Death of a Loquat Tree (with bonus puppy photo!)

We have several loquat trees in our back yard. Also known as Japanese plums, these trees are a pretty common sight around here, almost to the point of invisibility - you kinda stop noticing them. Until something weird happens.

I'm poking around with the dog in the back yard a few days ago and notice that one of the loquat trees is looking, well, pretty bad. Every leaf is drooping and turning brown. What's weird is that there are two more on either side of it - and they look great! They're actually flowering right now.

Not my best work, but here are two of the trees - the dying one is on the left:

A close-up of the leaves:


The other healthy tree:


I brought a leaf in to Kim, our Master Gardener, but it's really hard to tell what's ailing a tree by one brownish leaf. There's no sign of insect damage, which would lead me - in all my ignorance - to believe it's a disease affecting this tree. So why just the one? We must have seven or eight loquat trees in the back yard.

If we were to figure out what the problem was, I hope it's an inexpensive cure. Kyle doesn't really like the loquats for some reason, and has been talking about taking them down. Luckily, he's got an invasive mimosa and some dangerously close pine trees on his to-do list now.

In a completely unrelated story, my puppy!

Just chillin' on the front lawn with Kyle. I can't believe how big she's getting. Not a pokey little puppy anymore, sigh...

Although not a grownup dog, either. This morning I stumble out of the bathroom to see that Murphy has thrown up on the bedroom carpet (for some reason she never chooses to do this on the tile). This is not the first time this has happened, and in fact, it's the same stuff - pine bark, leaves, but with a new addition - some fiber from a toy she destroyed at a friend's house the previous evening.

Not the best way to start your day. But then I look at her and she's just so damn cute.

To use a phrase that's becoming very popular in our household, damn dog.

New Light is Shed

Literally. For over a year now, the dining has been without over lighting, a gaping hole with dangling wires where a light should be. Mainly because we took down the hideous monstrosity that was the previous light fixture. It hung so low, you could see the light bulb. And way too modern for our tastes:




We'd been putting off getting a new light forever, when Kyle went to turn on the kitchen light one day and the chain came down with his hand. This light/fan fixture was really, actually worse - it was very country, white and too big for the kitchen (old photo - the kitchen doesn't look anything like that anymore - DIE WALLPAPER DIE):



So he ripped that one out - and now we had TWO holes-with-wires. But then, my wonderful husband went off to Home Depot one morning and returned with two fixtures.

So now not only do we have a new, smaller-yet-brighter kitchen light:

We also have a lovely dining room light as well!

(Please ignore all the booze - it's left over from the wedding - AS I SAID IT WOULD BE...)

Here's a close-up:

I think he did an awesome job and I'm so pleased to be able to see what I'm cooking and eating. :)

Puppy Hell

Our puppy is a vampire!

Miss Murphy is slowly draining the life out of us. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: How the hell do parents of real-life babies do this? Kyle and I are exhausted and cranky, and all we've got a dang dog.

A dog that won't sleep at night. That chews on everything except the toys we give her. Whose teeth are like tiny ceramic razors. Sigh...

I'm not sure if I've even blogged about getting a dog, now that I'm thinking about it. Kyle's been wanting an Australian shepherd for years, and I've been putting him off. First a house, then a wedding, then the dog. I can only handle one major life-altering event at a time.

So Miss Murphy Brown was born May 1, and we picked her up June 27. That's right - a little over a week, and we're in despair.

I don't think Kyle really thought about how time-consuming this stage of puppy-hood is. You have to keep an eye on them at all times or they're all over the place, leaving a path of destruction in their cute, fuzzy little wake.

But she's pretty dang cute:

Here Comes the Sun . . .

Spring has arrived! Yes, I know it's probably a bit rude to rub this fact into the faces of anyone from up north - say, the 140,000 without power in Maine thanks to the snow storm, but I'm so excited and it's so pretty!

The azaleas are really starting to crank the blooms out now. This is our largest azalea, out back besides the porch:

(Speaking of azaleas, I think the Florida Azalea Festival in Palatka is still going on March 7-8, even though I couldn't find a single mention of it on the Palatka Daily News web site. There is a web site for the festival, but unless you want to register for the parade or the Azalea Queen beauty pageant, there's not much there to look at.)

