, that's why we didn't get our garden started till May 1.

Pat had the money to buy a tiller this spring. I said I'd like to try square foot gardening before we spent the money on the tiller. If we like it, we won't ever need the tiller. I bought a copy of Mel Bartholomew's book, New Square Foot Gardening to use for a guide. As it turned out, building 4 4-ft beds. and buying all the soil was expensive, but not as much as a tiller. We invested about $300 in boards and soil and other supplies.

First Pat made our beds. The frames are four foot square.
We attached mulch cloth to the bottom to keep grass and weeds from growing into the bed.
Next we stirred five sorts of compost, plus vermiculite and moss together to make our soil. The soil was the most expensive part of this project, but the Bartholomew's book said this was the most critical factor. Pat was doubtful, but he let me talk him into it.

Third, we filled the beds with the soil mixture. Pat attached the lath that divided our four foot beds into sixteen sections. There was a small miscalculation here. All of the lath was 4 foot in length. Half of them should have been longer to reach the edge of the longer sides of the beds. Oh well... we will make different ones next year.

Time to plant! Since it was so late in the season, we bought many of our plants, particularly the tomatoes. I picked two different kinds of onion sets, two bundles each. We didn't need that many onions. Again... live and learn. Oh! Do I miss Mom and Dad! They were the seasoned gardeners.

This wasn't the year to start a strawberry bed. (Next year!), but I did want to have a couple of plants. They started in strawberry jars on the back porch. Now we have moved them to the railroad ties that make the border of the mint bed. They are lined across the ties with several flower pots of onions. Some how the one pot of catnip didn't survive our 5 cats. Gee. I wonder why?

I LOVE SPRING!! I LOVE LILACS!

It's so great! My lilacs are blooming!

I have waited for years to have lilacs again. They wouldn't grow in our part of Texas or Arizona. I had to run outside immediately to pick some and bring them in. This bush is particularly special because Mom took a start from the one that grew on the west side of Grandpa Hull's place. Grandpa's bush went away when the house was torn down, but we still have the lilacs.

I didn't realize the bushes took so long to grow. This one is a little less than 5 ft. high. It only had 5 blooms this year. As it gets older and fuller, there will be more blooms.

Last year we had frost after the buds formed. It killed the blooms. I wasn't going to have that happen this year. I have waited far too long for the smell of lilacs. When the buds started forming, I listened to the weatherman. If he predicted frost, I ran out and threw a blanket over my lilacs.

Ah! the wonderful smell of lilacs. I have a vase of them beside my rocker. What heavenly perfume! It was worth it.

Ta Da!!!

The living room floor is done! It seems so much brighter, lighter in the living room now that we don't have that dull, dark, unfinished floor. I can live with this until the plaster is replaced and I get to put down hardwood floors.

Another Roadside Attraction

This has nothing to do with the house, but I think it's neat. There is a farmer who lives off Kansas 47, between mileposts 29 and 30 who creates metal sculpture in his spare time. There are at least three dinosaurs in this picture. He says they are "anatomically correct" because his daughter, a palentologist, oversaw their creation.

If you double click on the picture, you will see a larger image. There is a red tyrannosaurus by the tree; a white brontosaurus by the building in the back and smaller ones behind the white deer. I believe they are those small dinosaurs that look like horned toads. Hard to tell when you zip by at 65 mph.

Nearly done

Look how it's coming along! All that is left to stripe is the area where the piano sits. That's been our walking corridor as we laid stripes and let paint dry.

When we were in Lawrence a couple of weeks ago Pat bought me a new rug for the center of the floor. I put it down for the first time last night. Of course, the cats say it works fine. They try to blend with the black parts.

I'll finish the red area today or tomorrow and have the floor complete by Thanksgiving.

Half-way There!

We have the room half done! More than half... The squares are fully painted on the west side of the room, the furniture has been moved onto the painted area and the other half has been primed and painted red. I plan to get the stripes laid this weekend.

It's been nearly a month that we've been working on this project in our spare time. I'm ready to have my living room back!!

Furball Lends a Paw

I am drawing the line. As you can see, Furball is helping. When Pat came home for lunch he brought me a second roll of blue tape. That really helps. After the lines are drawn, I can lay both lines at the same time.

