Two House Blues

Travelling with me on the journey to my new destination is my new house but also tagging along is my old house.  It’s up for sale and people keep telling me the real estate market is improving but the lack of a “Sold” sign tells me otherwise.

This probably isn’t breaking news but having two houses is a pain.  Let’s put aside the fact that I am making payments on one house where nothing but air and dust currently live.  I mean I’m glad to give the air and dust a place to call their own but I’d rather they made the payments themselves.  The other pain is maintenance.  You’d think there wouldn’t be much since no one is living in the house but guess what?  Grass still grows even though no one is there.  Leaves fall, too, and plants die out because seasons still change even though you aren’t living there.

So who has to go over there and take care of the yard?  Me.

(…well, my ex wife does too, but she’s not writing this blog, I am so let’s put the focus on my woes.)

Last week I went over there and did, in the terms of my realtor, “some fall clean-up.”  I took a few hours each day to rake out the beds, trim back some shrubs that had overgrown and had begun to die out, and blow as many leaves as I could into the woods behind and next to the house.  Unfortunately, the lawn tractor we still have there has a rag tangled up in the mower blades and the only way I’m going to be able to get it off is to take the mower deck off the tractor and remove the blades.  I’ve tried cutting it off but it’s taking forever and since I had a limited amount of time, I put my energies into other things like leaf removal.  Luckily, I had my leaf blower so I put on my iPod and started blowing leaves. 

I started with a large bed in the front of the house.  This bed is a raised one with a grouping of trees that managed to stick around after the house was finished being built.  My old house sits at the top of a hill so those trees helped break up the slope but to help even more, a few years ago, I built a stacked stone retaining wall and back filled it with dirt.  I loved that wall.  It took a while for me to finish it but when I was finished, I thought it looked good and it certainly wasn’t going to go anywhere since I put cement along the rear of the wall to help keep it in place.  

Each stone in that wall was picked up, dug up or dragged over by me.  I got the rocks from my property and the surrounding lots.  It was a lot of work but it was worth it because that wall was going to be there long after I was gone.  I just didn’t expect to be gone from it so soon.

I worked my way up the hill and noticed the grass really needed to be mowed.  I was disappointed the tractor was temporarily out of commission because I loved to mow that lawn on the tractor.  Again, I would have my ear buds in and would work my way in circles around the lawn.  I tried to change it up each time I mowed because I read somewhere that was better for the overall growth of the lawn.   Back when my youngest was ….um… younger, she would sit on my lap and mow with me.  I wouldn’t go up or down the big hill when she did that, just did the lower part of the front yard and the side.  She loved it and I loved having her there.  One time she fell asleep while I was mowing which amazed me because the mower is so loud. 

I eventually worked a good portion of the leaves to other side of the driveway where we have yet another hill that was too steep to mow.  We called that hill the “Place where nothing grows.”  Since we couldn’t mow it, we tried planting ivy, shrubs, some type of cactus plant and flowers.  Nothing took for very long.  Finally my ex planted mint and that seem to do the trick.  Too bad we didn’t think of that shortly after we moved in, it may have fully taken over the hill (and probably a good portion of the woods the way mint grows).  It did well but we probably won’t see the full effects…well, at least I hope we won’t see the full effects because that would mean its spring and I still have that house.

I completed my session of leaf blowing by pushing them past the swing set and into the back woods. The swing set was starting to show its age.  My ex-wife and I built that together in a span of about four days.  The girls were so excited to have it (you can see their reaction on this video I made and posted way back when:

 

My youngest had just turned one and I joked that one or both of them would have to get married in it.  Guess that’s not going to happen now…unless we keep in touch with whoever buys the house.  Maybe I can work that into the contract.

I finished up the bit of yard work I was going to do for the day and put the blower and cord back in the garage.  I stood there for a minute and looked around.  While the memories I have are good ones, I really didn't like having to revisit them just yet.  Being reminded of the good times I had at the house and the knowledge that those times are somewhat tainted with what has happened in the past year doesn't help.  My destination was somewhere else so why did I have to keep coming back to a place that should be in my past? 

I guess that’s just the way things go.  I'm moving forward down my new road and there are sites up ahead that I'm looking forward to but I still have to back up from time to time to settle things that  remain from the place I just left.

I guess it’s kind of like raking leaves.  You gather them all up and either bag them or blow them away but soon more fall and you have to go back and rake some more.  Maybe instead of just blowing them away, I should just pile them up and jump in the middle of them.  Perhaps that would provide a better perspective.

...or at least it would be a little bit more fun!