While We've Been Quarantined

We finally got the two overly-huge camphor trees in our front yard removed; they had been planted too close to the house back when it was built. Over the past 24 years they grew to be over fifty feet tall, and their root systems became a threat to the foundation of our house. Their leaves and berries have been killing our grass, and I've always been worried they would fall over during a hurricane and destroy our roof. I hate cutting down trees but it's a relief that they're gone.

Since then Kat and her dad have been working on adding new plants and some landscaping to the front of the house. My kid has a real talent for creating little gardens, and she made this one for us:

Recently my kid applied for a temporary job working in the northwest part of the country to do field and lab work for the federal government. She'd be testing the streams and rivers up there for different problems they're having with their water sources; the job would last anywhere from six months to two years. Her biology professor recommended her for the job to the guy who is hiring, and it's what Kat wants to do as a scientist, so we're hoping she gets it. If she does she'll start in June.

Comments

Maria Zannini said…

Good luck to Kat! I hope she gets the job.

Nice work on the cacti. I'm jealous of the urn too. LOL! I'm always on the lookout for concrete planters.

April 18, 2021 at 4:34 PM

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to...

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

Valerean

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