Moving In

Since we were no longer going to be hiking for the summer, we wanted to do something useful and productive. We moved all of the things that were still at home as well as the stuff from Japan that was in a storage unit to Lafayette, Indiana, where we bought a house. We moved a LOT of boxes, mostly books, and mostly Lee doing the moving since I was still fairly lethargic and useless.

We put most of the things where they ought to go, though we don't have much storage space here in the main house, and bought some of the more important things. A car, a bed, a KitchenAid stand mixer, and of course, a grill:

We plan to make quite a few improvements to the house. We know we'll be refinishing the floors and painting all the walls, maybe trying to reclaim doors and floorboards that were painted over to bring back the original wood, but we haven't yet decided exactly what we'll be doing in each room and what order to do it in. The one thing that could really use some obvious work is the plant life outside:

The previous owners used a lot of plants that work well as groundcover under the mature trees, and that means a lot of plants that shoot out tendrils and spread over anything they can touch. In this case, it's everything lining the garage and pathways:

There are some daylilies, a rosebush, and other plants hiding in here!

Again, real bushes and daylilies in here!

We have two options here, either nuke it all from orbit and start anew, or pull out what we don't want and add in more of what we do want to make it nice again. Since there are a number of rosebushes, daylilies, and other plants that we like (even if they are in need of pruning and/or relocation), we're going to attempt to reclaim most of the yard. We're fans of the backyard covered in groundcover like ivy rather than grass, so keeping that and filling in the patchy areas with more ivy or other easy-care, shade-loving plants is our plan. We'll be using local Purdue resources, xeriscaping, and the Uncanoonuc Mountain Perennials downloads to help us. It'll take some time, but hopefully it'll be worth it!