Another Big Landscaping Project

The little lake we live on was probably formed by a retreating glacier centuries ago.  As it swept down the hillside, it left a trail of massive boulders in its wake.  We had a couple of danger trees that were threatening the buildings - The biggest fir tree had been draped over our power lines for years and its roots had heaved up our water lines three times.  Finally, we had to deal with it.  When it came down, we removed the stump, which exposed several huge rocks.  Ron placed them along the bank for me so I could landscape using the rocks to hold the hillside and make little plateaus for plants.

As you can see, my work was cut out for me.  I bought nearly $100 worth of plants at Home Depot and you could barely see the results.  Then I moved a bunch of iris from existing flower beds, but there was still a lot of bare ground.

Then I discovered that most of the 25 to 30 year old Rhododendron plants had rooted new plants where branches draped down and touched the ground.  Using my big loppers and a shovel, I was able to find a couple of dozen good plants.  Along with ferns from the woods the bank is now looking a lot better.  I have some wildflower seeds to scatter and if they grow, the bank should look great by mid July.  It's been wonderful having warm temperatures and full sun for working on this project.

News Letter for March

New City Hall Under Construction 

Your Premier Community News Letter March  2019 Granite Falls Premier Real Estate Rosemary Crawford, Broker ronandrosi@msn.com  425 344-8877                                                           103 S Granite Ave/PO Box 1559  Granite Falls, WA  98252  (360) 691-7377

Granite Falls School News The Talent Show will be Saturday, March 9 at 6:00 pm, held at the High School Performing Arts Center (PAC). This event showcases talented singers, dancers, comedians and musicians from our community. Cost of admission is $6 for adults, $3 for students and seniors, and preschool get in free. All proceeds go towards the Granite Falls Education Foundation which is a nonprofit organization established to promote education within the community of Granite Falls. Don’t miss this fun evening of entertainment! For audition forms and more information, go to: www.gfallstalent.org. I went to a presentation by Fred Cruger, who has been instrumental in digitizing all the historical records of Snohomish County.  For years, he's utilized the labor of high school students who needed community hours, inmates at an Oklahoma prison, and any volunteer he could find.  The net result is pretty amazing.  For instance, you can click on the map link for 1910 and then overlay that with a scope that shows what's currently on that site.  The arrows on the map show historical photos - with the arrow pointing to what you'd see if you looked that way in the past. Granite Falls Museum—109 E Galena, PO Box 1414, Granite Falls WA 98252 We have local treasure that has quietly been on the leading edge of digitizing the past to make it available to all of us free of charge.  Fred Cruger and other volunteers’ passions for history have resulted in an amazing museum. If you have a chance, visit the museum on Sundays between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. or call 360 691-2603 for an appointment.  If you want to explore maps of the area, check out  this link: Early Snohomish County Maps   Other information available on line:  High school annuals, newspaper articles, original homestead information, photos, and vintage maps that can be overlaid with a scope to show current pictures of the area.  The Search feature allows you to search names, addresses, and much more. To get started, go to  Granite Falls Museum   and begin your trip back in time. If you want to explore the Mt. Loop Highway and the many hiking and camping sites in the area, stop by our office or the museum for a trail map.  Or you can download the map ap for your cell phone at: Cell Phone Map of Mt Loop Highway Note:  Once you load the map on your phone, even when you don't have a cell signal, the map will work using GPS coordinates.

Construction Update:  City hall construction continues.  You may notice the building looks like a train station, in keeping with the railroad theme of the town.  Scheduled to open in early May. Suncrest Farms: on Burn Road:       Phase 1 (97 homes) complete, Phase 2 (120 homes) nearly complete, Phase 3 (112 homes) In work.  Homes from $339,000 to $469,000, on lots 5500 to 10,166 sq ft  Annual dues of $600 maintain roads, sidewalks, and three parks in the development.  Grandview Apartment Complex at Alder and Alpine: Scheduled for completion May 1, 2019 Bridge replacement at Falls bridge:  Studies complete, construction to begin  when funding is available.  Grants have been applied for but not yet approved.  More information: Information about Falls Bridge Replacement     March  gardening tip: Plant cool weather crops, such as peas, cabbage, brussel sprouts, onions, spinach, and  broccoli,  as soon as soil can be worked. Time to trellis raspberry new growth and remove old canes.  Prune grape vines.

