Work This Week

It has been cold and frosty this week. This is about as snowy/frosty as it will ever get. It has now been 15 years since it snowed. I took the dog out early this morning as as I was standing on the frozen sidewalk, I thought of that saying I read in the Little House Books, " When the days begin to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen." After hardly any cold weather last year, I am enjoying every single bit this year.

We have been busy working this week. I think the first week of January is off to a good start. I doubt if we can keep up the pace but it feels nice anyway. I was thinking as I was cleaning out my make-up drawer in my bathroom, " Now who in the world will ever look in here when the wedding comes?" I still makes me feel better.

I wish that my husband didn't have to go work at a real job next week. We would be done by the end of February if he didn't. I made him rest yesterday.
Here are some of the things he has done this week.

Some day I will remember to take before pictures. He raked all of the leaves and chopped weeds down this length of the driveway.

 He did this little flowerbed next to the garage, where his maple corner is right now. He will start grafting in February, we are pretty excited about that.  I have a barrel with my Peony's in it that he cleaned out and made all nice. I love Peony's but it is too hot for them to grow here. So we put them in a barrel so that we can move them around and out of the heat.

This is his little nursery area with all of his trees he will be grafting and trees he is growing to plant out in the pasture. He got it all pretty nice and clean. I didn't take picture of the other side but he even cleaned up and stacked my woodpile for my old barn wood.

I just love walking out there and seeing all of his trees on his benches. These are some that he has grown from seed, and some of them that will be future Bonsai.  The little cups are different kinds of little trees he has grown from seeds and are now seedlings.

I know you can't tell very well from this photo but these are his Bonsai trees that are in the ground to grow bigger bases. He has trimmed them and wired some of them and has expanded it to be six rows now.
If you look out he has even kept our pasture plowed so it looks all clean now too.

This is the pasture next door. He has been taking care of it now. My brother lives next door and  due to an injury is unable to care for it so my husband has taken over the job.

Here is the other direction of how big this pasture is and the land on the other side of this is my sister's property. Since she lives in Oklahoma, I think he has plans to start taking care of hers too.

Here is the mudball. Sasha wouldn't sit next to it so I could show you how big it is now. It is almost taller than she is when she is sitting. The experiment the boys told me was to see how water erosion from the rain would affect it this winter and what would happen to it by next spring. 

Here is the back flowerbed. All clean. He has three flats of spring flowers now growing in his shed under lights and on heat mats.

By the time the wedding comes, this patio will not look like this. But since he has cleaned it too I thought I would show you this, It looks so nice I think.

I tried to get all of my sewing supplies organized this week. I put all of my sewing and rug hooking things here. It felt nice to get rid of the piles that I had all over it.
I also went through my bookcases and gave them a good dusting  and even though I boxed up two boxes to take to Goodwill of books I still have too many books.

 Then while I was cleaning out closets I found my tulips. I felt like I was finally back home. I just got my bedroom and the office straightened and cleaned and I filled a whole trash can with things just from those two rooms. I organized and that part is clean. I have so much left to do but I think it is a good start. So then if anyone does look anywhere when they are here for the wedding, it will be clean.

When my last two got married, I cleaned like this and I was so glad too. I had so many people here decorating and the ladies that were doing the flowers had come in to eat lunch and I had forgot to get a piano or something for the music for the wedding, so I just had the boys come in and take our piano outside and put it on the porch for the pianist. The women were all at the table behind me eating, the boys picked up the piano and began to carry it outside, I turned around to see what the ladies were doing and they were all leaning over to see if it was clean under the piano.  Thankfully I had cleaned under it. Then the photographer wanted to set up an area in the living room which meant moving all of my furniture. Again, people watched to see if I cleaned under my couches. I had, so I squeaked through.
Last time I had the best decorator/ florist in the whole world. She even had the head designer from Disneyland who had retired after 30 years, who had just decided to move up here. They were the best people and the weddings were beautiful. Emilie starts working at a florist on Monday. I have a little more experience this time around, but I know if I get in a bind, who I can call. I think the secret to planning and doing a wedding is getting lots, and lots of help. I do my own flowerbeds though, I spend a lot of time crying in them and letting go. Just a silly ritual I have but by the time the wedding gets here I can do it without tears.

So when you are expecting people for a wedding it all has to be clean. People do look in drawers and in cupboards and in closets. It is just human nature. Well it is in this part of the world. :)

This is our first week of January. I just hope our strength holds out.  Sorry this is so picture heavy. I want to keep records of this journey.

I hope you are having a nice week too.

~Kim~