Thanks for the kind words, Phil.
Today I donated some of my furniture mistakes to Open Doors, a thrift shop that benefits the needy. The behemoth Craftsman-style table that was way too big for the dining room is gone. I dropped off the set and the volunteer put it out on the floor. I browsed around (CDs 25 cents!) and by the time I got back around to my dining room set, it had been sold.
It was 64F today in Mobile so I painted the back door. Even though there's a canopy, when it rains hard (which it often does), the door gets wet, so I figured I'd better protect it with a good coat of paint. Yesterday the primer went on and dried quickly. Today, although it was much warmer, the paint was still quite tacky eight hours later. I left the back door open, covered the screen door with a tarp, propped up a piece of insulation foam over the opening and cranked up the heat. I'll leave it that way all night and hope the paint dries sufficiently to close the door. "Cured" as it were - or is that the meaning of cured?
That lurid green is not the true color; the image is a combination of wet paint and the camera exposure. This is closer:
(Behind the image of the door is the new circuit breaker box I had to get. The old Federal-Pacific box (AKA the "house burner") might have been the source of the fire in the sleeping porch. Anyway, it's open because the labeling has to be done so I can know which circuits control which sections of the house.
While the paint was drying (or, more accurately,
not drying) I took the opportunity to do some gardening, mainly weeding. (I did plant a sweet olive [
Osmanthus fragrans] on the sight-line to my neighbor's back door; by the time I move here it should be doing its job. The "fragrans" in the sweet olive's name isn't fooling around - the fragrance is terrific and carries some distance on the air.) I filled up the bed of my truck with weeds. Finally, I feel like I'm ahead of the camphor tree (
Cinnamomum camphora) seedlings; the two big trees (now gone) had generated thousands of seedlings. There are no more of these bothersome trees in the vicinity. After clearing the weeds away from my young plantings, I side-dressed them with some composted manure to give them a boost in the spring.
At the back corner of the house is a saucer magnolia (
Magnolia soulangeana) that my neighbor always rhapsodizes about. One bloom appeared today. The tree is covered in buds, but I'll miss the rest of them.
Nothing evokes 'The South' like a live oak dripping with Spanish moss (
Tillandsia usneoides) but Mobile only has small pockets of it; I'm not sure why. So, I went to the hospital complex downtown where the trees are heavy with it and collected some. Back at the house I devised a contraption with two ice cubes and a length of string and hurled a few clumps of moss up into my oak. We'll see if it takes.
Finally, now that the dust has settled, I've hooked up my Marantz 2216 to my Advent speakers and have been enjoying some eclectic tunes. It's starting to feel like home - just in time for me to leave!