taking a break

my intention is for this to be brief. we'll see. i'm in the midst of laundry and i have wallpaper yet to hang tonight but needed a breather and why sit and stare at the walls if i can be productive for another 15 minute segment of my day. it's been a very full week. weeding and planting and projects and work and busybusybusy.
on tuesday the garden club went to a farm 13 miles from gothenburg, cozad and calloway. marilyn mcneal is a retired teacher, master gardener,
farm wife and general all-around nice lady. i see her regularly at the library. last summer we went up (out?)(over?) to look at her gardens and she invited us to come back this spring because she was planning to do some splitting and we could help her out by taking the extras. a very generous offer when you do the math...(part of the math that day included several ages revealed to a general chorus of oh! you can't be etc. marilyn is 77. and the excepting myself - the youngest garden clubber is - wait for it- 68. guess who manned the shovel and did all the lifting??
the math - 8 of us went to marilyn's. i came home with 10 different plants, about the average haul, some large enough to split again. we filled 2 trunks and had some on our laps. i got mine into the ground just before it rained that day.

and that night there was the episode with the chair. $10 bought this chair back in sioux falls and it will no doubt be the best quality chair we will ever own. it's comfortable but awkward to move - the back being rounded and no legs to hold on to -and no there are no 'before' pictures because i didn't think there would be a story to tell until we were already at this point. at what point, you ask?? the point where after getting stuck at the top of the stairs for the third time.... let me back up. the chair got wet during our recent water-in-the-basement episode. this is 'cleanup' week in gothenburg and we decided it was the perfect opportunity to get rid of the chair for free. borrowed a pickup. we're all set.
the chair is heavy. heavy and it has to be lifted higher than the railings. and make a turn at the top of the steps. and we took it there 3 times.

we decided to cut it in 2. the fabric wouldn't tear. the sawsall blade vibrated on the surface. we're laughing. breathing hard. and trying to make a dent in this chair from hell. we found a metal strip that had interfered with the sawsall. the wood! the springs! the padding! we could not demolish that chair!! it has a round swivel base probably an inch thick. at one point tim warned me, as he positioned the pry bar, that "ball bearings would scatter all over the floor" as he began to push. nothing budged! like i said, the best piece of furniture we ever owned!!
we eventually got it in 2 pieces that we could handle, up the stairs, into the truck, over to the dumpsters and out of our lives!!

i'm going to hang wallpaper. the rest of the week will follow soon.