Catching Up

Well....

[awkward pause]

It's been a while since we talked. The entire summer, fall, and most of winter as a matter of fact. Let's catch up a little!

First, the garden was a lot more productive last year, especially in the squash, cucumber and tomato harvesting. I do think the tomatoes suffered a bit from trying to fit more in at the behest of certain people residing in this house; that will need to be ameliorated next year. The trellis system with poured concrete buckets with metal poles held up, but I definitely need to construct some cross poles at the top, because the weight of the bean and cucumber vines caved in the lattice fencing somewhat. It was my intention to do this, but I just didn't get to it. There is now about three feet of snow over some winter rye I put in again in late October. I can't be sure if the increase in production was owing to that nitrogen boost from the rye or the 10-10-10 fertilizer put in during rototilling (probably a little from Column A, a little from Column B) but I'm happy with the results, so I'll repeat them next year.

In early August, a crew contracted by Connecticut Light & Power took down a huge red oak tree in the front yard. It was a double-trunked behemoth in the shape of a V. There was a sizable cavity right at the split, though, filled with water and debris all the time, which worried us and our neighbor (the base was actually mostly on their property, but the tree itself lorded over about half of our front yard) about the core rotting or freezing and splitting. That "October Suprise" storm in 2011 really woke people up about the need to cut overhanging limbs and suspect trees from power lines.

I've also been doing a little kitchen updating, finally getting to rehabilitating our cabinets and doors and various little things. I cleaned the insides and outsides of the cabinets with some TSP (I am nicknamed "Felix Unger" and strive to keep a clean house and it was unbelievable how much grime there was). Most of the cabinetry structure was in good shape still, but a number of things weren't conducive to being able to sand/strip and refinishing the cabinetry itself, not the least of which was particle-board sections, serious gaps and uneven plumb between cabinets that had to be filled. I decided to just paint them in a gloss white. I then sanded the cabinet doors, which are solid red oak and stained them in a deep Minwax red oak color that I've used for wood and furniture through the rest of the house. With the trim molding through the upstairs being white, this color combination really helps to tie the place together. Some of the cabinet doors were in good condition or able to be repaired, but there were several that were too far gone through about 40 years of abuse and the stiles and rails had unfixable damage. Hiring a carpenter to make these doors was cost-prohibitive. And then, at someone's suggestion I looked online and found a place (barkerdoors.com) in Arizona that fabricates cabinet doors to specification. It cost about $500 for seven doors of various sizes. But I'm happy that I was able to just pick out the door style details online and get just about an exact match (I had to do some minor routering around the edge that the company didn't have an option for) and that the project could go forward without wasting all the time I had put into refinishing the undamaged doors. And the price on the replacement doors isn't all that unreasonable when factoring in how much just the grade-1 red oak raw wood boards cost at the store. Hiring someone here --- nevermind trying to find someone who has the tools and can do it and then having to wait on their schedule --- would've easily cost two or three times more. I also went to Lowe's and ordered a new countertop to replace our old puke-yellow Formica counters that are in seriously bad shape. We selected a white solid-surface Corian (TM)-type. The contracting company templated the new counters with a laser system and it was installed about three weeks later. I am a big-time DIYer, but a countertop is something that's a little beyond my ken.

Otherwise, it was a subdued holiday season given the shooting in Newtown in mid-December. There really is no way to make sense of it. As with any tragedy, all that remains is to remember with grace, and try to hold the light of humanity higher and make it shine brighter.

I don't want to be divulging too much in a public forum, but to explain the absence of blog updates a bit, my mother was diagnosed with a stomach/pancreatic cancer in October, had successful surgery in late November and and is currently undergoing a lengthy course of chemotherapy and possibly radiation.

But here is to 2013! It's already holding a lot of promise and I feel like there are many good things to come this year.