Winter in February

Well, winter is here - it's a winter wonderland out there, and the temperature is hovering between 23 and 25 degrees.

My little greenhouse has a nice insulating blanket of snow.

This happened overnight - yesterday was warm and nice with no trace of snow.

It seems like more, but the deepest snow I could find was just over 6".

It is pretty - but I prefer color in my world so I hope it doesn't last long and that spring is close behind!

The Winter that Wasn't

      Hoping I'm not too premature here, I can say as we near the end of January that this has been the easiest winter I've ever experienced in Washington.  When I started seeing pussy willows in bloom a few weeks ago, I kind of discounted it.  Then this week, the Hawthorn trees by the graveyard in Marysville had pink blossoms popping out.  
     Yesterday, the sun came out early, and it felt absolutely balmy in the sun.  The tiny little breeze felt like a Chinook - always one of my favorite things.  So in spite of it being "too early", I began working on my garden.

First job:  Till in the winter rye that I planted in November as a cover crop.  Not sure what I'll plant in this area - we removed about 200 Christmas trees so the soil isn't that great, and there are still a lot of roots and some rocks to remove.

The plants I moved into the greenhouse to winter are all doing fine.

Time to start seeds for tomato, pepper, and other plants that can't go into the garden until all danger of frost is past.  I even planted some lemon seeds to see if I can make a lemon tree for a house plant.  Pinterest says they smell lovely and make a good house plant. :)

The garlic was planted in September, but yesterday I put pea seed along the fence line and spinach and cabbage in the sunny spot along the edge.

If I'm fooled by a winter that will come later, so are the raspberry plants!  They are definitely starting to get leaves.  I definitely prefer the "El Nino" winters!

Christmas Eve 2018

This was as close as it gets to a perfect day!  Sunshine without frost to start, and time to work on a garden project.  I could have cleaned my house, but as a native Washingtonian, when the sun shines, I can't stay inside.

So it seemed a perfect day to tackle my grape arbor/garden fence. Nothing puts out more vines than grapes and when they are covered with leaves and grapes, and even the netting I put over them to keep birds out, they are impossible to contain.  Even now, they are  a bit daunting.....but since I only use them to have leaves for my pickles, I figured I couldn't go too far wrong.  My main goal was to keep them from covering the driveway and the garden.  So when I prune them, I am pretty ruthless.

So after the first step of cutting back all the vines to the fence line, I used the tractor to pick up all the downed vines.

So my burn pile is maxed out and the next step is to burn it.

I have winter rye planted in all the tilled garden areas except for my little garlic patch.  You can see the garlic is coming up nicely.

The swans are back on the lake.

We've collected a pile of rocks for the children to toss in the lake this summer, the grass is coming up, 

We have a new carport with a view,

a few trees came down in the wind storm, but missed all the buildings,

and my two week old Christmas bouquet is still bringing me joy!
We made it past the shortest day of the year, so every day gets lighter and brighter.  New Year's resolutions are in place, and we're looking forward to 2019!

Deferred Maintenance

        Our log house on the lake was built in the 1940's and our family has been connected to it since my folks went out on a limb to buy it in 1959.  At that time, it was a vacation cabin with stumps for a foundation, and constructed with whatever building materials could be found.  The road to access the house was a narrow dirt lane with blackberries overhanging it to where you scratched your car to get to it.  My folks sold the house in 1975, and it was out of the family hands for the next 10 years.  However it always held a place in our hearts because my siblings and I spent a lot of our formative years struggling to live without electricity or indoor plumbing.  While my parents commuted over 60 miles each way to work, us kids planted the gardens, canned veggies, did maintenance tasks, and most importantly swam in the lake and played in the woods. 