In case I do this again, I'll document what I've learned. First-- knee pads are a must! That floor is HARD. I tried various methods of drawing the lines. The easiest one doesn't even require a pencil. Just a good yard stick and the tape.

I place the yard stick near the wall and use the tape to mark the 12" point. I'll next use the second roll of tape to mark the 13" point. I press the first six inches down securely on each piece of tape so they won't come loose when I tug on them later. Then I move the yard stick about 1/3 of the way down the floor and position the edge of the stick on the starting point of this "brick". Using the first roll of tape like a plumb line, I "snap" it straight to the 12" mark and secure it to the yard stick. I now have a straight line. I repeat for the second role of tape, securing at the 13" mark. Press the tape down and progress to the next section of floor.

Quick. Straight. And no pencil marks to paint over if there is a mistake.

Peeping Tom

While the painting is in progress, we put the boys outside. (Furball, the Ladycat, is afraid of squirrels. She never leaves the house.) I'm not certain if Morris wanted to see what we were doing, or if he was telling me he wanted back in. However, we did have a Peeping Tom while we painted.

There is a cart parked under the kitchen window where I keep unused flower pots. The cats will jump on it and look inside to tell us they want in. The view behind him is the east yard and the three-car garage/shop. This is our main "back yard" because we seldom use the front door and only cross the west yard to get the mail. The south yard is another full lot. We use it for the garden and orchard.

Second Coat

The red brick color we're laying for the main coat is Dutch Boy Mesa Red. I was making the pizza dough for supper when Pat started the next coat. He used a small brush to paint the edges where the floor and walls meet, then came back with the roller for the rest of it.

He had about two roller widths painted when I heard, "Oh. That's really red."

"IRIS!" His voice came drifting into the kitchen. "Is this what you REALLY want?"

Grabbing a dish towel and wiping flour from my hands as I wove my way through the furniture stuffed any which way in the half of the room we aren't yet painting, I came to look. It was a wonderful brick red. Just what I wanted.

"Don't worry, Pat." It will tame down when we add the stripes."

"YOU get to paint the stripes." I was informed. Ah. Pat doesn't do brush work. :)

Primer coat

I must admit, I like the way Pat thinks. I had expected to paint these floors with a brush. He pulled out the paint roller and pan. Now, that's the way to go!

We are using Kilz for the primer because it hides stains so well.

Oh, yes, this is the way to paint a floor!
Not only did it go on quickly, I got to watch Pat do all the work. The Kilz is really thick, but dries amazingly fast. By the time he had finished the first third of the room, there were spots already drying.

I had the really hard task of sitting across the room in my rocker and going "You missed a spot!" Pat showed amazing restraint. He never tried to paint me or throw anything at me. :)

First Stage --Prep Work

It's begun! I was pulling staples when Pat said he'd do that if I'd unload the three bookcases. Gladly!

Each of us feels s/he got the better end of the bargain.

I will say, being a librarian shows. I have a lot of books. Pat has a mere pittance in comparison. :) His books take up a couple of shelves in the bookcase in his computer room. Mine are EVERYWHERE!!!! At the moment they are all over the daybed. Boy, was Something disgusted when he wanted to catch a quick nap this evening.

The Foundation of the Matter

I've waited a year, thinking we'd be more productive than we have been, but it doesn't look like we'll get to put down the hardwood floor I want any time soon. I'm resigned now that it may be two or three years before we do it. The issue at hand is the things that have to be done BEFORE we can do the floor.

Besides replacing the roof, (there is a leak in the flat roof over the utility and bathroom areas), we have more horsehair plaster to remove. That's dirty work that can ruin the finish on a nice floor. I'm too cheap to put down an interim floor just to see it ruined. I refuse to put down the good wood floors I want until the plaster is replaced. I have plans to replace the utility room and bathroom floors later, too. I have my eye on some click-together laminate that looks like stone. I've heard they don't stand up well in wet areas. This may not be a good idea for the bath and the back door. I wonder if they can be sealed? Hm... I have time to make that final decision.

