TREES! and Shrubs

This year I ordered a bunch of plants from the Alcona Conservation District. Usually I buy windbreak seedlings and the occasional small plant like hardy geraniums from them, but with plans of moving to the new house this fall I went a little wild and got a few things other than just evergreens.

Shrubs:

5 Ninebark - a hardy native shrub with tiny white flowers

5 Common Lilac - though I already have a couple elsewhere on the property, a few more wouldn't hurt

5 Saskatoon Serviceberry - a medium height (8-10') shrub with white flowers and edible purple berries

5 American Mountain Ash - a native MI tree with tiny white flowers and orange berries

10 Winterberry Holly - likes set soil and we have a lot of that

10 Gray Dogwood - I like dogwood, I hope they can withstand the winters, most dogwoods are Zone 5 and up, we're in Zone 4 despite what the re-drawn zone map says. This one is a shrubbier type with tiny white flowers and the Morton Arboretum says Zone 3 so I should be good.

The evergreens I'm getting are 5 black spruce and 25 Norway spruce to replace dead trees in the windbreak. we really need to trench and drain the north side to keep these trees from drowning like the previous ones. I even lost balsams there and they like it wet.

The other day Hal and I discussed a second windbreak closer to the house. Now starting with seedlings won't it will be a couple decades before these trees have much height but what the heck, got to start sometime even if we aren't around anymore to see it. 

I ordered 50 Black Hills Spruce from the Arbor Day Foundation yesterday, they are one of the faster growing evergreens and don't mind the wetter soil we have. I don't know if it's the same as the 5 I ordered from the conservation district, but I guess I'll find out when they come in. These 50 new seedlings will  be in 2 staggered rows on the opposite side of the driveway from the house. 

I also bought 50 tulip tree seedlings from them, I always liked those and why not have 50? At least a few ought to survive, now I just have to figure out where to put them and the 3 American hazelnut that I also bought. Hal says those never survive up here, I guess we'll see. Those are taller than seedlings, 2 or 3 years old so 2-3 feet tall.

I have my work cut out for me!

YES, this MUST Be the Final Floor Plan!

So as anyone knows who follows this blog, my floor plan for our new  home has changed many times. I did it again in February. Right below is the new one. I pushed the wall to the left of the dining table out a foot, then I was able to I flip the walk-in closet with the laundry room. The laundry room became bigger and you no longer have to walk through the closet to access it from the master bedroom.

Another advantage it allowed me to move the guest room closet up, increasing it's size to be equivalent with the other small bedroom. There was extra length in the guest bath that wasn't needed and as the walk-in closet is smaller now, the door into the guest bath also shifted, a small hallway had to be created to accommodate the door.

Below is the January plan. The smaller guest room, walk-thru from the laundry into the closet and excess space in the guest bath always bugged me. Now it doesn't'

The photo below shows the old walls in white and the changed walls in black.

Since I did this the only changes has been fairly innocuous, an inch here or there to smooth things out. I am rather pleased (yet again.)

Another Wall

Hal put this up yesterday, he decided it was too cold to glue ABS together for drain lines so he made a wall instead. This one goes between the kitchen and TV room. Incidentally these walls area about 9' 6" tall. So we may not have the cathedral ceiling of our last home but at least we won't feel like we're in a cave.

5 More OSB Sheets and a Surprise!

Today we installed the 5 sheets of OSB that Hal had trimmed yesterday. Three were added to the row we had started last week, and the other 2 to the next row. We didn't want to complete the previous row until Hal did some more rough plumbing, this time for the master bathroom sinks. Being as he is so tall and the crawlspace is so small it would be much easier to access while the floor in that area was still open. This also meant he needed to know the exact location of the sinks and therefore we needed to mark out the wall location which separates the bathroom from the master bedroom. Then Hal decided why not build that wall today?!! So off to the lumber yard we went and bought several 2x4x10s as well as 2 2x4x16s for the wall between the kitchen and the TV room where more plumbing is needed.

So here are the photos of the new wall! I found it very exciting to actually have a wall inside the main building, not just inside the garage. I cut all but one piece of lumber and Hal did most of the nailing.

Tomorrow he plans to work on the plumbing while I go buy some more screws.

Tuesday I also purchased three 52" ceiling fans which happened to be on sale at Home Depot. One for the living room (bronze), the TV room and the master bedroom both black). They also had a light for the dining room table half off so I got that, too. Just need to find a place to store all these things till we need them!

New Flower Bed

While looking over my posts, I may have neglected to mention that I put in a perennial flower bed last summer. Hal used the tractor to dump a few bucket loads of topsoil onto a patch of ground behind the new house and I went to Home Depot and spent about $132 buying plants so that when we move in we will have something colorful to look at when we move in someday. I forgot to publish this last year so here it is. Other than the ninebark and artemisia silver mound, and a hydrangea I can't really remember the names of what's in there. Never took a photo of it all in full bloom and covered in weeds. Just hope it survives the winter.

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