Oh the Misery!

There are things that come with age.  Wisdom, knowledge, and maturity. Poor eyesight, decrease in flexibility and range of motion, and weaker immune system. I don't consider myself young nor am I old.  I'm kinda stuck in the middle. Sometimes, no matter the age, it takes an experience for one to learn and appreciate wise old sayings. Take for example "Leaves of three".  This statement has been repeated and repeated, year after year by parents, grandparents, outdoor enthusiasts, and other knowledgeable beings.  Hell, I even repeated to those younger than I.  A lot of fat good all that repeating did.  For the first time in my life I got to experience, in all its glory, poison ivy!

Poison ivy is a beautiful plant with bright, shiny green leaves.  There was no red angry colors, no orange streaks, no flashing neon sign chanting STAY AWAY, STAY AWAY, STAY AWAY.  I have seen, pointed too, hiked alongside, camped under, and cleared trees containing poison oak, poison ivy, and poison sumac.  Never once did I have a reaction to its evilness.   Never say never cause three to five days after cleaning brush, I discovered that I was covered.  My face and neck were spared, but all extremities and torso were are a red, blotchy, angry, bumpy, itchy mess.

Oh, the pain.  Heat is not welcomed when covered with such evilness. What's worse is that there was no cure for this misery except time and a cool room. Don't get me wrong, if there was a home remedy, cure, or snake oil, it was tried. Benadryl liquid gel, Calamine lotion, and generic creams are still in the medicine box at full capacity. Baking soda rubs are messy.  Hot showers are great only while in them.  Rubbing alcohol worked the best for me because it is cold and dries the itchy out.  However, rubbing alcohol burns like the fires of hell on open wounds caused by excessive scratching.

This mess lasted intensely for three weeks.  Just about the time I was healing, the husband decided that he needed to experience this in his life too. Luckily for him, we knew what to expect.  While his were more confined, he did experience a much more intensive patch on his leg. I guess reactions to poison ivy are one of those things that come with age. 

The Second Clearing

After all that work clearing, it became evident moving the Airstream under the trees would not work well. Yes, trees provide shade, buffer street lights and road traffic, and hinder the breeze. Hindering the breeze is not an option.  Just because we are moving from the RV park to the property does not mean we are gonna change our living styles.  Natural light and fresh air are important to maintain a healthy RV.  Too many people in a small space increases interior heat, dirt, and claustrophobia.  Being able to open windows and doors is a must.  And besides, a stiff breeze helps control these nasty buggers.

Mosquitoes! Everyone has some type of experience with them.  The buzzing, the biting, the slapping, and the itching.  ARGH!!! Just saying the word mosquito makes strong men weak. While I don't promote idioms, there is one about Texas that is true.  "Welcome to Texas, where everything is bigger".  Bigger here being referenced to mosquitoes sizes.  The example above is what the kid refers to as the "eagle".  Kinda have to agree, don't you think? The "eagle" is placed next to an Altoids mint for reference. How much bigger do they come?  However, these eagle sized mosquitoes are bearable compared to their tiny cousins.  The small ones, the ones you don't hear, are the buggers the bite you because they are so small you don't feel them when they land.

So this is what the husband did during his family free days with his borrowed tractor, he cleared a new home location where the summer breeze will help keeps the mosquitoes at bay.  This space was filled with brushy growth making removal easy peasy.  The only drawback to the new location is the lack of protection from the intensive summer sun.  Direct sun will bake the Airstream but the plan is to be in a home with a nice porch before next summer.  Well, that's the plan anyways....

Just a Little Trim

A family divided.  The kid has camp again this week, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  Since he is occupied and I am at work, the husband borrowed the tractor again. He figured he'd use his family free time to piddle at the property.  Not me, I'd spend my family free time at home in the AC drawing on the house plans.  It may not be the dog days of summer but temperatures will still be in the upper 90's with a heat index in the low 100's.  To each their own.

Before he could even get started trees had to be trimmed to clear the trailer and tractor.  These trees were cleaned up two weeks ago during our staycation and now have adjusted to their new positions.  It was debated in removing the entire tree but decided one limb at a time was better.  Once the tree is gone, it's gone and replacements take years.  Oh, and pay no attention to the fact the husband is standing on the gooseneck trailer to trim the tree.  Details like that could drive a safe person crazy.

Limbs were not the only evidence that two weeks have gone by since the staycation.  Several plants are rearing their heads in the newly cleared areas.  Some are good like this palmetto the size of an adult's palm. Palmettos are a native plant and come in various varieties. It is too early to determine types.  At this point, every effort is being made to preserve any palmettos.

