I Miss Camping - But so much more to do

  

A couple years ago, we sold our camper and bought a house. It was the right decision. Camping was only a couple months a year and maybe six camping trips at best, where as the house is permanent. 

Of course along with the house comes other responsibilities. Cleaning and painting, just to get the house ready to live in for one. The place was filthy. I think they previous residents had food fights in every room. Seriously, there was food streaked down every wall in every room. Okay, every room but the bathroom. 

Apparently the people who lived here previously (renters) had tempers. I heard she kicked the man out several times and he broke in. Obviously, the missing screens, windows replaced with Plexiglas, and damaged entry doors was proof that someone broke in or attempted to break in often. 

At any rate, we had our hands full just cleaning. Add to that discovering a hole in the bathtub, that even the inspector missed, we ended up gutting the bathroom. 
But all of that is done and out of the way.  On to the outside. Of course there's normal lawn maintenance, cutting the grass, which is fairly easy in the front. I have a self-propelled lawn mower. The shrubs needed trimming, which I attempted and came to the conclusion, they're too old and will have to be replaced. Next year's project or at least not until fall. I planted a few flowers in the front and my son painted our house - it was in desperate need and we'd really have loved to reside it, but that wasn't in the budget. Besides, we needed a new entry door and  storm door. Once the garage door is painted, the house itself will be done. On to the back yard.  Lord, help us. We aren't sure what to do there.  We had the maple tree cut down last year - it was leaning toward the neighbors and the roots made it impossible to cut the grass. It scared the heck out of me every time we had a storm. So down it went. This year we had the oak removed after we noticed several squirrels going into a hole where a branch had previously been cut. And there were several other

holes just not as deep.  I asked for a price in trimming the tree and cutting it down. I pointed out the hole, and he didn't even give me a price for trimming it. The maple tree, he had said there wasn't anything wrong with, that it was healthy. Not so the oak. (Not to mention I didn't care for all the leaves to rake and the acorns, oh the acorns, millions and millions of acorns. I won't miss that tree.)

My kids wanted the wood from both trees so, the tree removal crew stacked everything in a pile, cut to firewood size.  The kids rented a log-splitter and came over and split the wood. It was an all day project. We started the day with coffee and donuts, I made sloppy joes for lunch and hubby grilled a turkey for dinner. Of course, it was one of the hottest days this year, but they did a great job and they'll have plenty of firewood for next year.   They took the wood from the maple (cut last year) for their camping trips. I don't mind telling you, I was happy to see it disappear, although I now have another huge pile and this time in the middle of our yard. since the back part of our yard floods something terrible. One of my neighbors said there used to be a creek back there before they built the houses. Truthfully, I wish they would have left the creek. I don't need a pond every spring. We even had ducks. After the rainy May and June, I didn't think the yard would ever dry.  

Which leads me to my next problem. What to do? It would take truck loads of dirt to fill it in.  And I'm not sure that would even solve the problem. For now I guess I'll just keep cutting the part of grass that isn't under water and leave the rest for another year. We have an idea what we'd like to do back there, but that will be a project for another year. 

Anyway, back to my original statement. I still miss camping. The kids all went for the 4th of July and it's the first year we've been alone. Usually we celebrate with them, but this year, it was just the two of us. I really really miss camping - or maybe I just miss the kids.