It’s been a mild summer, and I’m grateful, but we’ve had our heat spells. Our little house is barely insulated at all and is very drafty, although the attic holds an unbelievable amount of heat during the day. Last year Peter installed an attic fan and that’s helped some. A few weeks ago he traded out the air-conditioning unit in our bedroom for a bigger one that actually cools the house! And he also put up a tarp outside that takes away all my sunshine in the bedroom…but it’s also easier to cool. 🙂
My mother came out to visit right after Seth was born and planted a beautiful garden right outside my kitchen window.
A year and a half later we adopted a dog, and then our neighbors got a puppy, too. Well, that was the end of my garden. Between their dog’s digging and our dog’s trampling-in-search-of-a-shady-nap…it was gone.
So, before Ian was born Noel came over and replanted my garden. My mother was coming out and I was embarrassed to have her see it like that. Noel found shrubby plants that could withstand some dog abuse and it’s really pretty with roses, lavender, mock orange, tea tree, and some plants I can’t recall the names of. But what has really done well (taken over) and gives me so much pleasure to look at is the purple fountain grass. It’s getting so tall and the fluffy things catch the evening sun to light themselves up.
But none of it could be seen until recently. There had been a metal dog fence around the whole garden to keep the dogs and little boys out until the plants had a chance to take root and establish their home there. Well, they did that just fine and the dogs and boys stayed out and the fence just kept stayin’ up. I was just as embarrassed about that fence as I had been about the bare dirt of a garden, but I wasn’t gonna say anything about it because I felt it was my pride making me ashamed of a metal fence held up by tires in my front yard.
Peter spent two days of his free time putting up this lovely little wooden fence in replacement. It made me so happy! And now anybody can see what’s in that garden. And I suppose since the ugly metal fence was up for so long, the dogs got used to not being in there and they haven’t even tried breaking in. 🙂
Another thank you to my man!