All in a Garden Green

After a too-early wakeup call, a whirlwind trip to Augusta this morning (complete with ridiculous traffic) and a semi-leisurely trip back (stop at Christmas Tree Shop, and a nursery (which I had a gift card for, but discovered upon arrival that I had left it in my other purse, dammit. Oh well. Bought the 2 plants I wanted anyway, and will go back for 2 more when I actually have the dang card)), finally returned home late afternoon.

In the interest of not acquiring more plants unless I actually have a spot to put them so they won't linger and die in their pots, I set to work on rebuilding the collapsed front bit of the terrace out the front door. Several rocks and 13 buckets of loam later, it looked pretty good. kurlon and I took a quick trip to the transfer station to get rid of some construction debris from the garage, and stopped by the scary little discount shop in town to see if we could find any hoses, and I came away with an itty bitty pot of coral bells. Marked at $2.99, apparently on sale for 50% off, and I was able to split it into 3 pieces (that's 50 cents each, for those playing along at home... woo!). I call it victory. A good plant day.

The terrace is very shady, like most of the property, but gets some direct morning sun. The upper level will be home to an Oakleaf Hydrangea (once I bring it home, finally), and the lower level is perfect for my Heuchera collection. The 2 new 'Pistache' Coral Bells and the 'Caramel' I picked up earlier this week seem to be quite happy in their new home, and there's room for at least two more. :) The three little bitty 'Ruby Bells' tuck nicely into the front of the upper level, and will be a nice compliment to the eventual Hydrangea.

In other house news, we have a garage door! It's beautiful! I'll get my bay back soon, and won't have to spend another winter cleaning poor Rosie off! She'll be happier in the garage, too... she's getting old, and cold mornings are not fun for either of us...

So. We got our home equity loan straightened out, and have money (at the moment), and roofers that have been chomping at the bit to start ever since we suggested we might have a big project for later in the year, after they fixed the front leaky roof back in August.

Saturday was clean out the garage day. The amount of crap we pulled out of there was truly astounding. Had Dad-in-law and Dad there to help in the morning and afternoon, respectively. Found amazing things. If we couldn't identify it or decide definitively to keep or toss it within about 20 seconds, it got tossed. So many mouse skeletons. Ick. Some stuff worth keeping, like door handles and screen door return springs (anybody need any? We've got lots... in decorator colors...), a box full of Avon stuff (to be gone through later), lots of various wood (some good, some going to go to the fire we're having once we get the firepit built), but the majority of STUFF got tossed. The little trailer was quite full.

Wood arrived bright and early on Monday morning, followed by our fabulous roofer guys. When I got home Monday night, the garage smelled like fresh-cut softwood, the tetris mess of the back wall was gone and replaced by proper framing, and there was a pile of railing parts in my garage bay. Progress has since been made. The sunporch (which it turns out, is a pretty expensive little building add-on, just installed waaaaay wrong) has been disassembled and stored in the shed, and will be given new life as a greenhouse, or as a sunporch, off the back of the house at some point. For now, storage...

The roof comes off Friday, I think... supposed to rain some tomorrow, roofer says that they've saved some indoor work if it gets too wet outside, but they're just plugging away on this... It's wonderful (until the payments hit... then... ugggghhh!).

Now! See! The Remodeling of the 3rd Garage! Fear! The mouse nests, now gone in the Great Insulation Purge! Rejoice! In the soon-to-be-non-leaky roof! Coming soon, to our home...