OMG! It's October!

Wow, Time flies even when your not having fun! I haven't got many house items to report, been really busy driving kids around and working.....there are not one, but two truckloads of mulch on our driveway, I guess we got a little ambitious and figured we'd have all this free time to shovel much.....we'll get it moved, eventually. The weather has finally cooled down a little so it should be a more comfortable job (if moving a mountain of mulch could ever be comfortable). The mornings have been absolutely beautiful and the house actually cools down to a level below our thermostat setting. That great news for the electric bill, which became a complicated matter after fixing the A/C hot water leak sprung up under the house.....creating high electric AND water bills.....eventually, the entire house will have been fixed or replaced, so when we do go on the market, we will look good! The market is so horrible right now, we are holding off officially going up for sale.....I can't bear the thought of having to keep the place "show ready" for over a year.....
We started Halloween decorations on the front porch; nothing fancy.....one of the great things about living in an old house is the fact you can pretty much just throw up some cobwebs and put a black bulb in the porch light and VIOLA! Creepy Old House!

Slow Times

Not much posting lately; some personal commitments, minor surgery and inability to charge my camera have prevented me from posting anything monumental. I am feeling better, but still I have little to update.
The rotted side we have been working on is almost done.....some finish work and paint and it will be history, and the last of any outside work until fall...too darn hot! We will forever and ever have siding replacement to do, one section at a time, the most rotted and nasty looking gets first priority. Due to the scourge of time and weather, this will never be completed. This particular job was really overdue.
I do think I will push forward on the backyard project......it's mainly free, so that fits right in with the budget. I hope to have the entire back mulched this summer so we can stat planting stuff this fall. I'm not sure on when the walkways will go in, I figure the mulch and plantings will form some pathways to some extent. Probably within a week or two, the mulch piles will reappear on our driveway.
I am really frustrated with the front yard; just as we get the "bad" side sodded, the "good" side goes and dies......I think we may have some sort of infestation.....even the new sod we put in the corners died, and the plugs we put in last season which were doing great are dead now too....only the weeds prevail. Pretty unbalanced yard....starting to think strongly of doing the mulch thing in front too......why waste time, money & water on an impossible task? A couple of my neighbors have very nice front lawns, but I think that is not the norm in Seminole Heights. Plus these lawns are so small, I could afford to re sod them every season, which is probably what they do..(I'm not bitter). I'll think on that for awhile....maybe draw up some plans, look at some pictures of glassless front yards.......it's got to be pretty!

Got Mulch?

The mulch for our backyard project has started arriving! This is the first of several truckloads we will be receiving to complete the coverage. This is where having teenagers comes in handy. I was hoping they could dump in the backyard, so we would not need to move the mulch more than once; but they did not want to go over the edge of our driveway for fear they would make cracks in the concrete (and there are certainly no cracks to speak of now, lol). This is the best kind of mulch, because it's free!