Views by Valerie: Bye, Bye October

Rare sighting

I have been waiting for this to bloom, since it started
sending the stalk up in August

October was a busy month and the rest of the year will continue in the same vein for us.

We jammed up to Michelle’s for a weekend to visit them before winter hit. We had a wonderful drive up and back. No rain. Shocking. I’ll post pics of that trip separately.

Then we finally got the company that laid our carpet three years ago out here to re-stretch the front, family and master rooms. It hadn’t been stretched enough when installed and had developed a couple of big wrinkles in each room. We had a lot on hold waiting for them to get here. We had a new chair to pick up and we wanted to rearrange the furniture, but knowing we would have to clear out the three rooms we weren’t going to do it twice in a month.

They came on a Monday so we spent all weekend clearing out and stacking furniture. Just another way to keep the house really clean. Thank goodness we don’t have a lot of stuff, so it wasn’t too bad. After it was stretched it got a good vacuum and Larry crawled around and washed all the baseboards and then we put everything back. We only have one sofa that weighs a freaking ton, very well made, the rest of our stuff is pretty easy to move.

Larry pouting where his chair will be when it arrives,
my new chair is the small brown one on left.

The next day we went to Roseville to pick up my new rocker recliner. The two we’ve had the past three years I disliked almost from the first. It is too big, uncomfortable and the fabric was hot. Company loves them though. Larry’s chair is being ordered and won’t be here until December some time. We came up with a way to rearrange everything in a way that suits us better. Not designer approved for sure, but it works for us. Now when the kids visit there are lots of seats in front of the big television and the big family room’s space is utilized so much better. And the front room is set up for comfort, visiting and reading.

Gracie had a rough day watching us move furniture.

We have both been fighting a cold the past week. Slows us down but we’ve still accomplished a lot.

I got all my glad corms dug up, they had multiplied wildly. They were in five of the flower beds and I discovered why so many seemed to lean so badly. Some were three corms/bulbs connected and the two either side of the center one were perpendicular. Some are the size of small potatoes and there were gazillions of teeny baby corms attached to most all the big ones. I am planning on planting all the glads in one big bed next year, should be spectacular.

The right half of hedge cut back, left side until next day

Hedge cut back, daylily bed cleared out

I also dug out all my daylilies, they are just too big for my flower beds. THEN, it was onto the roses. They were still blooming, but I have learned my lesson. I love that they can stay in bloom into Jan. but after two years of pruning them back in driving wind and pelting rain because they were tipping over during a bad storm, I decided I would forgo a few weeks of viewing pleasure. The rose hedge was seven feet tall, amazing. Every year just gets better and better. Some of the canes were almost an inch in diameter, so can’t wait to see what they do next season.