Tag Archives: house

Scary boxes

By Life

I’ve had a box of office stuff in my writing office since we moved in. I knew it wasn’t crucial stuff, so it sort of sat in front of the antique wardrobe, getting shoved around as we needed to get to the window to put in or take out the AC, etc. The other day, I finally threw up my hands and took everything out of it. We’ve put a small bookcase in the wardrobe (eventually I’d like to have removable shelves that run the whole width), so I figured I could off-load stuff into there.

What I found was rather…interesting. Including…

  • An astonishing number of Post-It notes (various sizes, colors, etc.). I know I have a problem when it comes to office supplies, but seriously, I thought I’d unpacked all of these. Turns out, not even close.
  • A calculator. (Got one of those on my phone. Into the Goodwill box it goes.)
  • Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking. I thought I’d lost it. Hurrah!
  • Barbara Hambly’s Darwath Trilogy. Horrifyingly, I hadn’t noticed they were missing. Someone must have returned them after we packed the rest of the books to move.
  • An acorn front door knocker. I…can’t explain why it was in here. (Also, I’m not sure what to do with it. I don’t want to put it on the front door because then people will use it rather than the doorbell, and we can’t hear a knocker in the back of the house or upstairs. Hm…maybe on the door to my writing room?)
  • The hooks, etc., from the peg board we had in the kitchen of our last house.
  • The cardboard backdrop to our Narnia bookends. I confess I forgot about our Narnia bookends, because they still must be packed away somewhere. As the lodger and I are currently rewatching The Magicians, my need to find the Narnia bookends has now become a consuming flame in my soul.
  • A plastic envelope of magnets, decorative postcards, and other ephemera. I don’t even gave the energy to go through all that yet.

This is making me nervous about some of the other boxes we haven’t yet gone through….

What’s the strangest mix of items you’ve found in a box after you’ve moved?

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Look what Ken made for me!

By Uncategorized, , ,

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We had a big blank wall in our kitchen, and I’d been finding various examples of pegboard herb gardens on Pinterest (you can see my board here).

Every time I’ve tried to grow herbs outside, I’ve killed them. I forget to water them, or I think “Eh, I’ll go out and water them tomorrow,” and then they’re dead, Jim—dead, I tell you. I had some success when I put the pots on the back steps, because they were close and I could just open the door and water them, but Ken doesn’t look where he puts his big ol’ feet, so that resulted in multiple broken pots scattered around the stairs. The only herb I’ve successfully grown of late is a basil, because it was in the kitchen and I saw it every morning.

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I still need to get more pots and things (and I have to figure out how to do that without spending much money). Right now the pot above has a regular basil and a purple basil, but they’re still in their individual wrappings. I think I’m going to just put regular basil in that pot to let it spread out, because we use a lot of basil.

Gardener peeps: Would I line the bottom with small rocks for drainage?

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The rest of the herbs, currently on the utility porch, waiting to be transfered when I have proper pots of some ilk. Well, except for the lemon geranium, which I’ll plant outside. And that big pot with the French red chard in it is too big for the pegboard, so I’m not sure where that’ll end up. Maybe it’ll live on the utility porch, and I’ll take it to visit the other herbs in the kitchen every so often.