Our list of home-improvement projects never gets shorter; new projects rise to replace the old ones we retire. As time passes, though, the projects seem to be less money-intensive and more muscle-intensive.

Gone are the days of, "We need to pay a contractor several thousand dollars to re-sheetrock the entire downstairs."

Here are the days of, "We need to spend several hours with a spade, ripping out sod to prepare the berry patch."

Our big project for the weekend took longer than it should have. Since we moved in, the garage has been a disaster, a holding area for stuff we don't currently need or know where to put. We had decided that this was the weekend to put the garage in order.

However, we also decided that this was the weekend to start seeing our friends again. We've been in social limbo for four months. All we do is work on the house; we never have people over. So, on Friday night invited Mac and Pam over for an inaugural supper, our first proper dinner guests in our new home. On Sunday, Sam and Eila (and Liliana) swung by in the morning to tour the house. We emphasized the guest room was always there for them should they need a place to stay. Later, Paul and Amy Jo, newly returned from Virginia, joined us for brunch. It was great to see them; I haven't seen Paul in several years, and the last time I saw Amy Jo I was tired and unsociable.

We've plans to see other friends in coming weeks, too. It'll be nice to be social again.

Because of our newly-revived social calendar, I had planned to spend Saturday working on the garage. Instead, we spent seven long hours in the car, driving from nursery to nursery to nursery, looking at fruit trees and berries. Admittedly, we did locate (but not purchase) our fruit trees — a Jonagold apple, like Joel and Aimee had; an Italian prune (not plum); and a two-way pear (Bartlett and one other variety) — and we purchased a couple of berry plants — a blackcap raspberry and some thornless, non-invasive variety of blackberry (right! I'll believe that when I see it) — but the sheer length and breadth of our search made me cranky. I forced two stops, one for a Costco wienie, and one at the Lake Oswego Public Library where I stocked up on comic book compilations.

Eventually, though, we did manage to get the garage clean. By Monday afternoon, we'd shifted the couch and the boxes of books to one side, moved everything that ought to be in some other room, and even started a corner for a garage sale next spring. (If you'd like to join this garage sale, let us know.) We now have space to park one car in the garage, which is strange. I've never lived anywhere with a garage before. The two hours my car was parked in the garage yesterday were the first two hours any of my cars have ever been parked in a garage. I'm not sure I like it.

In the afternoon, and with Mac's help, I purchased a rototiller off craigslist. It's an old beast, maybe forty or fifty years old. But the man I bought it from claimed to have purchased it two years ago from the original owner, an old man who had the engine serviced frequently, and who took great care of the machine. The tiller starts on the first pull, and gamely chomps at the ground with all its three-horse-power heart. Mac noted, "You only need to get a few hours out of it for it to be worth it," meaning that it would cost $60 to rent a tiller for a few hours.

And I may get the first hour or two with the tiller in tonight. We've blocked out our berry patch: two three foot by twenty-four foot rows (separated by six feet of grass). One row will be caneberries of various sorts — raspberries and blackberries — the other will be grapes.

Our future plans include the removal of the (volunteer) dandelion garden near the road, and its replacement with a new and wondrous herb garden. Also, after the Rose Day on the 18th, we'll till the south bed and convert it to our vegetable garden. I need to learn what can be planted in mid-September as an overwinter crop.

(We'll also have a small horse-shoe pitch, much shorter than regulation length. Michael and Laura gave us a nice horseshoe set, and we plan to set the pitch in the far back, behind the rhododendrons, underneath the locust. I wanted to have a regulation-sized pitch directly behind the back porch, but Kris objected. She thinks I'm rototilling too much of the yard as it is.)

Tonight, though — tonight I begin digging sod.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2005 — The End of Comic Book Movies?   Marvel Entertainment, publishers of some of my favorite comic books from childhood, has concluded a financing deal that grants the company a $525 million line of credit to make up to ten films based on its properties. I'm skeptical of the move.

2003 — Hello, Autumn   In which I listen to the rhythm of the falling rain.

2001 — Aspiring Writer   I want to be a writer, and always have.