house disaster (proceed with caution)

On Saturday morning, out of the blue, we discovered an unwelcome substance in the closet: Mold.

Eric had an old belt on the floor of his closet that was just coated in it. It had turned green and white, and was so disgusting we were gagging. You guys can all thank me that we threw it out so fast I wasn't able to take a photo of it.

Commence freak out.

And begin to empty entire closet. and find more mold.

(if you don't want to see any of these pictures, you may want to skip the rest of this post)

We ripped out the carpet pieces laid in the closet (our closets are about an inch raised off the bedroom carpeted floor and extra pieces of carpeting were cut for the closet floors and just laid in them), only to find this:

From then on it was just like a bad movie. We started pulling out things from our other closets, in our bedroom and office. And wouldn't you know. Every single closet was infested.

Things we don't often pull out--like luggage, old school books, board games, and old clothes. Everything smelled gross and musty, and a lot of things had mold spores on them.

Somewhere in the midst of this, we called our landlord. He said he'd have an inspector come out early this week (hopefully today?) to see if he could figure out where moisture was getting in.

Most of this mold has to be somewhat recent because it wasn't all on old/unused stuff.

Bu it just seemed like once we started looking, we found in places we couldn't believe we hadn't noticed it before (inside a kitchen closet, on the baseboards).

E's blazer

Lots of stuff ruined, some stuff salvageable with a lot of effort

Eric started unloading the contents of every closet, inspecting items.  We started throwing things in piles: garbage, try-to-salvage, just needs a wash, and seems ok.

Anything that smelled I set out in the sun.

I started the laundry, adding baking soda and vinegar to each load, and hung things to dry:

(SO thankful for a sunny day!)

Then I made a bleach and hot water solution and we started sponging down every surface in the closets.  Looking back, we probably should have gotten gloves and a mask, but I just wanted to get it done. Every fan on in the house, every window open.

I can't believe I'm going to share these pictures, but this is what the house looked like in process.

5 hours of emptying, scrubbing, bleaching, laundrying, sunning.

I had done about 6 loads of laundry at this point and sometime after dinner (Eric's mom brought us In 'n Out--life saving!) we just quit.

Sunday was spent trying to put our lives/house back together.

Apparently you can't find dehumidifiers in SoCal (who would expect humidity?) so we stocked every closet with cedar blocks and moisture absorbing crystals something like this.

I did more laundry and we started to carefully restock (it was a good opportunity to purge!), leaving the floors clear, doors open, and still running fans. Not everything is put back together, but we're getting there.

I imagine we'll be paranoid for a while(even if it turns out to be a fixable problem). We rotate the fans every night and leave the ceiling fans on all day.

I feel like this is only a tiny taste of what home ownership will be like. yikes!

Garden: week 5

So I'm a little behind on posting pictures of our garden.  I was going to try to update weekly, but three weeks have gone by.  Check out the progress! (weeds included)

Most notably, the zucchini and cucumber plants just exploded last week. All four plants have blooms on them now! (even the shrimpy cucumber plant I thought would die!)

The pepper plants growth seems sort of stunted, but the yellow pepper plant started blooming.  I also noticed some leaves being eaten...but never seen any bugs on the plants.  I'm wondering if these teeny holes could be compliments of our local warren of peter rabbits who keep digging under the fence to get to our yard.

gerber daisies

The wildflower mix that currently looks like a huge weed invasion behind the gerbs started blooming!

The tomatoes are still growing and flowering, but I haven't noticed any little fruits forming.  Anxiously awaiting this!

Last time I promised pictures of the flowers and herbs, and instead of showing you the three week old pictures, I'll just update you with the current state of things.

Here are the back patio herbs.  The biggest pots of mint, a savory herb mix, and the large flower pot, I inherited from a graduating student's wife who is moving away.  So nice to have such mature plants among my little seedlings.

tangled mess of mint

rosemary, sage, and oregano

anyone know what this flower is? ( i think it's the same as the scraggly plant in the front--see below)

basil (also just started to get eaten)

rosemary

sage

i have no idea what this flower is, but I rescued it from a pot in the corner of our backyard and I thought it was just grasses until it bloomed last week!

clearance pansies from Walmart are surviving, but not thriving....

this plant almost died a few weeks ago, but when I repotted it out side it started growing like a weed.  I was beginning to think it was a weed until it started to resemble another gerber

THe back patio (wish we could do more with it!)

the gorgeous (expensive) hydrangeas that I"m paranoid to plant for fear they'll die in the poor drainage soil I have in the garden

All the plants along the front of the house were here when we got here.  I've just started to dead head them in hopes they flower a bit more, since they can bloom for a long season in this weather.

I'm not sure what to do with this mess

although the grasses started to produce little white flowers!

for some reason the geraniums flower heads are three times bigger on the side facing towards the house (the shade?)

and lastly, the rose bushes on the south side of our house. The pink one just started picking up with blooming, but i'm going to fertilize to see if I can get them to fill out a bit more. They haven't been touched in 3+ years!

A little bouquet I made of the geraniums (?) out front and roses a couple weeks ago:

El Jardin

I was talking to my dad last week about about my garden and he told me to post up some pictures!

So here is a tour of our little garden.  I wanted to start small and keep things manageable due to our constraints on time and money.  I also motivated to keep up with it, and enjoy working in it, because it's not too overwhelming or too much work.

The pictures below are from last Sunday, and about two weeks after I planted everything.  I'll try to keep you updated as things progress!

Our soil out here is a mix of very sandy and very clay-ey.  I layed some top soil over the whole plot which was roto-tilled in, and then dug about 8 inches deep and mixed in a mulch type mixer for clay soil where I planted each plant:

Red Pepper

This pepper plant is doing the best of the four of them, and it just happens to be my favorite kind of pepper. I planted these as 4inch seedlings, but was still surprised to see a bloom already!



green pepper


jalapeno



the four of 'em



Cucs





Zucs


the one really sad plant. Can't figure out what's wrong with it. Too much water, not enough? Too much sun, not enough?




I decided to pot my tomatoes because it's a little easier to keep them upright:

Early Girl


Roma



these onions from the grocery store sprouted, so i planted them.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm not sure what they'd be good for now.



Wild flower mix just sprouting [in a very uneven pattern]


Next week I'll show you the herbs and flowers!