Deepest apologies for the ridiculous delay in posting something. Work has been crazy and I started going for my masters in data science online too. Anyway, here is a quick catch-up. Well, I’m guessing it won’t be quick… We’ll see what happens 🙂

Initially, I fell off posting because not too much was going on. I had spent a bit too much money getting everything for the yard and what-not so I was reeling in my spending; nothing of great interest was happening at the house anyway. So now I’ll do this catch-up post to lay out the rest of last year in a couple of nut-shells.

First fall at the house!

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Plus some holiday decorations

I recently purchased a new rain gauge. I wanted to track how much rain we got over the course of each week so that I knew how much to water the grass on the weekend. It is recommended that established lawns get one inch of rain per week. The last couple weeks it’s been a tenth of an inch here and a tenth of an inch there… until last night. I’m thinking I don’t need to water the grass this weekend!

So, it all started last weekend when I got a new bamboo floor put in the living room…
Wait for it; there IS a connection…

Here is the old floor. Carpet. I don’t like carpet…

My parents had a bamboo floor put in their steampunk room a couple years ago and they love it. It’s tough, easy to clean, and very nice looking. So I went that route. Below you can see the progression as the installers did there thing.

Generic wood floor under the carpet.

There was a bulge in the floor!

So they cut out the wood…

And filled it in to level it.

Then the floor went in.

That’s a mighty fine floor…

Beautiful!

And into the hall.

Tada!!! Thank you Marco and Marco’s brother from Home Depot!

So, you’re probably wondering about that mailbox… Well, our cabinet that we keep our router and modem in has wood legs. Fine for carpet. But to protect my new floor I had to run over to Ace to get these felt pads (note the cabinet in the background sitting on some left-over floor padding):

Perfect! But when I was wandering around Ace looking for the felt pads, I came across this sweet mailbox. “I’ve been wanting a new mailbox!” I thought to myself…

So, here it is. Unlike the floor, I put this in myself 🙂

Old mailbox. I hated it.

Put in my new cedar post.

Tool list indicates a regular screw driver.

Yeah… Good luck with that…

Got out my handy dandy DeWalt…

Perfect.

The final product! I’m so pleased…

Love it!

A package from Grandma Kendellen the very next day!

Some folks might be appalled by the appearance of mushrooms in their yard. They might think of fungus as a blight upon their perfectly maintained lawn. I’m a little different… I love mushrooms! I have have a collection of mushroom photos from my time out in the woods as an archaeologist. I have a neat little book called Mushrooms of the Upper Midwest. So, without further ado, here are the mushrooms that have popped up in the Clarkin lawn over the last few weeks.

First up, we have numerous kinds of Tiny Fragile Mushrooms. These are very common in urban lawns. I took a stab at identifying the genus of them which you can see when you scroll over each picture. One thing I did not do for more thorough identification was spore prints. I’ll get into that later.

Conocybe

Parasola

Panaeolus

Conocybe

Parasola

Parasola

Next up: Fairy Ring Fungus. Also very common, though this particular one is unusual in that it was a complete loner. Typically, as the name suggests, you see these in clusters that form rings.

Fairy Ring Fungus; cap

Fairy Ring Fungus; gills

Here are a couple, currently unidentified, mushrooms. They don’e seem to match any of the photos in my book so I’ll have to do some more digging. Again, no spore prints will make it difficult. I’ll be doing more of those in the future.

AND THE GRAND FINALE! I had a beautiful patch of Green-spored Lepiota pop up near the maple tree out back. I let my toxic friends grow to maturity:

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Here’s the best specimen in more detail:

I learned how to make a spore print in my mushroom book, and the Green-spored Lepiota is a perfect specimen for a first-time spore printer. Different varieties of mushrooms have fairly unique spore colors that can be determined by making prints.

Start out with white and black paper.

Cut the stem off…

Gently place it gills-down.

Cover it with a bowl over night.

Ta-da! It’s like art-work 🙂

As I find more mushrooms I’ll do spore prints to better identify them. Not to mention the prints are beautiful. I’d like to start making them on card-stock and collecting them. I’m excited for more mushrooms to pop up!

Apologies for the delay on updating my site; I’m officially bad at this 😦

In any case, I thought I’d just show the progress on some of my projects.

