Trashed - April 10, 2025 @goldenoakfarm

Back porch – plant lights on

On Thursday morning I was up at 6:30AM, fed the dying cat that had knocked over a lamp in his frenzy to get someone, anyone, to feed him. I got my post up and got started on the project.

Before I could do anything, I had to clean off the 8 foot table.

I put away some stuff and found places for other stuff. I compacted what was left at the end.

And finally I could start the project. This project was started with my #1 intern early in 2021 after my husband died. But life intervened and it never got done. So I decided it had been sitting on the 8 foot table for long enough and I was going to finish it.

We had collected all the photos I had of my husband and planned to make collages of them. They would hang on the wall in the downstairs hallway. So I went through the photos and selected the ones I wanted.

Back in 2002 we had a lot of trouble with paper/ink when printing photos. The ones printed then, having sat in a stack for 5 years through high humidity, had all glommed together. I was able to separate them, but they were ruined.

So that resulted in a second mess in the office. I could not find the photos on my computer. Because I had just done the attic inventory, I knew the albums I had made of duplicates for my husband's parents were in the attic. So I went up and got them. The photos weren’t in them (pile on new desk). Sigh.

Being a packrat, I get rid of nothing. So I had stored in the back of the closet in the sewing room, all the backup discs I had made since forever. And the year was there, so I brought them down.

But the external hard drive Tom had set up had ceased working months ago and it wouldn’t read the discs. In looking at the back of it, I saw the hole for the blue network cord. So I stole it from the printer (praying the printer would work when it was restored) and voila! The hard drive read the discs. I found all but 2 of the ruined photos on them. I think the 2 were taken by someone else.

So I restored the printer and it was working, so I printed out new photos.

Big geranium

My helper friend arrived at noon and I set him to watering the seedlings. They needed tending too, so I did that while he watered. Next he watered all the house plants while I finished printing the new photos.

I forgot to get a before photo but this area was REALLY bad. We slowly worked our way in and got it emptied out. We straightened out the things on the existing shelving and started building a new set of shelving we’d found back there. It was nearly 4PM and both of our feet were hurting from standing so much so we stopped.

I wanted a sitting job and most of what we took out of this area was candles for luminaria. I had been collecting them for decades in hopes of one day making that project happen. I have all the materials; it’s just a huge job with my super long driveway. Maybe next year…

So we hauled the candles up to the dining room so I can sort through them and count and pack them properly. That’s Saturday’s project.

So we left the cellar just as it was, a disaster area, to try to finish it on Friday while it snows/rains.

Except for the brown dehumidifier, this is the trash we pulled out.

So Friday is finishing this mess if we can, and working on the photo project.