April 2026 – Starting with over a Foot of Snow

I mean to be fair it was April fools day when the first storm hit and, also to be fair, it ALWAYS snows here in April. But I was getting quite comfortable with the snow being gone. We saw highs in the 50s many days in March and the majority of our lakes went out. I even (finally!) tackled the disaster that was my front door with new electrical, a new outdoor light, patching and fixing the sheet rock and getting nearly to completion on the outside. And then the temps dropped and it snowed and snowed and snowed lol.

I still expect Link when I get home and see him in the hall or running for me. Its gonna be a long time before I lose the urge to hurry home to get him dinner after work. I’m so glad the weather was nice the last couple weeks of his life. He got to romp in the grass and enjoy his dog kennel every day in the sun which was literally his favorite thing.

I used to take Link to the groomer every few weeks and I always wrote myself a sticky note “Pick up Link” so I wouldn’t forget him after work. Well, they called to tell me his ashes were ready and I didn’t even think about it, I wrote my last sticky note so I wouldn’t forget, “Pick up Link”

It was super sad.

After the loss of my old Oak in the front yard I had always planned to replace it with an apple tree. (Its where I buried my last dog before Link.) The night I lost Diesel in 2017 it was on Easter and it was particularly nice outside, I had sat with him under that old Oak, looking up at the stars together before he passed just a couple of hours later.

So I’m going to bury Link’s ashes under an apple tree beside Diesel, a spot that gets lots of sun that they both loved.

I just realized that Link passed within just a couple of weeks of Diesel and my soul horse Garcia too who I lost back in 2024. And all three of them got some really abnormally nice warm weather for their last days as well. Weird.

One thing about little Link no longer being sick here though is that I can get back to work. After living with Lodi’s explosiveness any loud noises sent Link into terror and hiding. It was OK when he wasn’t sick as he would just head upstairs, burrow under my covers and sleep through it.

I certainly couldn’t stress him out when he was sick though.

So, work on this house has (sadly) commenced.

I miss him terribly but its still a relief for me as I really do need a project for my sanity lol. I finally (after months) got motived to fix the front door issues. Its been the BIGGEST eye sore on my to-do list that actually made me feel guilty for working on anything else besides. I finished the inside and just have one more thing to finish on the outside!

I tackled the main floor closet, the guest bedroom closet, reorganized my entire kitchen, finished my guest bedroom, new tool room and am happy with my second floor as well… at least, for now lol

I am at an impasse in my new office as I literally just put all my furniture in there and called it done.

Before I “reveal” it here I certainly feel like I’ve got to do something else in there as its a total mod podge at the moment… though I admit that doesn’t mean that I don’t totally love it.

That may be a this fall thing though as I might have started this April 2026 post talking about all of the snow we got it is now decidedly spring.

I’ve always wanted a place to setup my saws and have a real workshop… It literally took me these last eight months to realize I can now have one! I have a ridiculous three car garage I never needed or wanted that Lodi insisted on because he HAD to have two vehicles and an ATV besides and I refused to park my one car outside. (In the divorce I’m getting just about everything that he just had to have lol.)

Good riddance!

Just like that extra room Lodi had to have that I converted into my tool room I’m now going to get something I want out of something I never wanted to build or pay for and certainly never needed.

The third stall garage addition is going to make a great place to setup my miter saw and table saw. Its connected to my original two car garage by only a doorway so the sawdust mess etc. will be contained. I’m planning on building a work bench around my miter saw that doubles as support for cutting long boards and it is ridiculous how excited I am about it!

There have been several things on my list for years that I can tackle now that Lodi is permanently gone.

I patched and painted the interior of the old “well house” shed in my yard late last year. A couple of years before that, with some extra roofing steel I had leftover, I also put a new roof on it and wrapped it up in house wrap. I have the siding, trim and extra steel I need to button it up and I’m certainly going to be getting that done this year finally.

I will share pictures!

Unfortunately I took no before pictures of the situation because that old shed had been raising thousands of bugs, mice, chipmunks and squirrels and it was SO GROSS. I masked up, cleaned it out, patched it, spray foamed any gaps and painted out the entire interior.

It was not a pleasant experience lol.

I don’t actually need the shed for anything but I can’t just let it rot when I already have the materials I need to fix it. I’ve only spent about $150 on paint and on the steel corner trim and that’s all I’ll be spending.

The shed is roughly 10×10, it has a concrete floor that’s in very good shape and the slanted roof is nearly 11 feet at its highest point. It also has a decent steel exterior door and a screen door. At one point it had electricity and a working sand point well that has unfortunately since dried up or I would have put a manual spigot on it. (That’s what that steel pipe thing is that’s poking out of the floor that I need to cut off.)

Out in the dog kennel I have this motion sensor outdoor solar light that I’m going to be putting in the shed because (*sad sigh*) my little dog doesn’t need it anymore and it will be perfect here because it has a sixteen foot cord so I can put the solar panel outside and the light inside.

(Horrifying thought: If I ever see the light on in that shed… something will have triggered it from the inside that wasn’t me lol)

I did an “out of this box ideas” google search for sheds and if this shed was up by my garden it TOTALLY would have become my potting shed/outdoor bar (LOL) but its like a mile hike from my garden and in a location I never hang out and in a location I also don’t want to hang out either.

I might not have a use for it yet but at least it won’t be an eyesore anymore! And don’t you dare even one of you mention that all of my empty sheds in this yard would make great chicken /duck coops lol I know! My entire family won’t stop bugging me about it and they’re not wrong!

On the docket for May: Have the hole dug for my pond beside the garden ideally BEFORE planting my trees so they’re not in the way, top off my vegetable garden with more dirt and plant it and get my 350 tree seedlings planted as well.

(I’ll be planting just over an acre in trees.)

Other things I probably won’t get to but would also love to get done this spring: build flower boxes along the East and West sides of my vegetable garden and transplant all of my perennials into them. Purchase nine 3-5ft tall spruce trees to create my “fence line” though I don’t know the cost of them yet… and both of those things could wait until fall.

Just like with the tree seedlings there’s going to be a very short window when it will be safest to move my perennials this spring and I won’t risk them if I think I’m too late.

With the forecast its looking almost assuredly like mid May before any planting is going to happen which is totally normal for my neck of the woods, but I am feeling the cabin fever!

April 2026, hoping before planting I’ll have the shed sided and there’s a spot on the South side of the house that’s needed a patch for years now and, not to mention, there’s that hole in the side of my garage that sure needs fixing too… None of this is urgent but I don’t dare waste it if I’m feeling motivated!

As with all springs everything is still very brown here on the farm, but green is on the way!