WHY NOW ?

 I have known The Man for five and a half years.  During that time I have visited and then resided in his home here in Michigan and for all that time the house and yard have been over run with stuff.  In the house it is household and clothing and outside it is WEEDS.  Let's face it, the place needed a woman to try to get it under some control. 

I have told you how I respected The Man's space and held off for three and a half years before attempting to make any headway in the house and garden.  I understand this is "his" space and I respect that. But if we are going to keep this relationship going he has to understand that I NEED to feel welcome here. 

Last summer was ROUGH !!!   I didn't expect to be here all those months without seeing my kids and I guess The Man understood that so he "allowed" me to clean out a closet or two. ALWAYS under his very careful scrutiny so that I didn't throw out a precious family heirloom such as one winter glove with moth holes in it or even one of the twelve dozen spatulas in the kitchen that are so old the plastic is disintegrating and sticky. (You know how long it takes for plastic to decompose so when I say these things have been here a while you know I am not kidding.) Once a closet was cleaned out I was allowed to use it to hang up my clothes but even then my clothing must share their space with two folding snack tables that we NEVER use and a LARGE plastic garbage bag FILLED with old baseball caps.  These hats are apparently headed for the baseball/football/hockey museums because they MUST remain on the top shelf of "my" closet.  Are there 42 other closets where they could be stored? Of course! But it is in my space they stay. (I pick my battles!)

Upon arriving in MI this year I decided that I was going to attack some of the kitchen drawers and under the sink. We have been here two full months already and I have managed to clean out and reorganize 2 of the 7 kitchen drawers.  A couple of days ago I cleaned out the cabinet under the kitchen sink while The Man was taking a nap.  He will never know because he never goes into the working area of the kitchen. 

All this brings me to today's blog.    When you enter the back door to The Man's house, (No one ever uses the front door. This is apparently a "country" thing), you step into a small space about 9' X 9'. There is a short flight of stairs leading down into the cellar and a short flight of stairs leading up to the door into the house. I'm not sure what you would call this space. Probably the modern term would be "the mud" room, but here it is just called "the space at the bottom of the stairs by the back door". In this small area there are 2 HUGE cabinets hanging on one wall. The latch on their doors is too high for me to reach without standing on my tip toes. They are probably 4 1/2' tall and 4' wide. Their 4 shelves are filled with cans of paint, and other "manly" items. None of which I have EVER seen The Man use. But they are off limits and quite honestly I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole. Literally! In this room there is also a floor to ceiling pantry size cabinet that up until last year was filled with baking pans and other baking paraphernalia.  All of which The Man allowed me to move onto shelves in the basement so his son could look through it to take what he wants. (That was my idea for getting all the excess baking and cooking stuff gathered together in one spot. Worked like a charm!) 

So with the "pantry" closet emptied out, (sort of), I was able to talk The Man into putting all our garden tools in there.  The property is bursting with garden tools like rakes, shovels, clippers, saws and just about anything else you can imagine.  These things are scattered between the garage, the shed, the milk house and the lean to. ALL of these tools are either rusted or broken so that the majority of them are not useable. I am slowly collecting some garden tools that work.  I suggested to The Man that he keep his tools in the "pantry" closet  so they will be handy if and when he needs them.  So far all that he has put in there is a small black duffle bag containing 7 hammers, 4 pliers and about 14 screw drivers. All of which The Man has not used since I have known him.  But he likes that he has his tools handy just in case. (The garage is a separate building that stands a distance away from the house. Being on oxygen The Man can't get to the garage unless he rides his mower or car down to it. Both those vehicles are parked just outside the back door. )

OK . . .  so now we have the space at the bottom of the stairs sort of organized. The two items that do not fit into either cabinet are the leaf blower and the weed whacker.  Bot of these items I use at least 3 times a week. They both stand in the far corner of the room and are not in the way of anything.  Now The Man's six oxygen tanks, bag of charcoal, (unopened and un used in 4 years), and his 4 cooler chests that have never made it to the garage, (because we may need them), THOSE things ARE in the way of just about everything.  I have to climb over them to open the window in that room, plug in the battery charges for the weed whacker, or get to my closet where my gardening things are stored. (I have a small cardboard box containing 2 pairs of garden gloves, a scissor, a ball of twine and a pruning tool that I bought at the dollar store. ) 

Tonight The Man announced that "WE" needed to put the garden tools in the garage so the space at the bottom of the stairs will look nice for when my daughter and family stop by next weekend. (They are touring Wisconsin and Michigan for 3 weeks and will stay here for a weekend parked in their rented RV out in the yard.) I know for a fact Keri will NOT even notice the weed whacker nor would she care if she did see it.  This is a farm, you're supposed to have stuff like that laying around. Right?  

Next on the list of things pissing me off tonight is the fact that because this is not my home I do not have "my Stuff" to preoccupy me. At my home I can find endless sources of entertainment for myself but here I am on "his" turf.  In order to keep my sanity, (that train may have left the station some time ago), I am enjoying gardening.  Over the past couple of years I have weeded and cleaned out the foot and a half wide space lining the back patio. I have pruned the good stuff growing there and added some solar lights that The Man found in some closet. There is a small pink flamingo and 3 Shepards crooks holding 5 different bird feeders. This is my little space to "putter" in.  This year I added a tomato plant in an old rusty lobster pot and a plastic under bed storage box that I filled with dirt from the field. I had brought some flower seeds with me that I had gotten in the mail before we left Florida and they are now growing nicely in my make shift "window box" that sits on the top of the cement stairs that go into the parlor.  That sliding glass door and steps are NEVER used so it was the perfect place to plant a "garden" 

I have been having a great deal of fun tending this space and The Man has been very tolerant of me up until tonight.  

Two days ago we were in the cellar cleaning out more stuff, as I told you in a previous blog. While going through the pottery stuff "WE" found a small ceramic sign for the garden, two small wrought iron fences, (about 2' high and 8 " wide), and 2 wrought iron holders for small flower pots.  I KNEW they were going to be trouble but I had to try. 

This evening I brought those 5 items up from the cellar and out onto the table on the patio so that I could size them up and decide where I wanted to put them in the garden if, indeed, I wanted to put them anywhere.  If it was going to be too much they were going back into the cellar from where they came. That at least was my plan until The Man came out and took one look at the things on the table and said, "What Now? What are you going to do with that stuff?"  All this being said with an attitude and a roll of his eyes.  

I get it !  I am moving too fast for him right now so I will have to put the stuff back in the cellar and not start any new projects for a couple of weeks at least.  In the mean time I will use this blog to keep from killing The Man when all I really want to do is take him by the throat and say, "Shut the 'F' up and let me have some fun". 

Side note . . .  I am sitting here on the patio in back of the house enjoying the cool evening breeze and here comes one of our 4 legged friends trotting across the field to munch on the corn I put out for them every night. This one little deer is ALWAYS the first to show up each evening. He is standing about 50 feet away from me and not the least bit concerned by my presence.  

I'm sure he thinks my garden is awesome !