Changing Light Bulbs and Moving Furniture

Our rental house has a "big room" which is the garage that was made into a living room.  It's a wonderful room and where we spend a good deal of time.  It has a very high ceiling and around the room are lights at what would be a "roof" level were it still a garage.  These lights are controlled by 3 separate switches, 3 on a switch.  We rarely have them all on at once because I think we could suntan if they were all running.  Changing the light bulbs in any of  them is a chore, adventure, hard task, difficult, etc. and you get the picture.  So unless more than one is out in a set of three, we just ignore it.  Very chagrined last week that all three lights in our favorite set had burned out.  Dang.  That really meant that we were going to have to change some light bulbs.


We got our ladder and standing on the top rung, we can just about reach the light to take off the cover and then reach in and take off the glass cover over the bulb and then pull out the bulb.  This is all by feel.  As this particular light series has a switch on either side of the room, we couldn't tell if it was on or off.  We thought off.   Blast but we were wrong after I got a second small shock.  So hubby fixed that problem by just flipping the breaker.  


We fiddled and fiddled and fiddled and fiddled and there was just no way we could get the blasted new bulb into this light socket.  Totally by feel and stretched to the limit wasn't working.   It is way too complicated, albeit a lovely fixture and quite stunning a decor, but way too complicated to continue to try and fit in the light bulb by feel only plus we had to do three of them.  So the ladder is out.  If we stand on the buffet which was a bit taller than the fourth ladder rung, it might be enough to see and reach.  So we dragged the buffet over to under the first light and I climbed up on top of the buffet.  It put me a bit closer but not enough to see over the edge and into the light socket. 


Next step of course is putting a footstool on top of the buffet and climbing onto the footstool.  YEA!  Tall enough now and I can see into the light socket.  Fiddle and fiddle and a few more fiddles and I get the light bulb into the socket and we check it by flipping the breaker again and turning on the switch.  Yes, it works.  Two more to go.


Now we have to move the sofa and the two end tables so we can move the buffet to the next light.  Back up onto the sofa, step onto the buffet, step onto the foot stool and yes, I can reach this one too and it doesn't take very long to change the light bulb on this one.  For the last one, we have to move the recliner and some baskets, move the buffet over a bit further, step back up onto the sofa, onto the buffet and onto the foot stool and viola!  Light bulb changing is a snap once you can reach it and see it.  


Took us 45 minutes of messing around with the ladder and trying to reach and do it all by feel and didn't change a single bulb.  Took us 20 minutes of moving furniture to change all three of them.  Did not rearrange the furniture but then put it all back the way it was as it was in the best arrangement for our lighting situation.  We did find several missing cat toys under the various furniture pieces.  Ahh, always a good weekend when hard to do chores are finished and completed.

Death and Destruction in the Garden

Death and Destruction in the Garden

            I love my English Garden.  It has numerous plants in it I haven’t even identified yet and they delight me when they suddenly bloom at odd times during the year.  Also, I have spent a good deal of time in the garden putting in new plants and working on the old ones and doing general gardening type things, EXCEPT the weed pulling and cutting grass and raking leaves which I hate and for which we have a gardener.  Love my gardener too as he lets me know which plants are weeds and should be removed or when to put in bulbs of one kind or another.  That said, be advised that I have a very dark brown thumb, almost black, in that in other locations we have lived, my garden has never prospered or done well and I am very good at killing things, like the very plants that are now blooming voraciously.  Now that this dark secret about me is out in the open, my English garden seems to forgive my dark brown thumb and things grow in spite of it so another reason to love it.

            Last week I found some dahlias on sale at the local nursery and couldn’t resist getting a 6 pack and sticking them wherever I could find an empty spot.  They were doing quite well last week in their new homes.  However, this week, it looks as if war has been declared on them.  Every blossom was gone and every leaf eaten clean away.  I have a green stick with smaller green sticks sprouting out of in in each place where previously there was a nice dahlia blossom.  And the destruction did not appear to be limited to the one species.  Some of my lilies looked to have some munch marks on them and the potato vine.  As I walker further around my house, I could see the hop plant had a few signs of destruction too.  Some killers stalk my garden.

            I have the means and technology and money to spring for the best to get rid of   these monsters of death.  Normally, I like to live and let live but when it comes to my garden, I am going to blast away the slugs and snails that come to feast on my hard work.  It’s not easy keeping things alive with a dark brown thumb and I don’t need the help to kill something.  I’m sure that the slugs and snails have a purpose but I haven’t figured out what it is yet.  So out comes the slug killer and I sprinkled it around my plants yesterday while evilly thinking of death to the guerrillas.