       My folks saved the house the first time by digging under it and putting in a proper foundation and a daylight basement in 1963. At that time electricity was brought from the road, and the old power plant and kerosene lamps were replaced with bright new lights.  Luxury in those days seemed pretty simple. My folks retired and sold the house in 1975, and deferred maintenance piled up everywhere.

       When my husband and I were able to buy the house in 1985, we saved it a second time when we replaced the failing, sagging, original roof with a completely new one - all the way from the top of the walls to the peak. All our spare time was spent either inside on the house or outside on the property to make it better.

We finally had to get rid of one problem tree that hung over the power line and whose roots had grown through our water lines twice.  Ron spent a couple of weeks splitting all the firewood from the tree, I've been moving the mulch from the branches to all the flower beds.  The mulch pile is down to a fraction of where it started, and the flower beds are looking pretty good.

I used a lot of the mulch to mulch the raspberry patch and cut back my dahlia garden and mulched it too.  

After we finished the massive job of chinking the entire house (for the first time ever!) we stained it all.  We managed to do both jobs without either one of us falling off a ladder, so it's all good. 

In the meantime, we've painted the entire basement - I'm liking the color in the bathrooms - until now, we've painted walls everywhere in some shade of white.  

The built in breakfast nook settee is out to the upholsterers for repair and recovering, but it should be back soon.  Then we can finish the work on the upstairs interior.  We should be ready to offer the house to the vacation rental market by the first of November.

In the meantime, I've been harvesting in the garden - this sunflower is ready, but I may need a ladder to get to it.  

I did harvest one of the smaller ones, some pumpkins, and the last of the cucumbers to make my last jar of dill pickles for the year.

We should still have tomatoes for quite a while as I bring a few in from the greenhouse every day. It definitely has been a busy couple of months.

Let the chinking begin

Chinking these days is done with foam material.  We ordered a 500' roll of 1" foam to do our chinking.  In the past, chinking was done with rocks, sand, hair, leaves, old rags, whatever was at hand to fill the cracks between logs.  We cut some of the foam lengthwise to fill cracks that varied in size.  Some had to be nailed in with a nail gun and finishing nails, some could be stuffed into the crack with a putty knife.  

Once the chinking was done, we moved on to "daubing".  For this we used a material called "Permachink" which is a mortar mix that is a bit more pliable than cement mortar as it has a silicone additive.  We bought a couple of essential tools:  A refillable caulking gun, and a plate with a screw hole the size of the end of the caulk gun that fit over the 5 gallon bucket of Permachink. This tool moved down in the bucket as the material was sucked out, so it kept a seal on top of the mix in the bucket. I wasn't strong enough to fill the caulk gun so that became solely Ron's job.

We developed a procedure that worked pretty well.  We both worked on chinking, then Ron squeezed the Permachink material over the foam.  I followed with a putty knife smoothing out the material and then used a paintbrush and water to give a final touch to seal the edges and make it look nice.

  While not rocket science, it is a huge job to chink an entire house! We used up the first five gallons of Permachink on the little section under the window on the back porch.  We ordered 10 more buckets of chink.  It took us four days to do the first side - but at our age, we only work about 6 hour days.

We moved onto the other "easy" side of the house facing the lake on the 5th day.  We were coming down a pretty nice improvement curve and finished that side in three more days.  So far we had been working on nice flat decks, with a little overhead work, but all could be done from a nice safe step stool.

Now we got to the steeper part of the house and bigger ladders became a part of our work.  But we've got the work down and are working faster and better, so we finished this side in just two days.

The final side of the house is without a doubt, the scariest. 

Probably not OSHA approved - but it was surprisingly stable and we are nearly done with the last side of the house.  It takes about 2 to 5 weeks to completely cure, so when it's ready, we'll restain the entire house and it should be good to go for our lifetime.  It is becoming much more clear why the previous four owners of this house never did chink it.