Spring Cleaning On Christmas Eve

You couldn’t expect us to just sit around and not do anything, could you? How many times can you go over and just look, inspect, take measurements and plan without so much as taking one nail out of a wall? Well, today, we reached our breaking point. We reasoned: Who’s going to care if we clear away all that dead brush from the house? I mean, really. Anyone should appreciate us doing that, from an international bank to the neighbor next door.

That was all the motivation we needed to gather up shovels, rakes, tools and the trash cart and cross over to the "other side" (of the street, that is).

A small fenced-in area between the garage and the house had, at one time, been a dog pen. Large soup bones (at least, we hope they were soup bones) lay buried just under the top of the soil. A chewed Frisbee was unearth in the corner. They had made a brace to hold the garage door open so the dogs could come and go as they pleased. The door itself was inoperable, and had been for some time. The stump of a tree at least 20 years old that still maintained it’s steadfast hold on the earth, sat directly in the path of the door, as it would have slid open on its track.

At least a foot of soil lay higher than the garage floor itself. She must have later had it hauled in for her garden area, although why anyone would want it so close to the house is beyond us. It was this spot where she must have grown record-breaking tall sunflowers. The stalks were ten feet long, at least, with trunks as big as your fist. Most of the brown javelins had fallen down, probably with the weight of a recent heavy snowstorm. The dead sunflower stalks, along with the brown vines of bindweed created a cushion effect, as you walked through the faded, untamed garden. Each step sent up a cloud of fine, white dust billowing into the air. Rob threw rake full after rake full over the dividing chain-link fence, and I drug the scratchy mess back behind the garage. For an hour, we pulled out the carcasses of summer’s progeny. At one time, this area must have been choked solid full of all sorts of blooms. Now, we just wanted to clear the dead debris away from the house before mice or termites started to read in the classifieds that there’s a nice place that’s "conveniently" located.

After about an hour, we decided that the only way we could possibly restore the garage door to its original position was to cut off the bottom three or four inches with a reciprocal saw. Since A), we didn’t have that kind of saw, and B), we didn’t have electricity, we made do with just cleaning all of the junk out. I worked on tearing down an old compost bin, its wooden sides made from leftover fencing materials. The rich, black soil smelled sweet and sour, as each shovel full produced remnants of rotting garden plants. Grubworms the size of Kennedy halfdollars lay still, the cold keeping them deep in hibernation. A child’s doll came up with one shovel scoop. Its little plastic head was perched on a remarkably preserved cloth body. I brushed the dirt away from his face, which had an expression that made me suspicious of his sincerity – after being under all that dirt, he was still smiling! I propped him up on the fence, to keep an eye out on things.
After a couple of hours work outside, we were satisfied that we had made a significant advance in the clean-up effort. Now we were ready to tackle a few jobs inside.

We figured an innocent enough job, considering that…well…..er….the house isn’t technically ours yet, would be to take out all of the nails and screws that spotted the walls like a connect-the-dot game. Being careful to pry against a thin piece of board, so as not to crack the plaster, Rob methodically went from room to room, downstairs, filling an old ice-cream container full of nails and screws. I stood on the window seat of the bay window in the dining room and unscrewed the brackets that formerly held blinds. Working on one bracket, I could see a thin line of white just above one of the boards in the window frame – it was daylight! Make a note: Insulate windows.

The afternoon sun was beginning to leave us, and the shadows grew to envelop and conceal more and more. It was just as well, really. We had an ice-cream container full of old nails, screws and brackets. There really wasn’t much else we could do, even if we did have the light. A Christmas Eve spent like no other for either one of us. What better day for a few surprises and even more rewards?