Oh my gosh. Two months in….. wallpaper and glue cleaned off and ready to fill holes and paint.

I thought I had a week or two to remove wallpaper and be ready to paint. It actually took two months. I am unsure how many types of glue were used and some didn’t really seem to be wallpaper glue at all. And more staples holding up the wallpaper than I could count. But, here we are now. All finished. I cannot wait to see just one room painted in Benjamin Moore Gray Owl. But first, we have dozens and dozens of nail holes to fill and damaged walls to fix. Theeeen we can paint. We’re getting there. 

Our little sitting area when we are taking a break from working. The walls still need patching and repair, but the wallpaper is gone and walls cleaned. It is wonderful to sit in there and imagine what it will all look like soon. 

This is the room before. With wallpaper. 

I am very anxious to move to the next task. I think I need to plant something!!

First planting in the new garden… at the new house

I am so excited!! We spent a couple days putting together a new raised bed, of the many yet to come, so that I could get the garlic in for next July harvest. I prefer planting about September 15th, but will go as late as October 15th. So it needed to happen right now. The deer fence isn’t up yet, but the buried garlic bulbs should be safe until it is. 

This year I lost all of my old garlic to what seemed to be simply a failure to thrive. They were small and stunted and a lot had bright yellow cloves. So I disposed of the lot of them and just used the other garlics from plantings from the nursery and farms. Here is the bowl before they were separated. They are HUGE. Some are Music and I think some are Red Russian. 

This new raised bed is made with our usual formula. Small fallen alder trees in the bottom. A thin layer of soil. A sprinkle of Urea. A thick layer of soil. A heavy sprinkle of Fish Bone Meal and a tiny bit of Urea. Then about five more inches of soil. With a bit more Fish Bone Meal in the top layer. 

This year I have planted 45 nice big fat cloves. They are exactly 6” apart. I poked 3” holes with my dibber and positioned the cloves so that each had about 1/2” of soil over it. Some cloves needed a bit of soil pushed in the hole so they didn’t sit too low and other had to be wiggled in a bit further down as they were HUGE. All in all, what a fun day planting in the rain. I love everything about growing garlic. 

Precision holes poked

Laying out the garlic


Garlic planted and wire down to keep the wild turkeys from scratching in the bed