Our neighbor across the street was found dead on his front porch this morning. Weird stuff has been happening there for several weeks. J called the non-emergency # at 5 AM last week on a very large white woman pacing the street in front of the neighbor's house and yelling, "Black Willy! Black Willy!" Eventually, a man whom we guess she was referring to emerged from the house. I don't think either of them lived there but we had seen her peeling out of the driveway several times in the neighbor's truck. I thought he was her dad.
We have met all the neighbors, wacky or not, renters and owners, and this guy seemed subdued and nice, and walked his cute little black dog 5-6 times a day in the park. He was a skinny man in his 50s and we think he was dealing or doing, or at least had a medical reason to be growing. Foil has covered one of their windows since we moved in, and we don't live in a region where heat loss is a problem.
Another house for sale? That would make it all 6 houses surrounding us. Maybe someone will buy all of them up and offer us a pile of money too, so they can build a mega-mansion or an apartment complex. It really is amazing.
Paint-your-own Pottery
For birthdays we like to try new things, and I'd never painted my own set of dishes (outside of the fourth grade). I didn't manage to get a whole set of dishes done, but did make a plate, of the house, and some of its cats. I wanted to write something creative on the back but we ran out of time so now I have a record of the gas price on my birthday.
My sister made a box with a penguin handle and Jason painted a bowl for ice cream, which I'm sure will be used. The house looks about as lopsided as it actually is, so that is a win for my artistic skillz.
Landscaping help
We went to a kind-of local nursery (across the river and south, Jacksonville proper is 2hrs in diameter) looking for zucchini and tomatoes, since it's time for our second planting season. I asked the man at the counter how much they charged for lanscape design. He said Mr. Trad draws them for free, you just have to buy all your plants there, and can use their installation service or do it myself over time. We are meeting at the end of the month. I figure it will be cheaper to have a plan than to plant things willy-nilly, right, Jason? I know I like formal plantings, but I think the house likes cottagey-plants. The lot is 50 x 100 with an incomplete city sidewalk, narrow original driveway and 4 fully grown fat trees threatening to eat power lines/fall on neighbor during hurricane Shoot Me Now. Our main needs include:
A barrier bed to keep adult walkers on the sidewalk and kids running to the park from cutting across our front walkway (if you're within spitting distance of my couch you are too close!)
A hedge to block out the neighbor's motion sensor driveway light
Plants which won't mind being flooded twice a year or only five hours of sunlight a day
Suggestions for pavement/shed placement (Me=clueless!)
Meanwhile, in the backyard, our spreading butternut squash vine has killed lots of grass but is popping them out like a bunny, and there are 15 broccoli babies from last year's seeds.
A barrier bed to keep adult walkers on the sidewalk and kids running to the park from cutting across our front walkway (if you're within spitting distance of my couch you are too close!)
A hedge to block out the neighbor's motion sensor driveway light
Plants which won't mind being flooded twice a year or only five hours of sunlight a day
Suggestions for pavement/shed placement (Me=clueless!)
Meanwhile, in the backyard, our spreading butternut squash vine has killed lots of grass but is popping them out like a bunny, and there are 15 broccoli babies from last year's seeds.
Picking our (noses) paint
We took a few months off from working on the house, as it gets pretty hot down here in the summer. The new heat pump being broken didn't help much, so we spent much of our time elsewhere. In about a month it should be cool enough to go into the attic again, where I have some wiring and demolition for the bedroom closet planned. In the meantime, we're doing things to the outside of the house. Last weekend we tried out paint colors.
We picked a blue and white scheme similar to our own a few months ago. One day on the way to work I realized we liked the scheme because it was on a nearby 1920s building, a glass-cutting business. I couldn't have us copy something so nearby!
Jason gets really impatient with me all the time. I know I like mulling more than doing, but when I give in to his pressure it usually costs us money. To chose our new scheme, we picked up a small shrub's worth of swatches at the paint store. As I was being indecisive, he said he would end my agony by picking the colors himself and that would be that. He picked a trim color called Seahawk, which instantly made me think guy = dark colors = couch = beer = Seattle Seahawks. It looked alright against the house, especially with a copper color I chose. He said, "Let's go get it now" and against my better judgement we bought 2 gal of Seahawk rather than a sample quart. Of course, on the window trim it looks like the teal of our local NFL team. I tried to blacken it, hoping I had picked a similarly lamp black-pigmented paint, but it turned mucky instead. Now, blue is out and brown, red, green and beige are next, to match all the red brick houses around us.
Our house is so small and plain, with not much ornamentation. Our neighborhood is becoming bad. I'd like a careful but friendly scheme that doesn't imply "rental" or "it's okay to break in". Did I mention that a month after J was held up, someone tried to steal my 20-year old car? Since there is truth to the statistics saying painted houses and trash in appropriate receptacles helps with decreasing crime, I want to do all I can. It's a bigger issue than what colors I think are pretty. That's what is holding me up. This week we'll try some new colors, in sample sizes.
We picked a blue and white scheme similar to our own a few months ago. One day on the way to work I realized we liked the scheme because it was on a nearby 1920s building, a glass-cutting business. I couldn't have us copy something so nearby!
Jason gets really impatient with me all the time. I know I like mulling more than doing, but when I give in to his pressure it usually costs us money. To chose our new scheme, we picked up a small shrub's worth of swatches at the paint store. As I was being indecisive, he said he would end my agony by picking the colors himself and that would be that. He picked a trim color called Seahawk, which instantly made me think guy = dark colors = couch = beer = Seattle Seahawks. It looked alright against the house, especially with a copper color I chose. He said, "Let's go get it now" and against my better judgement we bought 2 gal of Seahawk rather than a sample quart. Of course, on the window trim it looks like the teal of our local NFL team. I tried to blacken it, hoping I had picked a similarly lamp black-pigmented paint, but it turned mucky instead. Now, blue is out and brown, red, green and beige are next, to match all the red brick houses around us.
Our house is so small and plain, with not much ornamentation. Our neighborhood is becoming bad. I'd like a careful but friendly scheme that doesn't imply "rental" or "it's okay to break in". Did I mention that a month after J was held up, someone tried to steal my 20-year old car? Since there is truth to the statistics saying painted houses and trash in appropriate receptacles helps with decreasing crime, I want to do all I can. It's a bigger issue than what colors I think are pretty. That's what is holding me up. This week we'll try some new colors, in sample sizes.
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