I love living in a place with distinct seasons. Theoretically, it means putting aside certain activities every few months in favour of fresh, new-sounding ones. In Ottawa we have three distinct seasons – summer, fall and winter. Spring jams its foot in the door, churning out a last ditch attempt at snow immediately followed by a freakish day or two of hot, humid weather. A little cool rain and muddy schlock interlope and then it’s straight into summer.
I whittled down my exterior ‘to do’ list last year, stripping, wrapping and insulating the house, expanding the raised beds in the vegetable garden, installing the outdoor bathtub/bathing garden, and swapping over a huge chunk of grass to butterfly and bird-happy perennial gardens. I even managed to tidy the yard and put the gardens to bed before the first flakes fell. But regardless of my work and planning, I am squarely in the perennial season of ‘and’ (and I know I am not alone here).
‘And’ means that nothing really falls off my plate, but a whole raft of seasonal activities get added. And all the winter clothes need to be washed and stored downstairs. And I need to install the cedar t&g on the basement closet so that said winter clothes have an appropriate home. And all the summer clothes need to be brought up, sorted, tried on, and put/away given away depending on the outcome. Rabid shopping then ensues to shod enlarging feet and drape growing limbs. And yard clean up and composting begins. And shrubs need to be trimmed. And plants need to be divided and moved out of the way of the exterior house work. And vegetable beds need to be fertilized with compost and seeds need to be shopped for, planted and tended. And I need to build-out all the windows to accommodate the exterior insulation I added in the fall. And a dumpster needs to be brought in and loaded with all the unusable interior materials that came out over the winter. And all the nails need to be hammered out of the hundreds of board feet of interior materials that can be used again. And those materials need to be stacked, put aside and protected. And I need to install the doors and windows I purchased over the winter and that are crouched in my shed. And I need to strap the exterior of the house. And I need to plan out and order the clapboard and trim. And I need to install all of that. And I need to drop the deck and detach it from the house so I can repair the south wall. And I need to clean up and plant a large chunk of the southside gardens. And I need to dig up all the burdock. And I need to lay black plastic down to keep the weeds from taking over until I can lay interlock. And I need to mow the lawn (repeatedly). And I need to repaint the garden arch and outdoor furniture. And I need to install outdoor lighting. And I need to have the plans drawn up for the carriage house overhaul. And I need to figure out how to jack up the front porch and remake the fretwork. And I need to remove all the t&g from said porch to repoint the stone from the outside to finally (finally!) end the air ingress. And I have to strip and repair all the old storms. I have to have at least one of the large, old birches taken down. And I need to complete any of the other indoor projects I started. And, of course, I have to start planning what will happen when the kids are out of school come June.
And then I want to mill and create a beautiful, enormous outdoor table from my old-growth reclaimed wood. And I want to roof the playstructure with the reclaimed steel panels from the main house, add the shutters and all the arty-pretty-fun stuff, which is the icing on the cake. And I want to hang fairy lights in the trees and erect the pergola over the back patio so we can have summer dinner parties and bring in a band to play late into the warm nights. And, as requested by my squids, I want to build a series of platforms in the trees for them to spy on each other and play amongst the clouds. And I want to build a floating dock so we can jettison our life-jacketed bodies through the rapids and float down to the public beach.
I want to complete and submit my pitch to the CBC. And I want to blog frequently and continue meeting interesting people related to the housing sector. And I want to keep fleshing out my business ideas and be ready to move forward no later than September. (If work calls before then, alternative plans will come into play, not to mention the 3am wake-ups). And I want to bring Shakespeare to our park so we can celebrate as a community and not have to drive to the city. And I want to figure out where we’re heading on vacation. And. And. And.
So in actuality the snow shovelling and snowshoeing may end, but all the other ongoing indoor chores, volunteer work, kids stuff, projects and outside-the-home-work do not; the summer work (and lovely social delights) are simply piled on top. Heresy, but I sometimes wish for a few more weeks of snow on these beautiful sun-filled days.
I predict that by next summer we will be very close to maintenance mode. In 2012 I might just have to drag out those Martha Stewart home checklists that I always thought were insanely detailed and prohibitively unattainable. That is unless the end-of-the-world prognostications play out. In which case, I can safely scratch “Wash exterior windows” off my to-do list.