May 2023 – Yes Spring did actually Arrive

As per my last post you guys can see that spring did actually arrive here in May 2023. It didn’t come around nice though and I’m still crabby about it. The last day of April and first day of May we had 60mph north winds. I was so sick of there always being a big red exclamation point on my phone from my weather app. Here we were, finally into May and still with snow on the ground, but now we’re in extreme wildfire danger because of the wind?! I know the Midwesterner cliché is that we’re never happy with the weather but give me a break lol.

The end of April and May 2023 were a major bummer for us honestly. We held the funeral for my 2 year old nephew, Lodi’s Grandma decided to sell her place and move into a home and we made the decision to demolish the barn.

Like how much more do we need besides crappy weather on top of all of that?

We’ll probably all experience what its like to help clean out a family member’s home at some point in our lives. There really is nothing like going through 40+ years of love and collection. You can’t help but think down the road someone will be going through your stuff too.

How in the end, all we have to show for our lives, after all that time, just a few loads to the dump, a few things to family members and maybe a house for sale too.

Of course what materials we have at the end is no real reflection of our lives.

How we loved and lived is all that matters… but still… its damned sad.

May 2023 certainly we have no right to complain as it may be time for the barn to go but that is nothing compared to losing a child or down sizing your entire life to one room.

Our old barn is still here but it is definitely looking worse by the day.

We’ve salvaged everything we can out of it and are no longer going in there.

I said my goodbyes but honestly I’m to the point now where I just want to get it over with.

I mentioned in our April post that we have a new house guest. We took in Lodi’s Grandma’s dog.

No (lol) we did not want another dog.

He’s a senior Pomeranian Chihuahua cross and would never have been the breed of dog either of us would have chosen but he’s totally painless to live with.

My mom calls him Spud (Sir. Spudley), Grandma calls him Yip Yip and we have taken to calling him Link… as in: Sausage Link.

He gets along fine with Annie, makes very little noise, is not destructive and has had no accidents.

The hill Lodi and I agreed to die on was the doggie door. Eventually he could use it on his own – a big ask for such a little dog as its pretty heavy. Firstly we would just put him out and he figured out quick he could come back in any time he wants.

But it took awhile for him to realize he could go out whenever he wanted without one of us being there to say, “Outside!”

Years upon years of having to be told when to “go” is tough to train out of any dog.

Poor little dude lost Grandma just as much as she lost him – not to mention everything he’s ever known.

Eventually he started going out whenever he felt like it too. I’m proud of Link, he chose his “spot” in our guest bedroom and is becoming a lot more comfortable and independent.

He seems happy and he totally loves our giant dog kennel.

A big change for him was not being hand fed anything he wanted.

Food was always out for him in a wide array of different kinds and treats too of course. He was abused prior to Grandma so he had a pretty weird food anxiety thing going on which led to her hand feeding him anything and everything.

HE HAD TO GET OVER IT LOL

There’s no leaving food out with Annie around and we would not be cajoling, hand feeding or begging an obese dog to eat.

It didn’t take him long to get over it lol.

I had to get on Annie for her only change of behavior from his existence which was a sudden panicky form of “begging starvation” as if Link being here meant that she would starve.

Clearly there couldn’t possibly be enough food for them both!

May 2023 when spring finally hit it felt like we were SO far behind.

That wasn’t the case though!

It was just that the last couple of months had seen such God-awful weather that it felt like we were late when, in actuality, I planted our vegetable seeds even a little earlier than usual.

First day we hit the yard for a few hours and we both couldn’t believe what it took out of us!

I was so sore and I got a sun burn besides (very weird for my complexion) but after so many months of sitting in the dark I guess that makes sense lol.

Grandma’s perennial flower bed beside the garage (and the lilac bush behind it) were entirely over run with trees trying to take over. The lilacs were also mostly dead wood so its been on our list for awhile to take it all out.

(Actually we have a lot of lilacs on the property and they all need serious attention. They are all basically just dead wood at this point and need to be cut to the ground so they might have a shot of coming back healthy again. And they are all being taken over by trees and vines besides. Its to the point now, like with the bush beside the garage, that there’s nothing to be done except to go nuclear and just hope they come back.)

I’m not worried about Grandma’s perennial flowers, they’ve seen much worse than some trampling and those trees had to go.

I went ahead and put our new “container garden” there and planted our vegetables then too.

Lodi had extensive chainsaw work to do as the insane amount of snow we saw this winter (over 100 inches!) took a toll on our trees. Branches and limbs were down everywhere and it took the majority of May 2023 to clean it all up.

I moved the cute little sprinklers from our vegetable garden to our L shaped garden by the house as the watering system I had there needed retiring. I also covered the West side of the garden with new dirt and planted a pile of asparagus and chives.

We have both perennials growing back in that bed already but I want a lot more lol.

Cheers to this summer and hopefully a bounty of fresh veggies!