05/14/2002:
It has really been raining overtime lately, pretty much rain every night for a week or more, plus raining all day on the weekend. After all this rain it started raining and storming last night after midnight and rained constantly until noon or later, so my sump pump is just constantly on, and the old dusty cracks in the floor of the basement (my basement floor is a layer of concrete over a somewhat evened out/flattened dirt floor, common around here) are seeping water, which is running in little rivulets down to the sump pump well in a steady stream and getting pumped outside into the alley, making a huge puddle then going down the storm drain on the corner. There's been flood watches out all week, planting is just not able to happen. Some of my neighbors have standing water in their basements a few inches (and people down in Villa Grove have water in their houses!). Lots and lots of rain, here it comes again with the lightning.
However, all of this has been just WONDERFUL for all the existing plants and trees. Everything is lush and very thickly brightly green. In particular the maple in my parkway is loving it, it's a variety close to sugar maple, around seven years old or so and some years it's later to get leaves than trees around it which isn't a good sign usually, but with all this water it's filled out, and the shape is still doing great, it's really spreading out in a canopy and finally getting large enough that it's up overhead, meeting the really big tree across the street so the street is covered over all in front of my house, it doesn't seem like such a "new tree" anymore. Also the vinca that died off this winter in my front bed is coming back nice and even thick so it's not obvious where the original plantings were, and it's all gone crazy on the south side of the house by the driveway, so I can dig up some from there to beef up the front.
My porch is all finished now, and is really large and good, the lilac bush sort of screens it from the street but lets you see through it still. Sitting in there is just green all around, the lilac bush and then that huge hackberry tree between Willard's yard and mine. From the windows in my house too (particularly the front room) it's all green and lazily blowing around. I'm quite happy with the porch and the re-done roof, I had "porch envy" for quite some time. My neighbors are all quite pleased with it too, as the house looks much better and more "unified" generally, without the sort of "lean-to" feel on the front. Main thing, no more getting wet coming in and out of the rain anymore. The next thing to happen is, I'm getting the house painted starting the end of this month (if the rain hasn't delayed the painters' schedule, that is), it will be greyish-green with off-white trim and then dark green in places like the porch floor and the back stoop, and lots of little contrasting color places like the porch railing and stuff. Then, I will make more garden beds all 'round and rip up most of the paving in back for more plants, probably walled in bed areas too. The idea is to get it all built and filled with dirt/bark chips this season, and then be ready for serious plantings next year (although stuff amenable to late summer planting can maybe happen this year). I want on box bed all along the outside of my fence, in the alley on the south side, and that one will have vegetables in it. In the very short meantime I got some seeds for yellow, orange, and red cosmos flowers, and some blue/purple balloon flowers which I've really liked in other gardens, I will start those from seed and then move them to along the fence behind me and Willard's house for blue and yellow-orange happiness in late summer...
05/20/2002:
Well, the rain has finally stopped and now it's "unseasonably cool" (i.e. highs in the mid-50's). Yesterday (Sunday afternoon) Mike L and I took advantage of the weather to begin hanging a new back door. As luck would have it, the ceiling inside the basement stairs where the door has to hang wasn't quite high enough, so we needed to hack through there to see what's above it and open up some space. To do THAT, we needed to rip out the back of the pantry in the mud room. Turns out, there's just some empty wasted space back/up there (depending on your direction). You know, big enough to hide a body in, but not quite big enough for an extra room... so hanging the actual door should go fairly smoothly now. The unexpected benefit is, I had an excuse to re-cover the shelves in the pantry and build a new back wall in it, since it was built of yet more Kwalitee Building Materials, among them crappy fuzzy fiberboard (mmm, 60's!) and old painted over linoleum with hideous yellow and red patterns in it (mmm, 40's!) and some oh-so-nice painted over foam, all of it painted goldenrod yellow (itself not so bad, but it was cracked and sorta stained in places) and then the right half was hella sticky so I'd laid down a Prince Valiant broadsheet 3 years ago that was still on it. Now it's all down to wood, and we're putting new wood over the back hole, and new wood on the bottom. The upper pantry is the same painted linoleum but whoever did it did a much better job up there, that one is all sealed and clean. At any rate, I'll be taking off work tomorrow to finish the job.
It's all about Arthur B. Jones and the Russians. I think the Russians were most likely responsible for the shag and green jungle goodness, but Arthur B. sure loved his painted foam.
