Nope, that title is not a typo. I’m going to document last month before I get into this month.
It snowed on April 15 this year, which is not as unusual in northern Ohio as people seem to think. My birthday is April 22, so I tend to remember these things. I never count out the possibility of snow until after my birthday.
Luckily, no harm came to any blooms or foliage from the snow — nothing would have come up already that couldn’t handle a little cold.
It was a Friday afternoon, April 10th, when our dishwasher started making a weird whining noise.
I had originally planned to take the day off for a salon appointment, but the pandemic changed my plans to just staying at home instead of working from home. Aaron was about to go play video games with our son, and I’d been about to either clean my desk or weed the garden, when we started up the dishwasher and it made that funky noise.
We thought it was clogged. So we spent some two hours cleaning it, dismantling it (with help from YouTube), running it, dismantling it AGAIN… Once we realized that it was draining just fine, and that it wasn’t clogged at all, we resigned ourselves to calling in a professional.
No worries, right? Just call a plumber. No, wait, an appliance repair place.
Except that our go-to repair place was closed for COVID-19.
So was almost every other appliance repair place in town, except for one that would come out for “essential” appliance repairs only: refrigerator, freezer, washing machine, furnace, etc.
After four weeks of washing our dishes by hand, we called up our favorite appliance repair service on the day they reopened. They got us an appointment for the next day, at which we got the news that our dishwasher not only needed a new motor, but it was leaking into our subfloor and down into the basement. (Luckily, nothing got ruined.)
Today, after yet another week of waiting (and washing by hand), the repairman installed the replacement parts, and at least one aspect of our lives is now back to normal.
How did we live in our last house for nine years without a dishwasher? #firstworldproblems
The earliest of the daffodils have been in bloom for about a week. This is one of the later early blooms; I’ll have another wave of bright yellow elsewhere in my garden in a few days.
I laid down this landscape fabric last year, and transplanted the daffodils in the green, prior to blooming. I’m pleased that several of them bloomed this year! I’m sure I’ll see even more color next spring, after more of them are settled in.
It can be a little strange to realize that I’m starting to see the long view when it comes to gardening. Next fall, next spring, expanding and transplanting and letting some borders grass over on purpose.
First bloom of the season: dwarf reticulated iris. Such a welcome sight this afternoon.
The kalanchoes seem to like the west-facing kitchen window: for the first time in the years I’ve had these, all three colors are in bloom at once.
Outside, I can see some daffodil greens peeking up in the early spring border. Spring is on the way… eventually.