Right next to the azalea is a shrub that has little tiny buds that are starting to pop:

When it's fully leafed, it provides a great deal of privacy for our master bathroom - right now, anyone who really wanted to can see in.

One of the other trees in the back yard is also budding with leaves:

There's a few survivors in the vegetable garden planted by the home's previous owners, and most of them are doing pretty well. There's some sort of cabbage plant, rosemary and parsley:

The pineapple isn't doing so well:

I'm really hoping my plumbago comes back. It looks bad - Kyle thinks it's a goner.

That's okay, I LIKE sleeping like a squatter

After considerable delay and annoyances, the bed I ordered from Home Decorators was delivered yesterday.

Broken.

I noticed one of the boxes was smashed on the end.

But it was taped up - so someone else had already seen this and decided it was fine and sent it on its merry way anyway.

I waited for Kyle to get home; I just couldn't bear to look. And this is what we found:

It's a shame, really. Color's nice.

I am done with this bed. DONE.

Okay, not really done. But I'm tired of this hassle and I'm ready to be done with it. So off goes an e-mail with photographs to Home Decorators.

Butterflies, beds, and another goodbye

After all that talk about grandparents, Kyle received a call last night - his grandfather had a heart attack. He passed away some time in the evening. He was Kyle's last grandparent.

************************************************************************************

Our frustrating efforts to get a bed continue. After ordering a bed from Home Decorator's in August with the expectations of an end-of-September delivery, we got an e-mail stating that it would be early November before we'd receive the bed (evidently it's one damn popular bed). I sent off an angry e-mail and got a miniscule discount along with an apology.

Then I get a call last Friday - to schedule the delivery of the bed - this week! Turns out Home Decorators (owned by Home Depot, by the way) doesn't make the bed, and there was some confusion between the manufacturer and them. A happy mistake.

I had explicitly asked if they could call an hour before delivery - I don't want to be sitting on my ass at home for four hours waiting on these people. They assured me it would be no problem. So when my phone rang this afternoon, I was not expecting the testy dispatcher, who was wondering where I was. Someone forgot to tell the driver to call me. "Can I come now? Will the driver wait?" I ask. They say sure, and I rush out of the office.

As I'm pulling into my neighborhood, I see a delivery truck pulling out - my bed! I call back and the (still-testy) dispatcher says I took too long, they had to move on, and it's the manufacturer's fault anyway, for not telling the delivery people in the first place. I'll have to reschedule. Keep your fingers crossed for me; we're going to try this all again tomorrow.

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Did I mention that we're having our wedding reception at the Florida Museum of Natural History? We had considered it, and then decided it was too much. But Kyle changed his mind - the convenience of it being literally down the road from the ceremony site was too appealing to him.

We are saving a bit by not purchasing tickets to the Butterfly Rainforest for people, but I still hope people check it out before the wedding. Seriously, if you have kids, you've got to go see this. When they gave me a tour, I thought I'd see one or two flitting around. No - you walk in and it's like the IBM commercials about going green - it's like landing in technicolor Oz after being in sepia-toned Kansas. Butterflies are everywhere. They land on you. You have got to take your kids!

In fact, they're having a ButterflyFest this weekend, October 18-19.

Look, people actually live here!

We have a few people coming for the weekend - seven or eight, actually. I'm freaking out a bit. At first it was, "Bob and Jane are flying down from New York for the Miami game, and they're going to stay with us." Which is great, because this is the couple who got married in Brazil and invited us to stay with them in Cancun this year, so it's definitely our turn to be hospitable. And we have a bed . . . and a mattress, so they get the bed, we get the mattress - it's all good.

But then it was, "Oh yeah, Tom, Dick and Harry are coming up from South Florida, and they're gonna crash with us." A day goes by, "Oh, did I mention John's coming from South Carolina? And Tim from North Carolina - in fact, he got a ticket to the game for me*, so he's staying here, too." And on it went.

