A Giant Corn Privacy Fence.

I don't know if I have mentioned the neighbor lady who lives behind us. I will call her Patty, which is not actually her real name, but we'll call her that anyway. I really try to be kind to my neighbors because the foundational cornerstone of my faith is "Love God and Love People". I know it's God's little way of reminding me that the world is full of nuts, flakes and fruity folk, because this can be very hard sometimes.

Well anyway, Patty complains ALL THE TIME about her health. She takes 300 pills per week and get 6 injections per week, and has migraines and seizures and so on and so forth. Seriously, this woman should be on death's doorstep and yet she persists to come over and complain to me about her health. If she is that ill, I wish she would stay in the house and stop pestering me. I do try to talk to her at least once a week, because, like I said, I am trying to be kind to my neighbors. I'm not about to be the snooty neighbor that no one wants to help or be around.

Unfortunately, Patty has become a bit of an annoyance. It's getting to where I don't enjoy going past the back door. This is bad because most of the good stuff in the garden is right outside the back door.

The funny thing is that Patty gave me some advice regarding my corn. Like me, she has problems with our mutual neighbor, Lowell, whom I KNOW I have mentioned before in exasperation. Patty's idea was for me to continue digging up my side yard and planting more of that amazing variety of corn that has grown to be higher than the gutters of our garage. "Just like a great big privacy fence!" were her exact words. So that Lowell couldn't see what we were doing on the patio.

Now that's actually not a bad idea. A great big corn privacy fence all the way around my garage and patio to block BOTH of them.

This picture was taken one week ago. The corn stalks are actually higher than the gutters now.

Bathroom Break

Here we are - January 3!

I have a bit of a head cold, but nothing terribly serious. Just enough to make me slightly miserable.

Avery and Danny are coming over today to help me work on the upstairs bathroom. Our most pressing goal for the rest of the winter is to get that bathroom working again so that we can actually use it. Our house belonged to Alex's grandparents for forty years and there are some very strange quirks. For example - they really have something against using the bathroom that is part of their master suite. In the house they now reside in, they do not use their master bathroom, although, like ours, it is attached to their bedroom. They walk down the hall to a second bathroom. When they lived in our house, they walked all the way downstairs to use a tiny, cramped bathroom on the first floor rather than make a mess in the large, spacious, master bathroom directly next to their bed. The result? The master bathroom has a seriously bad case of dry rot and the fixtures don't work properly. We are not afriad of using the master bathroom, but we can't until we get it working again.

I'm not a plumber, so I can't actually replace the shower fixtures by myself. However, I can strip wallpaper, paint and scrub, so those are the goals of the day. Here are a couple "BEFORE" pictures.

I know this is hard to believe, but I actually have already done a bit of work in this bathroom. I replaced all the brass cabinet pulls with polished silver. The previous owners also had a serious affinity for brass. I think it's a generational thing because brass just screams "I did my decorating in the 80's and never looked back!!" It's definitely time to update things a bit.

If you will notice the green bathmat on the floor, and hearken back to what I just said about the silver hardware, I will give you a general overview of the room's eventual theme.

As you get to know me a bit better, you will find that I am a very elemental person. I am certainly very earthy - that is evident by my green thumb and my love of playing in the dirt. I drew the idea for this bathroom from an experience I had walking through the park one very early morning, when everything was dewey and silvered, and the sun was just beginning to rise, and all the foliage was brand new and pale. (It was in April.) And so, later today or perhaps tomorrow, when you see the finished product, I hope you will agree that the inspiration rendered an appropriate result.

Ta-ta for now! There is a lot of work to be done today.