Weeding in the rain

I drove to Longview Thursday to get the children registered in their new schools. There was a deadline for summer football. I wanted to make sure Trevor was listed as a participant. We will work out the details later about the other stuff. Riley needed to be registered in high school and pick his electives for next year. It will all be put in the computer and his classes spit out, but again I wanted to make sure he was in the system so he could get the classes he wanted.

I ran into an old friend who works at the school. We reminisced for a short time as she was working and students kept coming to her with questions. I feel really good about the new school. It is smaller than the school they go to now by 600 students. Just over 1000 attend. The community college is right next door. You can't tell where the high school parking ends and the community college parking begins except for the cyclone fence. Of course I did enter the wrong parking lot only to find there was no access to the high school due to the fence. I had to drive out and around the block to find the right entrance. It is all permit parking in the area. I never did find the visitor parking, just slipped my old car in with the other cars in an empty spot. It fit right in due to its age. Tom's Cadillac might have stood out and drawn some attention. Riley would probably have gotten his permit by now, if he thought there was any chance of driving the Cadillac to school.

Riley is talking about getting his permit once we move, but I think that he only said it because Trevor was in the back seat going on about how he couldn't wait to get his permit and a job. The job is a good thing but the permit I told him is only allowed if he gets his grades up. I cannot nag him enough about his grades. We will see what the report card states, a little over two weeks left in the year.

After the visit with the school, I drove up to the big house, just to take a look. I am told we are seven days from hearing a yes from the mortgage company, maybe. We are hitting our window when we need to start considering alternate plans. The big house is getting really overgrown. The back was like a scene out of sleeping beauty. The blackberry vines had overtaken the house. They were crawling up the down spouts. You couldn't even reach the back yard anymore without serious clippers.

I had some clippers in my car. I like to carry half my life in my car; extra clothes for casual and dress up and a swim suit just in case the opportunity arises. I have clean underwear for the boys. On the off chance, I get to garden with friends sometimes in the summer I carry around gardening shears. You just never know what might be offered up in a day.

When my girlfriend fell off her bike and broke her collar bone, a couple years ago. I was able to slip on a dress and look professional for the doctors while waiting in the ER. Rather than look like some out of shape biker with my fat thighs bulging out of very unattractive tight shorts. It was a relief to have the spare outfit in the car. We had planned to go out to lunch after biking. I had thought I might need to change my clothes. I just hadn't intended to wear them in the ER, but they were a vast improvement over the biking attire.

So my trunk has lots of useful things in it including a pair of shears. I spent an hour whacking away at the brambles with my shears. It was satisfying work. The rain finally chased me away. But I came to the realization that we have a real problem with the back yard. I barely made a dent with an hour of clipping. The brambles will grow back quickly. What to do to kill them. Digging up the roots is usually my line of defense, but this is a whole hillside. And once they are gone, what do we put in instead to prevent their return. I will have to hit the books on blackberry control.

I also could hear the rain flow through the drains and realized we needed to figure out the damp basement issue quickly. The front drive had issues also with standing pools of water. Hopefully, none of these issues are too big a challenge for us to overcome. We are going to own this house with water and weeds. Thankfully with the open beam plan and the unfinished basement we can see the health of the house with no black mold issues to contend with, yet. I still want to do another walk through just to be on the safe side. A sitting vacant house is not a healthy environment. By the time we close, this will not be such a sweet deal as it was two months ago.

I thought that summer would be easier on a vacant house than winter when the cold does its own damage. But the plants take on a life of their own, ripping the house apart from the outside.


The chores keep growing the longer we wait. I don't even know what is being done to the interior with it vacant so long. I know there was damp in the basement. I could see a hole in a down spout in the front yard that needs repair. The water was not being diverted properly. I am hopeful that by fixing that down spout we can solve the damp basement problem. I am tending towards tiling the basement as the most resilient material to damp and water. I think I might go browse Home Depot today. Check out blackberry abatement and tile. I do want to use that basement fully and finished.