First up: The oak tree! Lovely progress the first month or so. At least, I think it’s lovely progress. I’ve never actually grown an oak tree before…

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Next we have the infamous “trampoline spot.” What an eye-sore that was… I’m feelin’ pretty good about this one as well. On May 18th (after minimal progress) I spread some EZ-seed over the whole thing. I actually used it right this time 🙂

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And finally, the lawn repair job out front. Despite my blatant misuse of EZseed, it still worked 🙂

May 14th – Holy cats! I think this’ll work…

May 14th – A more broad view…

May 18th – Oh yeah… Now we’re talkin’

June 17th – A month later it’s like nothing was ever wrong!

This weekend was also a time for trees. I had two trees when I moved in. I’ve identified them as a Red Maple and a Northern White Cedar.

Red Maple

Northern White Cedar

I contacted Trees Today, a local nursery, and asked about having them trimmed and assessed for general health. We’ll see when they can come out to take a look.

Another tree has also joined the family. Last week at work they were giving away white oak saplings for Earth Day. Yesterday I planted mine 😀

So, I mowed the lawn for the first time. With all that dead grass cleaned out, a couple storm systems last week that dumped about 1.5 inches of rain, and then a couple sunny days here, the grass started growing very well. I had purchased some electric yard care equipment a while back so I was very excited to use it for the first time. I was able to mow the whole lawn on a single charge. Whoot!

Ryobi electric lawn mower

Ryobi electric trimmer

Backyard mowed

Front yard mowed

Another minor thing, though still exciting for a weirdo like me, is my purchase of a sprinkler to better water my trampoline spot.

And then there was my project to attempt a repair job on the yellow patches in the front yard… Note the word “attempt.”

For some very odd and unfortunate reason, I did not think to dig all the ezseed out and put it back in the bags. I could have got some more top soil to fill in the holes and sprinkled this stuff on top. It was late afternoon on a Sunday, so I think I just wanted to be done with it. Anyway, I might ponder a damage-control plan for next weekend. In the meantime I’ll see if it does anything despite my uncharacteristic lack of following the directions.

I have a sizable yard now. First order of business as the weather warmed up was to rake. Except that I didn’t own a rake… So, first order of business: purchase yard work equipment! Last weekend I went to Home Depot and bought myself, two types of rakes, a shovel, some gloves, and wheel barrow.

Before I get into it, let me show you the state of my grass as it was prior to any work.

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Now; last weekend I did a bunch of raking and some repair work on the trampoline spot.

Mostly, I’m starting this blog as a kind of journal for myself, as well as for curious family members that would like to check in on the activity at my new house. In case someone else wanders by though, I’ll give an introduction.

My name is Sarah Clarkin. Former archaeologist, former professional welder, future hobbyist welder, and aspiring sci-fi author. To actually make enough money to live on, I am an Operational Excellence Change Agent at the Trane facility of La Crosse, Wisconsin where we make industrial chillers (really really big air conditioners…)

I recently purchased my first house. I have always dreamed of buying a house and saved money for years for a down payment. My husband, Joe, was not interested in home ownership (been there, done that), but was happy to come along for the ride. I proposed that I buy the house and he pay rent. We had a plan 🙂

I spent many hours perusing homes for sale online and Joe and I frequented the local open houses on Sundays. I kept saving and looking and saving and looking. As I explored the available homes I learned a lot about myself what I really wanted, although there was always something wrong with the ones I looked at. Not a little something here and there; always at least one deal-breaker. It was okay, though, because I knew I wasn’t quite there financially anyway and I kept collecting mental data that would help me pin point “the one.”

I had planned to get real serious this coming fall. The money was coming together, the vision was coming together… But then I found it. End of last fall. I almost knew when I saw it online and I definitely knew it when we walked through it for the first time. It was perfect in every way that mattered. The first house, in the hundreds I had looked at, that fit the bill completely; no deal breakers at all. On top of that, it had exactly the right amount of “work” needed. It was perfectly livable from the get-go, but had SO much potential for upgrades and projects.

I put in an offer to purchase in December and closed the 23rd of January. With my finances not being quite there I only did 7% down instead of my planned 10%. WORTH IT! By the end of the month we were moved in and I’ve never been happier. I love having my own space and I love all of the care that goes into maintaining it. As the website title indicates, of course, I’m learning as I go; that’s part of what makes it so fun 🙂