the Village Knittiot

Yesterday was my first day at the new job. Like most first days, it was exhausting. I crawled into bed at about 8:30 and collapsed. This much is clear already, it is going to keep me very busy once I am up to speed, and that suits me just fine.

Of course, that initial adjustment period is always a little like purgatory. You are figuring out how to do everything, even the simple things like where to find the staples and post it notes. And I’m one of those people who want to know what I’m doing already so I can just be doing it.

The really good thing is that on the surface, nobody seems miserable. And because it is such a busy environment, it appears that nobody really has time to get miserable. This alone was enough to make me breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Sunday afternoon Mr. Knittiot and I spent some time working in the backyard. Doing this is something that we have to work ourselves up to. I mean, we have to plan it like three weeks out. And then I’m pretty sure we both spend those three weeks praying it will rain. Owning a home is a first for both of us. And sometimes it is a little bit intimidating.

The family we bought the house from had owned it for 87 of its 88 years. The woman who lived here (and moved to a nursing home shortly before we bought it) had been born in this house. I expect she intended to die here, but apparently that just wasn’t in the cards. The truth is, she probably lived here about 10 years longer than she should have. The house is all potential, but it’s hidden under layers of neglect and grime. I’m not usually too sure how to go about uncovering that potential, so I tend to huddle in my office on the second floor and freak out about how much I don’t know about owning a home.

This is only our second summer in the house, and last year I think we went into the backyard maybe 5 times. And then it was only to quickly run the mower around and flee. It is so wild back there, I don’t really feel like I belong in it. The wildness of it all looks great from my kitchen window, but standing in the middle of it is a lot like intruding.

Sunday, however, it wasn’t raining and we had planned to go outside that day. It was actually the perfect kind of yard day — cool and overcast — but I’m sure we could have easily found a good excuse to not go out there. It was, after all, threatening to rain. But we stuck to our plan. After running the push mower over the yard (we have one of those excellent push-me-pull-you old fashioned mowers — kind of the grass equivalent of one of those carpet sweepers) we started talking about our plan of attack.

The woman who lived here, in her better days, must have been a phenomenal gardener. Even through the overgrowth, the raw materials of a cozy backyard are evident. So we decided to take one section at a time, starting right at the edge of our back door where there was this little flagstone path leading out to the yard. Well, we thought it was little, but what we saw — a few feet long and a couple stones wide — is actually about 7 or 8 feet long and 4 stones wide. Over time, dirt had washed over the stones, roots had taken hold, and they just kept creeping their way across the top.

So we cleared that off and got an excellent start on pulling out the frightening thorny bush that appears to be dead, but keeps shooting up new thorny growth all over this one corner of our yard. I’m pretty sure that we found the spot for our garden, which will be a next year project at the earliest. This summer will be mostly about carving out a little space for us in the midst of all the wildness of our backyard.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 24th, 2005 at 6:04 am and is filed under this Random Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.