Saturday, March 26, 2016

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Tonight's picture was taken on March 22, 2009. Mattie was home between chemotherapy treatments and wanted to spend some time outside. He LOVED his frog shaped sandbox. Despite it being chilly out, we bundled Mattie up and Peter ran a portable heater outside so that Mattie wouldn't catch a cold. Mattie enjoyed his time in the sand.... he loved building, creating, and running his match box cars through the sand. The sandbox is still a part of our lives. It sits outside our deck in the common space. Kids in our complex come visit this box often, and of course most of Mattie's toys are still in there.


Quote of the day: The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month. ~ Henry Van Dyke

Given that today was a spring like day in temperatures, and there is NO rain in the forecast for the weekend, we decided to use this opportunity to clean our deck, begin scraping the paint off of it and to repaint it. This is a HUGE undertaking, which will take all weekend.

This is the before photo I took this morning before we started working. It is hard to tell from this photo (taken from Mattie's bedroom), but the paint did not make it through the Fall and Winter. 

In August and September of 2015, our deck looked like this. It was OUT of our control. The government building next to us, actually owns this brick wall. So they can do whatever they want with it. They chose to start a project in the summer to repoint all the bricks and then power wash them. I can't tell you what a torture this was, and working from home, I thought I was going to LOSE it! I had this nonsense going on for SIX WEEKS! Our deck was a disastrous mess by the time they finished. The scaffolding actually was a great weight on the wood and there are several parts of our deck that are now weaker. But what truly suffered was the wooden ramp Peter built for Mattie's wheelchair in the Fall of 2008. We have had that ramp attached to our deck for eight years. It would have made it another 8 years if the scaffolding hadn't taken over. 

Today, we had to face it... the ramp had to be disassembled. This might not sound like a big deal but it is, it is another part of our lives with Mattie that has been removed. 

I snapped this photo this afternoon. The old deck is that V-shaped structure propped up against the bricks. We contemplated building a new ramp (which is why you see new wood), but in all reality we just did not have the heart to do it. So we are returning to the way things used to look like before 2008. 

Peter and I worked about six hours today on the deck. All my planting bays needed to be cleaned out and we began planting basil and tomatoes. At the end of the day, most of the planting bays were cleaned out and their perimeter walls were painted. Peter worked hard on scraping the paint off the deck. So the after photo for today, looks actually worse than how the deck started out. 

On top of the walls, we tend to plant many perennials. It is always wonderful to see which ones come back year after year. However, several of our plants died from the harsh winter we had, so this means starting back to square one with our perennial garden.