Look what I unearthed from under a pile of leaves today! Tulips! Since we seem to be getting farther and farther away from freezing temps and finally had a decent rain after a record-breakingly dry winter, suddenly there’s life in the garden! Within just a few days, my tulips burst out of the ground. It’s exciting, and I still have blooms to look forward to!
The weather has been so funky lately (said the spoiled Californian)… with a winter freeze that turned my magnificent blooming Cupheas and Princess bush into crinkly beige sticks and many grey days without sufficient rainfall. I kept telling myself, “Jeez, I need to water.” It was an adorable notion, because the irrigation curse that had been placed on this house long before I moved is still in full force. I turned on the water and nothing happened. Dry silence. The next morning, however, we awoke to a flooded front lawn, with water seeping up from below quite spookily, and a flooding gutter.
A pipe had cracked, so Kim heroically threw on his sweats began digging in the cold, wet muck before heading off to work. All is good now, but we will need to gut the existing irrigation system at some point. On that note, our plans to re-landscape and fix up the kitchen have evolved into the possibility that we may add on a second story. Yup!
At my aunt’s urging, we had consulted her architect about how to approach a kitchen remodel. During our consultation, he made an eye-opening observation about the fact that no matter how much we spend on a new kitchen, the house will still be under 800 square feet. So in order to do a smart kitchen remodel, we may be increasing our house size.
At this point, we’re waiting to see the architect’s sketched ideas and then we’ll decide how to proceed. There’s a backyard re-landscape in our future, but we’re not sure when it will happen since we’ve shifted gears. What we’ve learned from all of this house and yard stuff is that, like planting tulips, it’s a process, and sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to end up with until you’ve done some of the work.