Guess who's being quoted there? Not me. And I was always being told after the fact. But it's our house, and these are all actually lovely people, so no biggie.

Except we have no more beds. In fact, at the time, we had no furniture. Seriously, we were watching a kick-ass, 46" 1080i flat screen television** in two camp chairs. We were eating our meals on the back porch, regardless of temperature - because the patio set was the only table! And the only chairs besides camp chairs.

But that would not stop our hospitality. Noooo.

So here we are, two days before people start pouring in, and we're racing around like the proverbial headless chickens - finishing baseboards, painting pantry doors, trying to get that damn shower tile replaced (that's a whole 'nother blog).

Oh, and finally dragging in our couches. And buying an area rug. Bringing in the coffee table we hate because it jumps out and hits people in the shin but it's the only one we have. One room of the house actually looks rather inviting now.

But first, a trip down memory lane. The den when we first moved in:

And then with its floor being laid:

And now, as of this morning:

(Please excuse the different angle; the kitchen's breakfast bar is still covered with construction crap.)

Not bad.

Notes:

*-Notice that "ticket" in the singular. I'm not going to the game - I'm going to guard the tailgate. I am the coolest wife ever. Just ask Jay.

**-This is Kyle's present to himself that he's been wanting forever. It was agreed upon at least a year ago. And he loves it. Hell, I love it. The picture is amazing.

Tile Conundrum

I don't think the master bathroom's shower was installed properly. Now, I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the shower floor is supposed to gently slope towards the drain to discourage puddling. We don't have that.

The tiles aren't one hundred percent even, either. One of them, right next to the drain was sorta off-kilter, and it cracked.

"Simple," you say. "Take it out and replace it!" After all, that's what bobvila.com and diynetwork.com told me to do.

So we pry this tile out - not easy, in fact we chipped one of the adjacent tiles - and we've got a confusing sight before us.

There's a thick layer of wet, sandy, crumbling gray stuff under the tile - obviously water had gotten in. But why is it so thick? Tiles are, at most, 3/8" thick, and the length between the black plastic pan and the top of the tile has got to be twice that. Is there supposed to be 1/2" of adhesive under the tile?

And there are more questions. Why does the "pan" have holes in it? Why isn't it sloping towards the drain?

I'm afraid if we just slap a crazy-thick layer of whatever adhesive down, pop a tile on top of it, grout and seal the whole thing, that we're putting a band-aid over a larger problem.

And it's done . . .

. . . almost. But the gray nasty is gone!



My knights in . . . sweaty workclothes:



On the left is my fiance, and to his left is our friend who had the know-how to do this project. We (see how I'm part of this!) couldn't have done it without him.

We're lucky - we do have great friends. Projects like this usually bring the best (or the worst) out in people. Some friends surprise you, offering so much of themselves - and others disappoint. But that's enough said about that.

We still have buy floorboards and transition pieces, but the guys are estatic - no more glue!

The floor - so close!

It's actually further along than this - I just haven't taken a photo of it yet. We may finish tonight!

Of course, "finish" is a relative term. Because once all the flooring's down, we still have to buy baseboards, "quarter-round" whatever that is, and transition pieces to put between the wood and the tile and the carpet. But the scary elastomeric stuff will be covered, safely within the doomsday deadline of 14 days.

" CURE TIME
Humidity affects cure to a greater degree than temperature;
the higher the humidity, the faster the cure. Keep off
membrane until material cures; usually 12 to 16 hours. To
help protect the cured membrane form scuffing, tears,
scratches, dust, dirt, or other jobsite contamination, install
hardwood flooring as soon as possible. If the membrane is
exposed for more than 14 days, do not install hardwood
flooring until you contact Bostik’s Flooring Technical Service
Department. "

(Italics mine.)

Yesterday morning I looked out the bathroom window and could see, from quite a distance, a spider moving around in its web on a tree in our back yard.

We have some impressive spiders:



They're mostly what I've always called banana spiders - I think the bug folks call them Golden Orb spiders - and dang, are they big. Big enough to see across the yard.

This particular morning, I could see the spider working with something in its web. I thought (or more likely, actually said out loud, because I talk to myself), "Ooh, it caught something!"