Some plants are bad like these briars.  Briar comes in several forms: the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Briar grows very rapidly and takes time to eradicate.  In two weeks this plant grew almost two feet.

The briar has curly tendrils, thorns and is bright green in color.  As the briar gets larger and older, the thorns become thicker and harder. The briar of them has root balls that spread under the sand like a frayed ribbon. Each of the frays is covered in little, tiny, sharp, sticky thorns.  Evil, Evil, Evil. Briar of this nature means the ground has been robbed of native grasses and vegetation due to lack of adequate sun light.  Once we start brush clearing, allowing more natural light, the native coastal will come back and it will naturally choke out nasty briar bushes. Constant diligence and time. Lots and lots of time.

Yucca, Yucca, Yucca

 

Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.  The neighbor is letting us use her driveway until ours is built. There is legal access but it is two blocks down a paper street, a never improved road owned by the county.  A road that was laid out when the subdivision was established in the 50's. This paper road runs where our grass patch grows into the neighbor's beautiful coastal field. As a way to say thank you for such neighborly pleasantries, we cut the neighbors field, the first time in two years.  I mean we had the borrowed tractor again anyways to cut ours. How long could it take?

Yowzers, what an ordeal. Do you know what can grow into a field in that time frame? Concrete blocks, plastic bottles, rebar, Johnson Grass 8' tall, coastal grass so thick that it had to be cut on the slowest setting and at the highest heights, and these plants. Hot dog!

When asked what they were the reply was "they weren't there before, cut them down".  Hmm, four plants three feet wide, two feet tall grew in the less than two years.  Seems shifty, but what do I know.  Wait, what? Cut them down! I don't think so. These are beautiful specimens of some undetermined plant.  I want them.  "Fine", I was told, "move them to your property".  Yeah, my first plant!  Well, it will be when we figure out what it is, when it can be transferred, and how to move to it without killing it.  Sooo, my first official plant come winter.  Isn't it wonderful?

Staycation

Bye kid of mine, have fun at grandma's and at camp.  I will see you in 12 days!!! Woo-hoo, what to do with my free time? Oh that's right, work.  The first week he was gone was the normal 9-5.  The second week was when the fun started.  I took a week of vacation from work to work. Yup, sort of like a staycation. Only not as relaxing.

Up at daylight, work until it was too hot to think. When the temperature is already in the upper 80's at 6:30am, it doesn't take too long to get so damn hot I saw a little man in an orange suit burst into flames.  After lunch and a nap, it is off again at 6pm-ish until dark.

We had borrowed the tractor again, but most of this work was done by hand.  Well by hand tools.  Oh, how I love my chainsaw.  The power, the two-cycle smell, the endless potential.  Unfortunately, this time, there was a lot more limb clipping and vine pulling. No power, no oil, no noise, just a plain old limb lopper.  Don't worry, I found reasons to run the saw. Branches small enough to be cut with limb loppers but big enough to use a chainsaw.  You know, branches the size of an infant's arm.  Don't blame me, the chainsaw told me to do it.  

This section is being cleared first because this is where the house will ultimately go.  Shade all day until late afternoon, close to the work space, and plenty of space to expand later for any future endeavors like space for the kid to move into.

Five days of manual labor and this is all we accomplished.  Huff.  Oh well, any further manual labor will have to wait until it is not so hot.  You know, around October or so.  Fair warning, compressing a week's worth of video is time-consuming.  The video could use more editing but at this point, I lack the time.  So if you're in the need for a nap, enjoy!

One Mans Trash...

Is another man's trash.

So many decisions on where to start.  Start here, start there, start anywhere.  After countless hours trying to decide where to build, it was decided that clearing the trash and the underbrush should be the first step.  Of course, clearing is easier said that done.  Previous owners and years of neglect have turned this land into a rubbish bin. But don't worry, good money was paid for that rubbish. Hopefully, some of this material can be reused in the future.

The problem with this trash is that it just can't be thrown into the trashcan.  There was lumber 20'+ long, a pallet of shingles, broken saltillo tiles, shrimping nets, multiple bundles of composite decking, rusted pipes, a refrigerator, 30' cattle panels, multiple bicycle parts, and the ever popular worn-out tires. Once sorted, it needed to be properly discarded.

How is that gonna be accomplished? If it was easy to throw away trash of this nature, this collection of rubbish wouldn't have accumulated in the first place. Since paying to discard of bulky materials is so expensive, people are dumping it along roadsides, empty lots, and vacant fields nationwide. Once the debris gets to be hazardous, local officials are forced to remove it at the cost of the tax paying citizens.  If the taxpayers could just discard their trash at the waste management facility for free, this burden could be reduced.  Yes, reduced not eliminated, cause let's face it, nothing works perfectly.

