If You Tuck A Seed In A Hole, It Makes It Happy
Master Pravus and me like going out on the porch on and off. I’ll just kind of poke around and check on my plants, and check out the view we have from out there. It’s pretty high up. But, parts of the porch aren’t great, and we obviously avoid those because completely replacing the porch isn’t in the cards right now. Well. I was walking down the steps to go and do a little loop around the house the other day and my foot kind of felt like it gave out under me. Not a joint problem, a wood problem. I called Master Pravus over to try to show him the exact spot on the exact board, but of course he couldn’t tell. Thing is, when you try to exert pressure on your own things like this are rarely noticeable. You have to be (for the most part paying little attention) and planting your foot down with no concern or expectation. You know what I’m talking about. You do. I know you know. So, of course we walked away and thought nothing more of it for the moment. “Could be your ankle, Kitty. Your ankle has been ankling.” I mean. I has. But this wasn’t my ankle. I felt the board! I walked away and put it out of my mind.
So, naturally, neither of us was supremely shocked when a couple of hours later this happened:
It’s like I told you: putting your foot on it on purpose and trying to get it to break wasn’t causing it. You needed to be paying no attention. The good news is that nobody was hurt because the board didn’t let go the entire way (see) and the faller was caught by the railing which is right by the rotted board. So: we dashed off to the lumber store and bough some wood. We were planning on fixing it up along with a couple of other not-so-good looking pieces of floor when Master Pravus’ brother called. He’s going through a rough time and so he’s coming over in a couple days to help Master Pravus do it. I mean, Master Pravus could probably do it betwixt the two of us, but then his brother needs the company right now. And I shouldn’t be bending. So there’s that.
Of course, all of that did kind of get our adrenaline going. I mean, neither of us was worried about being hurt in the moment but there’s a gaping hole in the porch and we didn’t want a package carrier to drop an ankle in there or something. We also didn’t want one of us to come running up the steps and twist an ankle in forgetfulness later. Ack. So Master Pravus decided he wanted to plant something in the basket immediately to do something with his energy. I already had plans to plant something in the basket, but I didn’t know when.
Master Pravus ran down to get a liner for the planter while I started soaking seeds to plant. Trying to get a head start on things since it was getting late. I was already taking the duds out of the water when Master Pravus returned. He had accidentally got a size of liner just slightly too small. So off back to the shop he went while I started getting really sleepy. I did manage to make it up until he returned. And we started filling in the dirt.
This officially takes care of item #60 on my Day Zero II list. Huzzah!
A few days passed and Master Pravus’ brother did, in fact, come by to help with the porch. All of the work did not get finished in one day. In fairness, we found more problems than just that one little board like oh I dunno hey look!
Yeah, they wound up tearing up a good four feet of floor in the side of the porch. And on top of that there was so much trash boarded away and hidden under our porch. (Thanks previous owners. ‘Preciate that. Love that for us. ::Sigh::)
The hole looks like this now, but that’s an obvious temporary fix. It’s only going to be that way for like, a couple of weeks. We can’t do anything about it for at least a week or so, but a gaping four foot hole in the porch is just not a smart plan. So anyway. That’s definitely patched.
We knew the porch was a big problem we needed to deal with shortly after our move-in. But so much went wrong in the house within the first three months we just didn’t have the ability to handle it. And now, the thing is literally falling apart so we have no choice. The only real solace is that, as Big Bro-In-Law points out “This is salvageable.” Good. Good. It’s good to hear it’s fixable.
Meanwhile, since heavy lifting isn’t entirely my speed, I planted a marigold.
My cat grass is doing extremely well, so I’m feeling invincible. See you in two months, and let’s hope I didn’t overestimate my plant abilities.
(P.S. The planter already has little sprouts popping up! :D)