I don’t know how it is at other people’s houses, but at my house I am the idea person/slavedriver. That is right….. they run when they see me coming. All except that poor guy, AKA my husband, who has nowhere to run. So what is it this time? A new porch.
I brainstormed this idea – and it really is a good one- last week. You know how they say you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? ( They do still say that, right?) Well, I decided it applied to our front porch. We shored it up and patched it when we first moved here, yon long time ago, but it always makes the house look like a sad man’s countenance. Just sort of droopy, and on the outs.
So! I got to my trusty library and got old house plans, and old house books, and country house books. You get the picture. My husband leaped at the good idea and then realized how much work we are talking about. Talk about the sad man’s countenance. A little verbal wrestling and we jostled out the plan: it can be done. I have two alternative designs to show him tonight. He, on his part, got his own slew of library books on the nuts and bolts of “building your own”. Yay. Sign of actualization.
For the landscape, however, this means major work for me, lest I lose the plants that are presently in the dooryard part of my garden. I will need to do this soon. I have to figure where to put the plants. I have a major investment of hostas that I do not want to lose. They are not going to like getting uprooted again. I will have to move a small Mockorange, Philadelphus coronarius ‘Aureus’. It has taken years just to look like it mattered, but I think it should be placed in a better position anyway.
Much more difficult will be a good sized birdsnest spruce. Maybe it will be alright if I c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y dig up the roots as paintakingsly as I can. I don’t know if I have the patience. Maybe thinking about the price of a new one in an approaching size will inspire me. I believe the porch vines will be able to be trained from their area up the new porch; their roots will just be somewhat under the porch. The only other things are new hydrangeas I put across the front gabled area. They will be fine… just additional work in moving them again.
Well, it was my idea.
I help with demolition work, but I never had to handle hammers, etc. I think my husband would prefer I paint when it comes times for that, anyway. He finds that tedious and I think my novice work as a carpenter would make him flinch inwardly ( the “no one does as good a job as I do” sort of flinch, the ” I ‘d rather not have your help” sort of flinch) . If I took joy in that I suppose I would be a passive aggressive. As it is, I am glad we divide the work between us.