We have four more rooms that may need the horsehair plaster removed. Kitchen. Utility. Bath. Northwest Bedroom. I can hope the bathroom and utility room have already been done when the folks reworked the bathroom, but I'm not holding my breath. It's all paneled. That was Dad's way of coping with crumbling plaster.

My old bedroom, the northwest room, has walls that are in good condition, even if they are still horsehair, but the ceiling is crumbling. Dad installed dropped ceilings to hide the problem. He did that for two reasons -- lower ceilings make a warmer house in the winter, and it was an easy fix. Dad wasn't worried about a "period look". He wanted something functional. He was also in his 70s when he was doing some of this work (with only Mom for help) so he wasn't going to create more work than they could handle. He only lowered the ceiling a foot, so that really isn't a big issue. I want to go back to the 9 ft. ceiling.

Before Robert and Pat stripped the plaster off the living room, the first thing they did was pull out the old green carpet. We've been living on the particleboard underlayment for the past year. I've even tried to wax it to make it look a little better, but that was useless. I'm really tired of living on particleboard. But I'm still too cheap to spring for an interim floor. Or am I?

Browsing at Sutherland's the other day, I found a flyer for floor and deck paint that showed it laid down in a red brick pattern. That looks nice! I know it's intended for a concrete floor, but the texture of the particleboard would just add realism to my bricks. We bought the paint and will be giving it a try. Even if it looks pretty amateurish, it will be better than raw particleboard for the next few years.

As you can see by the photo, there will be some prep work before we put down the color. I need to pull the nails that held the carpet down for starters. We will seal the floor with Kilz before putting on the color. In his later years Dad cut a trap door in the floor so he had access to the floor furnace. We have removed the furnace and will close off the trap door when we install the wood floor. In the meantime I plan to paint the black lines between the "tiles" to fall as so they hide the edges of the door.

Jonseys Construction

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Jonseys Construction

This is what's Pat's business card looks like. He always gets a chuckle when folks first read "Hire a Husband". But they like it! Almost anyone who sees his card thinks of some nagging problem that needs to be done.

It took a while for his business to get off the ground, but it's going strong now. He also works 4 days a week as maintenance man for the county library system and 1 day a week for the regional system as the rotation van driver, delivering books to member libraries. He has a full calendar. Now you see why we haven't had time to work on the house.

Ah, well, I consider this a lifetime project.

Summer Distractions

We haven't done much on the house this summer. However, Pat got to plant his first garden. We planted onions, carrots, lettuce, corn, tomatoes, peas, pole beans, asparagus, potatoes and watermelon. We let the strawberry bed go back to grass. That was too big a project for this year.

The spring crops did really well. We had a lot of rain this year, even some flooding around the Oklahoma line near Coffeyville. That translated into a lot of rain where we live. At one point the corn laid over nearly flat. Pat was heartsick. I thought it might stand itself back up, but didn't say anything because I wasn't sure. After three or four days, as the ground dried out, the corn pulled itself back upright. Pat was amazed. Unfortunately, all of the rain and problems at all the wrong times meant the corn didn't "make" very well. If Pat got two ears to eat, he may have been lucky.

Our best crop, hands down, was the tomatoes. We were able to can about 50 pints of tomatoes and a dozen quarts of juice. Except for a few onions, we didn't have enough to preserve for anything else. We picked one watermelon. The beans flooded out. The weeds took the asparagus. We had two or three meals of new potatoes but I wasn't ready to harvest the potatoes when Pat was. I could have sworn my folks harvested potatoes in the fall, not the spring. So we left them in the ground too long and they rotted.

But for all of that, the garden was a success. Pat had fun "farming" and we know we want to do it again. His home-based business has taken off and he's added two part-time jobs to his workload as well. I'm really busy with my job, so I don't see us putting in a big garden next year, but Pat wants to try corn again and I sure want fresh tomatoes and onions. We will be planting again next spring.

Guess we'll spend the winter pouring over seed catalogs. :)

1947 Lineoleum Floor

Spring has sprung! It's so nice to have the doors and windows open. It gives us an urge to get things done.

Pat has been busy this winter. He has reworked the living room walls, evening out some boo-boos and painting walls and ceiling. On nice days he has puttered in the 3-car garage, organizing it and enjoying his "man-space."

