At Work Upstairs

After the mad rush of house prep and sale (5 weeks end to end), we’ve entered a new stage of waiting. Since selling the house we’ve dashed to Halifax to find an apartment and returned with a lease in hand. We’ll be moving into a medium-sized apartment in a low-rise building on the north-west corner of the Commons. We’ll be on a well-travelled bus route but close enough to work, school, and shopping that we’ll be able to walk to most places.

While we’re still trundling things to the charity shop, this is an oddly idle time. The stoved-in garden shed is gone. The movers are booked. Furniture has gone to new homes. Spring yardwork is done. Utility cancellations are scheduled. Boxes arrive later this week. Each task completed inches us away from this house.

Soon enough the new owners will arrive and with a bit of weather luck they’ll arrive when the peonies are blooming and the house will have its first toddler of this century. I think she’ll like the echoes the place makes when it’s empty and she’ll soon figure out which of the fireplace tiles makes a satisfying clonk clonk sound.

I’m learning that selling a house has two major phases: the somewhat mad scramble to get ready and the somewhat maddening waiting as people look things over.

The first phase went quickly enough despite the miles and miles of baseboards that grew in the night and needed fresh paint in the morning.  Though I might have, well, did grumble at the process, it had its own satisfactions and was easy to measure: this much paint applied, these many books cleared away, and that much floor space revealed. All visible changes and all very much controllable.

The second phase is moving along as dozens of people troop through the house hoping it’s the right place for them, imagining their things in rooms that still hold a lot of signs of us, and if they look closely enough, the four families who lived here before us: Hoeys, Hicks, Petits, and Gomery-Powells.

The clearest signs come from the Gomery-Powells and the Petits though their colour palettes of green and beige have vanished under our yellows. The Hicks, we think, were the family that severed the land making way for our neighbours’ bungalow. The Hoeys were here from 1914 through the second world war when the house (with, yes, one bathroom) held seven adults during Ottawa’s wartime housing shortage. During the Hoeys time there were lilacs lining the back yard, peonies along the sunny side of the house, and a well out back where a maple tree now stands. The Hoeys and maybe the Hicks were here when there was a marshy area just beyond the dogleg in the road.

This is the hard phase of selling, with unsatisfying measures of progress: this many people at an open house, this many first showings, this many second showing, this many bookings coming up.  Very little remains in our immediate control as we can’t magic up a second bathroom, make the basement deeper, or get rid of the small apartment building you can see from the back porch. And much as I wish it, it’s hard to make people instantly love this old, well-loved, and well-used house but soon enough there will be lilacs,  bleeding hearts, forget-me-nots, and peonies.

About six months ago I bought five or six of these:

I was sick of dealing with the tidal wave of plastic bags. We were already plastic-bag resistant. Most shopping went into knapsacks or into other plastic bags.  And the bags we did end up with, we re-used and “donated” to the library and St. Vinnie’s.  Didn’t seem to make a dent.  Every month or so, we’d end up throwing away a bag full of bags. Drove me crazy.

Now we have these soft cotton bags, strong and capacious. They easily hold all the groceries we schlep and don’t cut off the circulation the way plastic does.  Stuff them in a pocket or in a bag.  Take them along on trips and fill them with the extra stuff that always seems to come back with us. There are still too many plastic bags here but I’d say we’ve reduced the in-flow by about 2/3rds.

You can’t buy them in Ottawa. (The first time I asked about them in the eco-friendly store, the clerk looked at me as I was a loon. Can you say “missed business opportunity”?) But you can buy them online for about 30$ US.

The mousie that just came in from the bad weather is going to smell really really bad if it can’t find its way back out. Good thing the flu has destroyed my sense of smell.

Heather

The extra sleep is kicking in and we’re having quiet day puttering about the house and yard putting slowly things back in order.

All the bits and pieces flung about my work room are put away. Dust removal has been completed. There are clean dishes. There will be clean clothes.

