The Things We Didn't Miss

The two years that we lived in Switzerland afforded us a very different lifestyle than what we have here in North America. One of the biggest benefits as I see it, was the ability to travel all over Western Europe and beyond.

Well, we are beginning to be reminded of the other smaller benefits too. This realization comes as things crop up around the house, as things always do!

This house was empty for about six months before we moved into it. The real estate market in this area had undergone a big correction, and it was great for us coming in as buyers. One of the side affects of the vacancy seems to be an unusually large bee population. (See my previous post about my Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day). Well, it turns out that we didn't just have random bees on our property...they had set up house in the absence of human inhabitants.

Not long after my Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, I discovered an entire nest of bees living underground in my flower bed. That led to further discoveries. It turned out that we had three bees' hives on our deck too. Kevin managed to get rid of them. It was a combination of a whole lot of bug spray and a whole lot of persistence. One of the hives was actually inside of one of the posts of the deck. We kept hearing buzzing from inside the post, then Kevin discovered a hole where the bees had managed to get inside. He had to spray the bug spray through a straw in order to direct it into the hole in the post. Not a pleasant experience!

As of now, it appears that the bees are no longer. That led to the refinishing of the deck. This is another thing we didn't have to think about in Switzerland.

Once the bees were evicted, Kevin had to sand, clean and refinish the deck. We inherited a spacious deck...about 12 x 15 feet. The wood was in terrible condition though. It looked like it hadn't been stained or protected since it was built with the house three years ago. It was in desperate need of attention. This led to two days of sanding, spraying, staining.....backbreaking work in the stinky heat. It is now complete, and it looks awesome. We look forward to getting the patio furniture set up and the grill cleaned and fired up. I miss the BBQ and can't wait to use it again!

Next on the agenda of dealings was the lawn. We have a very large lawn at our new house....about 3/4 of an acre....some of it is wooded, but it is still pretty big.

When we took possession of the house, the lawn was already really long. So, it was of the utmost importance to get it cut, on this street of immaculately kept, professionally landscaped and "sprinkler system-ed" lawns. We hadn't received our shipment of items that had been in storage, and of course, not having needed it in Geneva (another one of those little perks) that shipment included our lawn mower....our non-self-propelled lawnmower, that is.

So, off Kevin went to talk to one of the neighbours to see if he could borrow a lawnmower. He found a neighbour who was graciously willing to loan his self-propelled lawnmower and it was still a two hour job. That didn't include any trimming of the edges, and honestly, it wasn't even a very good cutting job....it was a "get it done" cutting job. If the truth be told, there were a few stray patches missed that never even saw the lawn mower.

Next, I went to Home Depot to price ride-on lawn mowers. Well, the base models are still a thousand dollars! There ended that discussion.

We talked to a couple of neighbours and quickly became convinced that a lawn service should at least be investigated. After a lot of calling around, getting quotes, and discussions, we decided to get a bi-weekly lawn service. Kevin did it begrudgingly, but I reasoned it out this way: right now the kids really want time with him (and they don't get it during the week). I would rather pay someone to cut the lawn now when they are little, and save Kevin the half day every weekend. When they are fourteen and seventeen and don't want anything to do with us, then Kevin can cut his own lawn....or better yet, make them do it!!