BUT NOW! IT'S TIME TO GET BACK ON THE PROJECT! We outdid ourselves today. (Am I sore!) We had been using Granny Mitchell's iron bed in our bedroom, but it was just too large. That wonderful foot rail that curves out to make a quilt holder takes up 18" more floor space than we had to spare. Today Pat wanted to install the new ceiling fan in our bedroom, so it was a great time to switch bed frames.

Pat took down the iron bed and pulled out the red cedar one that matches the rest of the bedroom set. It had been in storage for more than five years and was layered in cobwebs and dust. I grabbed the lemon oil and a rag and began dusting. Hey! There was wood under there!

All winter I have been muttering about the 1940s lineoleum on the bedroom floor. I have no idea how old that flooring truly is, but it looks like the stuff that was on the floor in grandma's house when I was a kid. It's real lineoleum, not vinyl.

"Do you really want to take that flooring up?" Pat asked as I was mopping it. "YES!" was my resounding cry. Hey! I guessed right. We rolled it until it cracked and broke, then took it out in pieces. Underneath was a layer of old newspapers. Kansas City Star, Feb. 2, 1947. The flooring was one year older than me!

We had fun with the newspaper. There was a politically incorrect ad for Aunt Jemima pancake mix, a Parade insert with an advertisement for "the really original postwar styling" of a Studebaker, and the funnies! Gasoline Alley. Little Orphan Annie. Dick Tracy. There were funnies there that I haven't seen since I was a kid; some I've only heard about. One called "Newsreel" had a story about Groundhog's Day. We weren't able to salvage much of the paper, but I kept the Studebaker add and a page of funnies. Pat would have liked to spend the afternoon just reading the paper, but we had things to do.

The bedroom is too small to rearrange. The furniture only fits in one way. But we have a wood floor now. The boards are stained but not varnished... and as ugly as Mom said they were. She despaired at the wood floors in this house. She said "I've seen better floors in barns." They are wide, poorly fitted, pine boards. Air leaks through them in the winter (remember me complaining about the cold in the computer room?).

Pat put insulation under the computer room and the bathroom. He plans to do this room soon. We will probably put floating laminate in this room and the computer room as well as the living room and kitchen. There really is nothing here worth salvaging.

Onions!

Onions! We've got onions!

Pat is so excited! The first thing to pop out of the ground is the onions. He feels very territorial about them. They are HIS onions.

Before this he was sure he could kill plastic plants. It's so exciting to see something come up. Now he wants to see the corn come up. Never mind that we haven't planted it yet. He can't wait to see corn rows in our garden.

Flat Lala

We have had a spring guest. Flat Lala visited in granddaughter Lala's place. You see her sitting among the tulips with this entry. Lala means Tulip in Slavic. The stone head always reminds me of my bald headed Papa. FlatLala finds it a bit grim.

I've had a lot of fun with this assignment. Flat Lala has accompanied me to work; helped Pat and I plant garden; helped Pat in his handyman business and traveled with us to visit cousins in Indiana. If you want to know more about Flat Lala, visit her blog at http://flatlala.blogspot.com

Farmer Jones

Garden time! I love spring!

Pat has never gardened before. He has prided himself that he is "not a farmer!" But he is really getting into the spirit of things this year. Last Fall our neighbor Merle plowed a section of Mom's garden when he plowed his own garden.

Pat was amazed to see Merle's tractor listing to one side with each pass. Then he walked out to inspect the newly turned earth. "It's 2 ft. deep! He dug that ground nearly to China!!" The garden sat during the winter with the snow adding nitrogen to the turned earth and the freeze and thaw of the season breaking up the clods.

Come spring, our tiller wasn't working, so we rented one in Burlington and smoothed out the garden. Pat also dug me an asparagus bed and a strawberry bed. We're starting small with only about 1/3 of Mom's garden tilled. Today we planted potatoes and onions. Later we will put in English peas, pole beans, corn, pumpkin, watermelon and cantaloupe as well as carrots and tomatoes.

You can see Flat Lala helping Grandpa plant potatoes and onions.