Douglas has had a twigfest snipping up tree trimmings onto to the back corner of the yard. It used to be a wasteland dominated by ashes and clinkers. For the last five years or so he’s been adding yard clippings and gradually he’s creating a mini-forest floor. This last year or so ferns from our neighbours’ yard are creeping in and we’re diverting much of our yard waste into our own backyard. It’s still pretty much an eyesore, but we’re gradually creating humus.

While he was out there, he harvested the last of the basil and now the house smells wonderful. The basil’s waiting to be made into pesto for the dire days of February. Sitting beside the basil is the pumpkin that I’m about to turn into pie. I’ve always used tinned pumpkin but the veggie man included in Friday’s delivery so it’s a pumpkin experiment day.

The veggie man is a luxury for us: weekly deliveries of locally grown organic veg. Part of the pleasure is the randomness: I’d never buy tomatillos and rarely shallots. Now I have a clutch of both. The unpredictability is expanding my cooking range–biggest hit so far: pattypan squash sauteed with very fresh garlic.

And now, some tea.

Heather

The long postponed repainting of the porch ceiling suffered another setback Saturday as housepainter Douglas declared both his arm and his patience for the job worn out.

"Obviously my upper arm is not used to this much overhead motion," said Douglas, 47.

Turpentine fumes were also a factor.

"My lungs are full of them.  And are you supposed to put it on your skin?" asked the tired and disoriented homeowner.  "I should have used [water-soluble] latex."

Rainy conditions Sunday caused porch painting to be called off for the remainder of the weekend, though critics point out that the porch ceiling is sheltered from the rain.

"Sounds like a sorry excuse to me," said Heather.

The porch ceiling project has been subject to repeated delays and procrastination.   Records show that the can of paint was purchased in 2005.  Eyewitnesses say that it had to be stirred thoroughly when opened this August.

Oh dear.

What we thought was pesky condensation seems to have transmogrified into a slow, small leak in fresh water intake pipe for that most useful of household devices, the toilet.

Sorting this out means the skinny person in the house has had to wiggle up through the kitchen ceiling, clear out a lot of old crud, and figure out what all the random pipes were. (Alas there’s one that makes no sense.)

And after a suitable amount of gawking at some hideous wallpaper remains, the leak was found. 

At the least, this will be a visit from a plumber.  At the worst it will mean a new subfloor.

Heather

Time in garden: 10 mins

Amount of mint ripped out: About a packed milk crate’s worth

Number of insect bites: 5

Unanswered questions

• Why is calamine lotion puke pink?
• Why do bugs favour my left leg?

Heather

Early this morning, before the cloud disappeared and the shops opened, I walked up to the market to pick up this year’s tomatoes and basil plants. The place was packed–everyone’s pent-up gardening urges popped out this morning with the prediction of hot sunny weekend. More than the usual number of crazy drivers mixed in with people trying to decide about geranium colours and tomato varities. For 10$ I snagged a dozen tomato and a dozen basil bedding plants.

They’re now stuck in soil that’s been getting richer and richer each year with all the the kitchen vegetable waste being composted and turned in along with the occasional bag of manure. I’ve planted them in a different spot in the garden this year; it gets a bit less sun but also doesn’t dry out as quickly. After the first week or so, the plants will be on their own water-wise so the added shade shouldn’t be a huge deal.

In one of the dozens of garage sales popping up I should hunt out an extra bucket since the old pail that has disappeared and we need to make a batch of the foul smelling but very useful comfrey juice to feed the tomatoes. Free, effective fertilizer from a plant that will take over if you you let it.

In a couple of months we’ll be eating tomatoes warm from the vine with shredded basil and goat cheese. All we have to do now is wait.

I’m sitting outside on the porch swing. I can see lawn after lawn of brown and grey grass and clutches of rotting snow. But it’s warmer outside than in; there are four or five kinds of bird song; and one of the neighbours is using an ice chopper to take down his Christmas lights. More than half of my garden is exposed: lots of leave litter but the lavender bushes seem to have over-wintered and the earliest perennials are starting to green up. I wonder where my box of seeds is?