The first time I saw this house and property, I cried.
It wasn't the hideous paneling that reduced me to tears, or the mustard-yellow plastic kitchen counters and avocado-green plastic bathtubs original to the 1970s single-wide trailer. No, bad as those things were (and, in the latter case, still are), it was the glass and metal littering the ground that did it.
The entire back pasture--an area that encompasses approximately half an acre of bare dirt--glittered with broken glass and bristled with old nails.
Meticulous landscaping was not one of Dale's interests.
I walked around this junkyard while Dale showed me the old pig pens and chicken coop, and as I went back to the car to buckle the children in, I literally had tears in my eyes. This was where I was going to raise my children? This junked property that resembled a miniature war-torn city was where my crawling baby would play outside?
And so, I cried. Just a little.
Even at the time, I realized this was ridiculously dramatic*. It was just glass and metal. Nothing a little work couldn't fix.
Or, as it turned out, a lot of work. A lot of stooped, tedious, drawn-out work.
A. conceived of a very clever method for getting up most of the metal. He attached a big roller magnet to a long-handled metal rake. This way, he can rake the dirt, and the nails and so on stick to the magnet. This is still a lot of work, but at least he has a tool to help him.
Perhaps he can launch a line of tools under the Woodchuck Man brand name.
The bits of broken glass, however? There's no tool for that. Nothing for it but to pick each piece up individually. And so, I have.
Thankfully, this is something I can do while the children play outside. Especially now that Poppy is big enough to walk around and mostly entertain herself outside.
Where "entertainment"=climbing up on a cinder block and falling off over and over again. It's like woodchuck step aerobics.
There's a box that stays in the back pasture that I am steadily filling with pieces of glass.
There have been other boxes with glass in them that have already gone to the dump, but this is the most recent.
Yesterday I found a disposable coffee cup blowing around and within 10 minutes had filled it with the junk under the clothesline, so it's not just the pasture that needs some work.
A. has big plans for an orchard and vineyard in that pasture, which would certainly be an improvement over the bare dirt, but first we have to get rid of all the glass and nails. A. sourly remarked that it would have been a lot more fun to be here when all those bottles of beer were being drunk and used for target practice. True. But he's raked almost all of the pasture, and I've picked up most of the glass, so we're getting there.
And I don't feel like crying anymore when I see the back pasture, so big improvements all around.
* It had been a very long day with the children because A. had been gone all day, so I wasn't at my strongest mentally or emotionally anyway.
5 comments:
It really is okay to tear up or even shed a few. Some days are just like that.
Sometimes things make me so happy I tear up.
You guys are doing great , by the looks of things.
Poppy is a trooper and she doesn't even know it.
I remember going for walks with my mom and coming home with a paper lunch sack full of things like that. Glass, fencing staples, whatever happened to be in the road.
It's an unfortunate cross between prosaic fact and sardonic conviction that it is how it is. I feel badly that it's your yard but also confess to zero surprise.
Karen.
I would have cried, too. And probably more than you did.
Your property is going to be so nice once you get through the glass & nail picking. Keep your eye on the finish line.
Hmmm! A vineyard & an orchard? How cool is that?!?
Linda
WOW. I really don't mean to be rude of funny here - PLEASE don't take it that way but - with all of these huge practical and aesthetic obstacles - what was it that made you choose the property? J xx I'd love to hear more about what your goals are for it, and what drew you in xx
Europafox: Several reasons. First and foremost, it was the only house officially for sale in the county. Literally the only one. Second, there are five bedrooms. This is almost unheard-of in a house anymore--especially here, where the majority of the homes have only two bedrooms--but greatly appreciated by us and our many children. Third, the raw nature of the property appealed particularly to A., because he can do whatever he wants on it without having to rip out or destroy existing landscaping or structures. Fourth, there is water here for things like fruit trees and gardens, which is often not the case in the western part of the U.S. And lastly, we could afford it, and will have an entirely paid-off house is less than two years.
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