door from a dumpster!

This week we dug a path from the side gate past the vegetable garden; the St. Aug grass was mostly dead from chinch bugs anyway. Something mysterious had been sucking the life from the grass and one day I saw a whole bunch of bugs sunning themselves on a wall, trying to tan, I guess. I thought they were odd and harmless and occasionally killed them with homemade insect soap, but today I saw the Garden Q&A in the paper and have taken steps. At least the steps to the hardware store; the poison is sitting on the kitchen counter next to the sprayer. Job for tomorrow.

J cleared out our wood resource pile in the back corner after I discovered carpenter ants in the logs this week. I'd hoped to use them to build an elevated vegetable bed but know now that's foolish. Last week I found a colony of them living in the roots of the fig tree I got from the Jacksonville Fair last year.

Mom and I went dumpster-diving in Springfield, an area of Jacksonville that's undergoing significant rehabbing (see restoration on 7th blog). Most of the stuff that comes from these beautiful old houses isn't fit to be reused, often tagged or peed on or held together with chickenwire and roofing nails, or the original interior parts are long gone and patched over with ancient vinyl flooring and random boards. But we found some exterior doors, the most sturdy one we put in the van. I scraped it, filled the nail holes and sanded & primed one side. The knobs are solid copper. If I can bring myself to do it, I'll knock out the half-door glass pane and install screen instead. Either way, it's going in place of a screen door on the back of the house, to cover up our ugly new steel door from PO.