Careful observation revealed that it was actually a leaf. It had most likely fallen out of the tree, and now the spider was neatly clipping it out of the web, as easily as we might trim a hedge. I wondered at it; the dexterity, the accuracy.

We're all over the elastomeric-ness

Ah, fresh from a weekend of toiling on the house. Actually, it was mostly Kyle toiling on the house. He and our friend who's helping us decided that mere days after moving in would be a good time to start laying the wood floor down in the den and hallway.

Saturday, Kyle and I go to our local big box home improvement store and purchase the glue, some trowels listed by manufacturer of said glue and a tapping block. A very friendly employee saw the glue and cheefully mentioned that the manufacturer wouldn't honor the glue's warranty if we didn't first lay a "moisture vapor barrier" down over the concrete. So back we go, off to buy what turned out to be hell in a can.

Bostik's hideously expensive "MVP4® Moisture Vapor Protection is a one-part, trowel applied, elastomeric, moisture cure urethane membrane designed to 1) reduce moisture vapor transmission from the subfloor; 2) create a noise reduction barrier over the substrate; 3) establish an anti-fracture membrane that can bridge cracks that can occur in the substrate prior to or after installation (up to 1/8"); prior to the installation of engineered and solid hardwood flooring..."

Elastomeric officially means that the product is an elastomer, a polymer with the property of elasticity. What it has come to mean for Kyle and I is "slimy, gray, sticky goo that, once touching any surface, will never come off - not even with the mineral spirits suggested by the manufacturer."

Kyle spent much of the weekend kneeling on concrete, spreading this mess with a trowel. Seriously, for hours at a time. It wasn't fun, and it wasn't comfortable - and that's just me watching him. The goo ruined a pair of new work gloves and Kyle's favorite flip-flops.*

It takes 16 hours for the stuff to cure. Since we spread it all over the hallway - the only access to the bathrooms and bedroom - we had to spend last night in a hotel. Kyle had to show up at work this morning covered in the stuff. Did I mention it's gray and doesn't come off?

The boys next get to cut the wood to size and glue it down, with another Bostik product that has "elastometric properties." Oh goody.

What am I doing this whole time? Trying to stay out of the way while still keeping nearby in case of a need of assistance. Doing "stuff" in the kitchen (but not putting on drawer pulls!) and laundry.

I had meant to take photos of poor Kyle toiling away, but I left the camera in the bedroom, and by the time I thought of it - too late: the hallway was all elastomized.

(*You know you're a Floridian when you have a favorite pair of flip-flops.)

Adventures in home remodeling

I've had my first remodeling injury.

Last night, as I was waiting for an electrician to come by to give me an estimate on installing the wiring for light over our breakfast bar, I decided to use the time wisely and paint some more moulding. I was crouched on the living room floor, stirring the paint. The phone rang.

Now, this is one of those times when everything happens very slowly. You don't want to miss the phone call - it's probably the electrician. But you don't want to leave a can of paint open, either. So I "carefully hurried" to close the can of paint and jumped up to run into the kitchen, where my phone was.

I had to go through the dining room. There's a light fixture in there. It's too low, even with a table underneath, as you can see the light bulb just walking by:

I ran directly into the glass "bowl" - with the bridge of my nose.

Blood everywhere, I called Kyle bawling. After rushing to my rescue with ice, he decided a couple stitches would probably be best. "Since you're a girl," he said. Apparently men like having permanent scarring.

Just driving by the emergency room made it clear we'd be there for several hours, and we found the closest urgent care clinic (or as Kyle calls them, "doc-in-box"). The very nice doctor took one look at me and decided it was the sort of injury that was "made for liquid stitches," due to the nice clean lines of the cut (glass will do that). We were in and out in under two hours - no wait.

They covered my eyes to protect them from the Dermabond. I insisted Kyle take a photo. "I'm going to blog about this," I announced to his and the physician's assistant's amusement. It was kinda funny by then. Good icing will do that.

Kyle set me up on the couch with a six pack of Miller Lite, an ice bag in a towel, some mashed potatoes and tomato soup (this same day the TMJ decided to go haywire - big fun!) , and headed back to work on the new house. See why I'm marrying him?

