Month: March 2023

Someone told me once I got the house painted, the project would morph into something else, and they were right. But first, let’s revisit the painting project, which my neighbor, a wise man who seemed to know better than to visit in the middle of everything, waited until the finished product until he stopped by. 

“Your mama picked out those colors, didn’t she?” he asked with a laugh.

“Sure did, how’d you know?”

“Looks too good for a man to have picked’em out,” and we both laughed at that one, but he’s right. 

Mom and I talked about it, and I mentioned the colors were the same of the house she lived in when she was a little girl, the house I remember from my childhood, when her mother, my grandma, was still alive and kicking. Mom had forgotten the green house with the white trim, or at least the colors, but I’m betting deep down inside that was what she thought home ought to look like, and I fully agree. That house burned down in the mid 1970’s, and there’s no greater loss I can remember. 

But the paint project has now turned into what are we going to paint the deck and the porch, and we have to cut down an oak tree that is pushing against the deck. I would build around it, have a nice oak tree inside the deck, but it’s a water oak, and they are short lived creatures sometimes. This one was small when I got here and is thirty feet tall now. If it falls, the new roof is going to take a beating, and I rather not risk that. So first the tree comes down, the deck gets a new board or two, then new paint. 

Wait! There’s more! 

I’m considering building a wooden platform, maybe eight by eight feet, twelve feet high, and having the top be a place I could write. A writer’s nook, with a view of the woods.

Anyone out there, maybe, who has done this sort of thing before? 

One of the things I heard from retirees, is that there are only so many things you can do around the house before it all gets done. I can’t even see the light at the end of the tunnel of such a thought! How can a person possibly run out of things to do? There’s a water tower for the compost complex to build, and there’s an elevated garden for the deck, and there’s a rock waterwall, and there’s the pump house to work on. 

People, when they retire, do not run out of things to do. They run out of ideas on how to live. 

Take Care,

Mike

Mike writes regularly at his site:  The Hickory Head Hermit.

Opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the management of this site.