Weekly Update: 5.10.26
Of yard work, flower beds, and sunshine
It was a solid week of visible progress here on Ozark Highland Homestead. Some weeks, it’s hard to tell at a glance what we accomplished around here. This week, there are updates in almost every direction. It’s encouraging what we can do when God blesses our efforts.
The week dawned sunny, and we all enjoyed how much cleaner everything looked after all the yard work we did last weekend. We still need to do more weed trimming down by the spring, but it is looking positively park-like already, with the blooming wild roses and trimmed grass. Bonnie-Jean has been treating our young weeping willow trees with neem since caterpillars were bothering them, and they are leafing back out and looking pretty again.
On Monday, we spent time packing away some of our winter gear. We ordered some vacuum storage bags to shrink things, making them fit better in totes. We still have a few more loads of coats to wash before we start on all the winter blankets, but it felt good to get most of it packed up.
It was cold and rainy on Tuesday, so we didn’t start any big outdoor projects. Instead, we finally hung up the curtains in our living room. It helped having our dad home, as his height and wingspan made it a lot easier for him to hang the high curtain brackets. Grace cleaned windows, and I spent hours ironing.
That evening, we whipped up some Cinco de Mayo treats — enchiladas, paella, and all the fixings. For dessert, my nieces helped me make a tres leches cake.
While we worked on curtains inside, Bonnie-Jean headed up the monumental task of repotting our seedlings. Our sister-in-law Erin and her kids helped. Our seedlings have really struggled this year, and we all blame the potting soil we chose. The day ended up being downright cold, but they persevered.
The weather was better on Wednesday, though it was still delightfully cool. My dad looked over the covered porch plans I’ve been working on. I always like getting a second opinion on plans for the bunkhouse, and he had a few thoughts that were helpful. After that, Dad and I put the metal roof on the outdoor shower. We had wanted to leave it open to the sky, but due to the location of windows on the bunkhouse, we decided to roof the shower for privacy. In the end, I’m glad — it will protect the fixtures from too much sun exposure or hail damage.
On Thursday, I set up the drip system on the one-third of the garden that’s planted. I decided to set up the system differently this year, adding more couplers to make it almost modular.
While I worked in the vegetable garden, Grace and Bonnie-Jean worked on the flower garden we are starting along the dry creek bed. I joined the flower garden effort on Friday. Eventually, we want to make flower beds around the wild phlox growing there already. There was a pile of very large rocks nearby that we decided to repurpose into a grotto-type feature. We have a statue of the Virgin Mary we plan to put there. My nieces and I worked on these rocks for a couple hours while Grace and Bonnie-Jean were busy with other tasks (weed trimming and window screen repair). After lunch, they brought their muscle and helped move some of the largest rocks into place. We finished the area on Saturday — adding the final rock border, bringing in soil, and removing dead trees and vines. We also adhered our Mary statue to a cement paver to make it heavier and less likely to blow over in the heavy winds we get around here.
While we finished up the flower bed on Friday, our brother Jeremiah started digging piers for our new deck roof. Since the deck is floating, we want to anchor the cover to actual piers. It’s going to be a tricky process, since two of the piers will have to be under the deck itself. Jeremiah has headed up this project and volunteered to do the digging.
It was a lovely week, with both weather and progress that boosted the group morale around here. I think a lot of the joy had to do with our flower beds and the luxury it is to work on something beautiful for its own sake. We’ve been in survival mode for so long, we’ve taken very little time to work on landscaping — aside from trying to keep outdoor spaces from being a jungle. Of course, the bunkhouse is still a construction zone. There are still piles of tarped lumber out front. Making our homestead aesthetically pleasing will be a long, multi-stage process. Still, we have started on our little corner, and we are all motivated to keep up the process.