Seriously, are the tile pieces supposed to be thrown away one at a time so that the local waste management crew will not notice they are mixed in with the household approved garbage? Does the same go for the shingles, rusted piping, and bicycle parts? Are there going to be late night raids to local dumpsters? Or do we resort to the rental of a contractors dumpster and dispose of the materials correctly?

So you ask, what was done with the rubbish? Some were stored for later re-purposing, and the rest was piled into a neatly compiled trash corner for a decision at a later date and time.  Right now there are things more important than the trash that has been collecting for over 50 years. Who knows, maybe the garbage fairy will come.

Not Your Average American Family

I guess you are wondering how we got here to Plan473.  That is a story 20 years in the making.  For as long as I can remember I have wanted chickens and a garden.  Growing up in a city of a million people, chickens were not gonna happen.  At least in my neighborhood.  There was a garden but all it every produced was cucumbers, okra, and tomatoes.  The dream never went away, it simply was pushed aside for the "what's expected".

After graduating college in 2003, we lived in a small 600sf home.  Rent was exchanged for maintenance work.  The house was two story, long and skinny, with a great porch downstairs and a deck upstairs.  Sure there nothing keeping the outside elements from coming inside except the clapboard siding. There was no heat/no AC but it did come fully furnished with plenty of yard space for a garden. It was so dammed cold the first winter water would freeze in a glass on the counter.  By summer, ice cold showers were our best friend. Living there was like camping every day.  The downstairs window was missing a screen so it was left open for the cats to come and go as they wished.  One morning we woke to the cats hissing at a critter on the kitchen counter.  At 4:30 in the morning, hard to tell if was raccoon or possum.  Just glad it wasn't a skunk.  The next day, the cats got the permanent boot outside.

 

After 6months of looking for a house to call our own between working full-time and me going to graduate school at night, we moved into suburbia Texas in February 2005.  The two bedroom, one bath was 1100sf of gold shag carpet covering up hardwood floors, dingy white walls and dark brown paneling on a 1/3 acre of yard with pecan trees.  There was still no heat/no ac and no ceiling fans but it was ours.  We were well on our way to the "expected". And hey, we weren't camping anymore.

By summer 2007, life was as it should be for the "expected".  There was a forty by sixty garden in the back yard, two full-time jobs, two student loans, a mortgage, a truck payment, and a baby on the way.  All that was missing was the chickens.  So why were we so unsettled?

One thing led to another and by summer 2009 we had sold our house and moved into a borrowed travel trailer on rented tarmac at the in-laws business where we worked on a refurbishing our own 1968 Airstream. This classic piece of America had been sitting in a field for too many years to remember.  The frame and floor board were rotted, insulation and bedding were infested with a multitude of carcasses and feces, windows leaked, electrical wiring destroyed, and it was ours for a few hundred bucks.

Living in a travel trailer was once again like camping full-time. Been there, done that.  No adjustment needed.  And that was life for the next year.  A full-time job, a full-time renovation, and a small bucket garden.

Buckets and fencing were free.  All that was needed was some dirt, seeds, and a couple of plants.  Besides I had a toddler who was willing to help, so why not?

In August of 2010 with a fully restored Airstream, we set off for our next adventure.  Living full time in a 7x18 space took a few weeks adjusting.  This was full time camping, but in style.  Other travel trailers envied our shiny trailer. Little did they know that the windows still leaked even after new seals, interior lights had not been completely installed, and there was bare electrical cords hanging from wall waiting for 12volt applications such as fans.  Sure the space is over 100sf but that includes all the furnishings, a toddler almost three feet tall, two full size adults, and one dog.  Life's space was cramped.  We traveled for a few months visiting family and friends all across the great state of Texas. We lived in the trailer for almost two years at the coast before coming back to the tarmac parking lot.

It was a this stage of our adventure where what was "expected" was once again challenged.  This was the first time since college that I did not have a paying job.  I became a stay-at-home mom. With so much free time, I started Edible Buckets.  Living in an industrial park requires a different state of mind. The surroundings are loud and busy, the tarmac is dusty and dirty, and the scenery is desolate.  So Edible Buckets was my way of making it home.  The buckets and fencing were in storage from last time, so once again, all that was needed were some seeds, a few plants, and a guard dog who kept drinking my collected rain water.