            YUCK.  I am the dispenser of death to these slugs but I don’t want to see it.  I am faint of heart when it comes to the actual visual effect.  I want to kill in the darkness and have them tidily slither away to die in a dark corner and fertilize my garden.  So I was less than delighted when I came home from dropping my husband off at work and found two huge banana slugs (not sure what they are called here but they are big and evil looking and nasty looking and BIG and slimy and nasty) that had crawled out of the garden and onto the brick wall, probably hoping to evade death and destruction by escaping the pellets of poison.  It was too late for them though and they were busy releasing their slime on my brick wall as they crawled to their death.  It is their death curse to release as much slime as possible.  Ugh.  Several of their smaller cousins were there too.  Take that to me they seemed to be saying!  Kill us but we will slime to the final end!  I managed to scoop them all onto a paper and stomped them to ensure their immediate death.  I didn’t want them to suffer long agonizing death throes.  I am not a monster after all. 

            The deed is done.  I put out more slug killer in case I missed a spot.  But now my brick wall is slimed and I have no clue how to get it off of the bricks.  The slime seems almost permanently adhered to the bricks and it’s thick and gooey and just all around ugly.  I am not touching it at all.  This is England, after all.  It will rain a lot this week or next and hopefully Mother Nature will forgive me for slaying some of her noxious creatures and clean my brick wall for me.

            The war continues I know.  Some will escape and come back for the next round of munching on my precious plants.  The scents must call to them and they probably come marching up from the golf course and the woods to the lure of my plants.  I’ll get them though.  I’ll get them.

Deer and Tulips

The English people I know love their gardens, for the most part.  They take a lot of time and expense to lavish care on the gardens (we just know them as "yards").  Most gardens are quite lovely too once it gets warm enough to start the trees growing again and the flowers blooming.  That's one reason I think they like the gardens so much, because the growing season is short and when a garden finally blooms, it's glorious!

I definitely have a nice enough rental house with a very nice garden that I also want to lavish some time and effort on it.  It is a learning curve though.  Last autumn, I hit the nurseries and found the daffodils and tulip bulbs for sale along with some flowering bulbs I'd never heard of before.  SO I got a small bunch of daffodil and tulip bulbs and got them into the ground before winter.  

By spring, of course I had forgotten what I planted and where!  After all, at best, I am a half hearted part time dark green to black thumb person.  But come January, all the nurseries, garden stores, discount plant places and such start bombarding you with incredible offers for bulbs, hanging baskets, trees, fruit trees, shrubs, grass, pots and greenhouses and everything imaginable for the garden.  Generally speaking - I want it all in my garden!  I want a riot of color!  I want fruit, I want nice smells, I want butterflies and nice bees!  (OH, mushroom logs too!) so I start getting some bulbs and fruit trees (dwarf ones of course, my garden isn't THAT big)  

By February and March, many people have large swatches of daffodils growing and other early bulbs.  Not me.  I managed to put mine in a secluded spot so they don't come up until late March.  At least they came up.  And as dirt and rocks and pots and plants and bulbs and trees are delivered, I start putting it in the garden.  However, even as I am busy puttering around and planting my dwarf fruit trees in containers, here comes a freeze!  My gardener (the rental house comes with a gardener who is supposed to take care of the lawn and leaves in fall and weeds and such) tells me that we could get freezing nights well into MAY!  I must pay attention to the weather and when it is going to be especially cold at night, I must bring in my dwarf trees that are small enough to sit in the conservatory and cover the rest of the vulnerable plants outside with this gauzy stuff that is supposed to protect it from frosts and makes the other dwarf trees in bigger pots look like triangular sails (and the pots do tend to move around on the deck if the wind is strong enough).  And some of my bulbs, I can't even plant until May because they don't like the cold at all.  wow.  what a difference from living in Houston where everything had to be planted by January and was dead by March from the heat!

Now back to the title of my article.  Right after I had planted my daffodils and tulips, I was talking to my next door neighbor who informed me that she never plants tulips because the deer eat them.  Yes, she was absolutely right!  As I am busy planting some anemones and freesias and other bulbs yesterday, I noticed my tulips.  I have some nice leaves and some nice stems nicely nipped off close to the ground!  NOT A SINGLE TULIP LEFT!  I feed the squirrels and birds and hopefully the badger someday and hedgehogs but didn't really want to feed the deer all of my tulips.  Next year, more daffodils, zero tulips.