House progress on Flickr

For the truly curious, I've got all the photos taken so far on Flickr.

Remodeling Photos

Floor samples AWOL, missing out and time's running out

I got a call from FedEx this morning - they needed to verify my address for a delivery. So that's where my flooring samples from Lumber Liquidators are . . . I had to leave a message with someone and I put new numbers on our mail box for good measure. It was missing three of the four numbers in our street address, so maybe that's why they couldn't find us?

Everybody has fun stuff going on in the month of July. Fun stuff they want to share with us. Fun stuff we've had to say "no" to because we're running out of time to work on the house before we have to move in completely.

1. Dear friends who live in New York are down for the weekend. "Come spend the weekend with us at our Orlando condo," they say. "Sorry, we can't . . ."

2. A close girlfriend has her family's beach house for the week. "Stop by next weekend - the weather should be great!" Again, "sorry . . ."

3. Coworkers finally have a get-together that involves cocktails and a (bad) movie. Me? I'm painting trimwork!

4. The band of a friend of our had their last concert last night - they're all moving to Austin. You already know what I was doing. Kyle? Mowing, edging, weeding in the front yard. For at least two hours.

Weekend One - House

This was our first weekend working on the house. Our friend John came down to help us. He's worked in construction, so he was able to give us some pointers, and he did some manly stuff with Kyle that I can't do.

Like tear down cabinets:



Note the big white wall of cabinetry hanging over the breakfast bar, blocking the kitchen view to the den.


Ta-da! John and Kyle had that thing down in the time it took me to run to Home Depot to not pick up new drawer pulls.

(Turns out our kitchen drawers have oddly-sized screw holes and I'd rather order pulls that fit than putty in the existing screw holes and drill new ones.)

They also hung cabinets in the garage (no photos), and much more, but this was pretty impressive - to me, at least.

What did I do? I tore down that hideous striped wall paper. All of it, including the huge panel behind the refrigerator. This would have been easy as the paper peeled right off. But (of course there's a "but") whoever put the wallpaper up then put moulding up - over the wallpaper. I'm not tearing perfectly good moulding down, so I had to slice the wallpaper off right under the moulding.

We also prepped the living and dining rooms for paint. This takes longer than you think it will, what with the dusting, cleaning the walls, taking down blinds, testing the colors, fixing the wavy chair rail (thanks John!), repairing the moulding (whoever put it up didn't caulk the seams where one piece of moulding gave way to the next!), painting the moulding. . . and so on. We worked all weekend, and there's only a test-sized patch of color on the wall.

Tomorrow: what we're missing out on

Color Theory

The house officially ours, we're starting the process of making some changes. Things that are easier done before you move in than afterwards, like painting and putting some new flooring down.

We want to tear up the berber carpet in the den and hallway; it's in pretty bad shape and Kyle prefers hard surfaces. We're going with either wood or a really nice laminate. We've got to do some more shopping, though - Home Depot's laminate selection sucked ass. They barely had anything, what they had felt cheap, and 75% of the samples had a sticker announcing they'd been discontinued.

I've order some samples from Lumber Liquidators. Even though they're not in Gainesville, the prices look like it could be worth the drive. I'll share when they come in. I ordered two laminates and two woods. Kyle's not sold on the laminates, but I'd love to go with something tougher and cheaper than wood - if I can get something that looks nice.

As for paint, these are the colors we've chosen:



The reddish colors are really just a stand-in for the Mexican tile we've got - I wanted to make sure these colors looked okay next to it, because it's not going anywhere. Kyle was immediately drawn to the Ralph Lauren paints, and while their selection is smaller than the big brand also available, these colors looked richer. Reviews I've found online concur.

As you can see, we like neutrals. But not only that - we have very little furniture, so the paint has to go well with things that aren't in existance yet. (I'm sure we're aware that you're supposed to match paint to upholstry and other fabrics, not the other way around.)

Hopefully the weather clears up for the weekend. I plan to take photos of my plants and beg my coworkers to identify them, namely our resident Master Gardener.