It was during this time that one of my closet friends was having back surgery and needed a full-time, live in nanny.  So kid and I, the dog (not the one pictured above, the one pictured below), and our edible buckets left the husband and trailer and moved into their uber nice, white collar neighborhood for the duration of the summer. Notice the lovely green grass between the back yard deck? Living with them was a whole new experience.  They had green grass, a sand box, a tree fort, and a play structure.

By the time school started for her children, we had ditched the trailer at a family's house and took off once again on our next adventure. With a no formalized travel plans, we left the great state of Texas. Yes, you read right.  We left the great state of Texas.

For three weeks we camped out of the back of our truck.  We saw alligators in Louisiana.  White sands of the Gulf of Mexico in Mississippi. White sand, not the brown, dark sand of Texas shores.  White sand!  What a difference it was.

Meet Candanian George, who full-timed in his van camper in Tennessee and ended up in Asheville, North Carolina.  The weather was beautiful and the mountains breathtaking.  We high tailed it home, packed up our gear, picked up our trailer, and said goodbye to Texas in the fall of 2012.

We lived for several months during the winter in our trailer.  And let me tell you, for a girl from south Texas, it was cold, cold, cold. While the Airstream had an AC that would hang meat it got so cold, there was no heat.  Yes, I know what you are thinking, we never have any heat.

Asheville is full of misfits like ourselves and we easily settled into a grove.  In the spring of 2013 we moved out of the trailer and into a rental.  This was the first time the kid had his own real bed and room to play Legos without having to put them away before bed.  It was great. Better yet, the landlord let us have chickens!!!!  12 chickens to be exact.  There was no garden but she has wild strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries in her yard.

At that was life for two years.  Work, hiking on the Appalachian Trail, taking long mountain drives, and enjoying the non-hot weather.  Living life according to the "expected".  It must be a summer thing because by the summer of 2014, I was getting homesick for Texas and the heat. I had not worn flip-flops or shorts in two years.  While I have always been fair complected, I was turning ghostly white and in some desperate need of dark, brown sand.  So we said goodbye to all the things we loved about Asheville, NC and came home to Texas.

Did you know that the closest Whataburger to Asheville, NC is eight hours away in Alabama?  Yes, we ate there on the way home.  And then again at the first Whataburger after crossing back into Texas.  I had never eaten there and I might never get the chance to again.  So, why not?  And then again every week since being back.  Good grief how I missed Whataburger.  Bojangles has nothing on Whataburger.  We moved back to same coastal town we left two years ago and starting our life over again in our now much too small Airstream.

The dream of owning chickens and a garden were still strong so we stated looking for land immediately.  Now we have the land and are working towards fulfilling the dream.  But as in all things done in the past seven years, we will not have the standard two-bedroom, two bath 2000sf home.  We will not have the "expected".  Nope we will have one of these:

Yes, that's right.  We are going to live a modified shipping container.  Like I said, we are not your average American family. We are Plan473.

The Tide is High

Yay, rain! Where we live, one never complains about the rain.  Ever.  It does not rain enough and we need all we can get when we can get it.  Just know it will rain on the one day when you don't want it to.  You know, the day when there is an outside event planned.  The wedding with the big fluffy dress, the birthday with the bounce house, the anniversary with the fancy dishes and crystal.  Sure, one can make peace offerings to the rain gods, but you know it will rain on that one day. It's Murphy's law, plain and simple.

Today, the rain started out nice and slow.  The kind that soaks into the ground.  By mid-morning, it had grown heavier and heavier.  There was never any thunder, lightening, or strong gusts of wind to indicate bad weather.  There was just rain. Lots and lots of rain. By lunch, water was beginning to stand in places that it doesn't normally stand and the people were starting to talk. By late afternoon, the rain had slowed and the damage had been done.

There was water everywhere!  The rounded top roadways had only the yellow stripe to drive on if your vehicle was high enough.  Bar ditches like rivers. Parking lots were turned into lakes.  Cars looked like boats in their driveways. Buildings flooded. What normally takes less than five minutes to get home, turned into more than 20.  There was no way I could drive my little beep-beep another two miles to check on the property. Damage assessment would have to wait until the next morning.

In the morning at first light, three things became clear. One, while I would never have made it to the property last night, all of the roads were dry in the morning.  The only water remaining were in the low spots and backed up drainage ditches. It is amazing what 12 hours will do for water damage. Secondly, the property fared very well for its location. The tree line where the house is going to be was soggy and the only standing water was in the lowest portion of the lots.

Third, lastly, and thank goodness, I'm sure glad we didn't buy the corner lot. Guess there is something to be said for trees.