June Projects

Since the twins were still in school (or gone to Boys State) for the first two weeks in June, and Josh was gone all day working at the golf course and STILL driving school bus, I had a LOT of time alone at home to work on projects.

The first thing on my list was to unload the cargo trailer that housed everything we moved out of my classroom and rental house in Mud Lake. I put 4 pallets down in one of the bays in the garage, and moved and stacked as many boxes and shelving units as I could onto them. Then I stacked up all the other furniture items in front/and to the side of the pallets. My classroom filled up one whole bay of the garage!!! It took me several hours to get it all moved, and thankfully Kanyon came to help me move the filing cabinet, because it was the heaviest. After that, we re-arranged some furniture in the boys' bedrooms: I sold the double bed that was in Micah's room, we gave away the bunkbeds that were in Kanyon's room to family members, and then we moved in the queen bed I used in Mud Lake to Micah's room and the twin bed Kanyon used in Mud Lake to his bedroom in Salmon. 

 

We decided to sell our trampoline this summer, now that the boys are older and it rarely gets used. As soon as the trampoline was gone, I made a new sitting space in the corner of the yard by the shed, and then I planted grass where the rest of the tramp had been. It took 3-4 weeks for the grass to grow, but it is so much easier to mow now, and I love the look of it, too! We've enjoyed sitting in the shade of the shed/trees in the morning and early afternoons in that spot throughout the summer, too, so that space is getting used much more now than it has been the last several years!

One thing I DON'T like about our house is that we don't have any additional closets besides the ones in our bedrooms; there is not a single linen closet, coat closet, or vacuum closet in our home! There are shelves in my bathroom that we use for the "linen closet" space, but in order to maximize space, we've placed the shelves pretty high up (above a dresser), and I can only reach the bottom shelf comfortably! As a result, the blankets on the top 2 shelves are usually a mess. After 10+ years of living in this house, I FINALLY bought myself an indoor step ladder at the beginning of June so that I could remedy the situation! I cleaned out all the shelves, got rid of stuff, and reorganized everything. I know it doesn't look like a big deal, but it took me a couple of hours! I wish I'd thought to take a before picture, but I didn't--this is the after shot: 

I love pruning trees and bushes, which I find so weird because I never had any experience with it when I was growing up! Slowly, over the years, Josh has "allowed" me to take on more of the trimming in the yard because he's usually too busy and tired in the summer to do it, but he takes pride in the outdoor work around our home, so it's been a struggle for him when I do the job without his knowledge! He's finally gotten to the point now that it doesn't bother him so much anymore when I do it, and I'm delighted to do it myself, so I tackled the red bushes on the north side of the house that have NEVER been trimmed in the past 10 years since we planted them! They needed to be trimmed terribly: they were getting WAY too tall, and we didn't want them to be taller than the roof! The weather was beautiful when I started, but a storm blew through right in the middle of my trim job, so I had to take a break half-way through while the wind was blowing and it rained, and then I finished it. It looked SO much better! There's already been a TON of growth on them since that trim, and now they'll have to be trimmed again next summer!

BEFORE

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER

One of my least favorite jobs each summer is to weed the garden. I weeded it all once at the beginning of June, and it was such a HUGE endeavor that I gave up on it, and didn't touch it again for a month! However, one of my projects I did in the garden that I enjoyed was to move the strawberries. I've had terrible luck with growing strawberries. A few years ago, I put them in a box at the end of the raspberry rows, thinking that taking them out from under the shade of the trees would help them, but I didn't realize the water didn't reach them well in that spot, so they suffered there too. After we dug up and pulled out the last two trees from our garden this spring, I re-planted the strawberries, plus a dozen more strawberry plants than what I had, in rows between the rhubarb and the raspberries. They did SO much better this year, and I'm hopeful they'll continue to grow there. Another good move I made was to put a weed barrier down between the rhubarb and tomato plants where nothing grows--I use that area as more of a walkway. It really helped keep the weeds at bay, and I will definitely do that again in the future! 

