Still We Are Moving
by James Glaser
March 25, 2011

We have been in our house for over a year and a half now, and you would think we would be all settled in by now, but you would be wrong. Yesterday I spent the day moving sculptures, and I'll be moving boxes of stuff today, too.

We have a 16 x 10 storage building, and I am moving everything out of there, so I can move that building to a slab we put in toward the back of the property.

Then, in theory, I'll be able to sort through everything, and refill that storage building with boxes that are labeled, and we will be able to find things when we want to. That is a theory we have been working on for a long time.

Don't you just hate it when you find a box full of things you know you will be using some time, but not right now? I have boxes full of lamb's wool pads for polishing my wood work, but I don't use them very often. Really not often enough to warrant keeping them in the shop.

Also, I have boxes of exotic wood pieces; a bunch of the hard cases hand tools came in when I bought them; two four foot by a hundred yard rolls of 80 grit sand paper somebody gave me; boxes of 33 rpm records; paper work, and more paper work; and boxes filled with miscellaneous stuff that always seems to accumulate over the years.

All the while I am doing this, I am asking Wanda's opinion if this or that should go into a yard sale, or maybe we should sell it in this booth we have at the Old Country Store in Madison. Either way we will have to keep the stuff until we have that yard sale or we get more room in that booth.

I do see light at the end of the tunnel though. We do have fewer things than we used to, and it is getting easier to find what we are looking for. The potting shed has only yard and garden things in it, the studio is functioning better, and we can actually walk into our other storage building. It wasn't that long ago that all we could do was open the door and see if we could see what we were looking for someplace in the pile. Now you can walk all the way to the back and usually find what you need.

The yard is always constant work, but even there we are making progress. I built three raised-bed gardens within my fenced-in vegetable garden area. Also, I have about half of the poultry wire attached to the inside of the picket fence. I think rabbits were getting my lettuce, but it could have been a possum, or who knows what. I put those raised beds right next to the fence and my beans and cucumbers will be able to climb up that poultry wire.

I have been planting any wildflower I can get on the new piece of property that we bought, and I am going to sow wild flower seeds there this weekend. All the fruit trees look to be doing fine and the thornless blackberry bushes are starting to get flower buds. Also, I found my first real tomato. It is about the size of a big marble.

We are still in a bit of a drought, and so we are watering every day. Not everything every day, but some section of the yard. My roses look good, and Wanda has planted all sorts of flowering bushes which are starting to bloom out. The dogwoods are in full bloom as are the azaleas and wisteria.

If we do take a break and sit in our covered swing, and there is a gentle breeze, we can smell all the different fragrances.

Of course as we sit there, we start talking about what we have left to do, and you just know a grape arbor is in the works. We need more blueberry bushes and blackberries, too. I want a kumquat tree, along with a lemon and lime. I also want another well, and I want a hand pup on this one.

We need to put in a patio, and I think a screen porch. When we bought that acre next to us there was an old tractor shed on it. The shed was overgrown with vines and was filled with debris. I cleaned it up, and it does have possibilities.

So, I guess we are going to be stuck moving things for a long time. But hey, it's good exercise, and I truly believe that some day we will have things not only the way we want them, but where we want them, too.

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