When we first moved into this house in 2010, I purchased some tall shelves to put in our master bedroom to put all of mine and Josh's books on, in order to get them out of the boxes they'd been in for years. They have been so nice to have! However, over the years, the shelves on Josh's side have gotten stuffed with additional books (he's an avid reader). Because the shelves are straight across from my side of the bed, I'm constantly staring at them, and his disorganized, over-run side of the shelves was starting to bug me. I finally figured out one day how to remedy the problem--I added an additional shelf onto his side (from a broken shelving unit that I'd previously saved pieces of). I took the books off the few top shelves, made measurements for the best placement, screwed in additional holes to put the shelf placers in, added the extra shelf, and put it all back together. It looked SO much better! 

BEFORE--his is the left side that I worked on

AFTER--the new shelf I added was the 2nd 
shelf down from the top.

I decided this year that I wasn't going to have potted flowers around the outside of my house in order to do my part in conserving water during our drought summer. I replaced the flowers in the pot in the front of the house with metal flowers in May, and I finally got to the pots along the backside of the house in June. I wanted to create a more visually appealing space in the area where the flower pots were (they're by the walk path in between where we park the cars and the back door that leads to the laundry room). I wanted it to tie-in to the other landscaping in the front of the house that has lava rock, and the new sitting area I put in the corner of the yard where the trampoline was. I measured out a rectangular shape in the gravel, and hand-picked all the rocks out. Then I placed some bigger flat rocks to border the edges, and put some new metal art in some of the pots, re-placed them back in that same area, and filled it with red bark. It has never looked so good back there--and best of all, it doesn't need water to stay pretty like before! 

BEFORE (photo taken in 2019)

I hand-picked out all the gravel rocks.

I placed some larger, flat rocks along its borders.

AFTER--now filled with the contrasting red bark!

Josh helped me with a more major tree trimming project towards the end of June after school finally got out, and he was back to having just one job for the summer! He brought home the extended-arm chainsaw, and he cut two branches off a Silverleaf Aspen that were growing into our Maple tree. The Aspen branches belong to a tree that's on the edge of the ditch, but on his parents' side. The Maple tree also lines the ditch, but on our side. The Aspen branches have been growing into the Maple for years, but recently we started noticing that they've gotten larger and are blocking the light from the Maple, and it's becoming deformed. There is also a power line that goes from his parents' pavilion to the power pole in front of our house, and it crosses right by the Maple tree, and the branches needed to be cut before they became too heavy and could potentially fall on the power line, too. It was hard to reach the branches, due to the ditch. The first one came down easy, but the second one was trickier to cut: Josh was standing on the ladder, with the heavy chainsaw reaching up and across the ditch. The branch came crashing down right where I was standing (holding the ladder), but it bounced on the power line, and landed on it and our fence. Thankfully, nothing was broken (Josh carefully cut through parts of it while it was on the wire, since it was too heavy to pull it off, and the pieces fell onto the grass) and nobody was injured. Josh is an amazing tree-trimmer, always putting himself in dangerous positions to get the job done, but thankfully, he's never been injured on the site at home and the trimming jobs always get completed! 

BEFORE the branches got trimmed. You can
see the extended-arm chainsaw on the ground.

AFTER--the tree is much healthier now.
You can see the power line that goes in front
 of it, which the 2nd branch landed on.
Also, the new grass is still growing at this point
from where the trampoline used to be.  

The last project of the month was a simple one, and one that has to be done annually--trimming the hedge along the ditch. Five winters ago, half of the hedge died in the extended sub-zero temps we had, and one of my projects this summer was to replace all the dead plants. It took about two months: I went to several nurseries whenever I was out of town, and got however many I could afford/fit in the car at the time. Josh chainsawed all the old/dead stumps down to be level with the ground, and I planted the new ones I purchased in between all the old plants. The healthiest part of the hedge is the part to the north of the main footbridge, so the trimming project wasn't too big this year: I got it all done in just over an hour. I'm hoping next year the new hedge plants will grow and start looking as uniformal as this section!