I finished the weatherstripping project I started and woke up the next day with the reddest eye. It would make you turn away it is so horrifying, it looks like I was stabbed in the eyeball. I don’t need a costume for Halloween, I am the costume. I must have broken a blood vessel in my eye by straining to push the button on the can of foam insulation? Like that is really hard. Maybe it was carrying the ladder from the basement. How soft have I gotten in the past couple years that I break a blood vessel just doing a caulking project?

Some thoughts:

• I just remembered that you never seal the whole storm window.  You need openings on the bottom.  Moisture builds up between the inside windows and the storm windows and the condensation has to drain out or the wood will eventually rot on the bottom of the sill.  You’ll see those holes at the bottom of the frame on the prefab storm windows/screens and they are there for this purpose.  Keep them clear so water and moisture can escape.  I have to go back and take a thin knife and open up a space along the bottom that I sealed. Seal the inside windows all the way around.

• I looked up what to do with my potted roses I  bought this past summer.  They are full-sized roses in barrel-like containers that I have set out in my garden.  I was debating whether to leave them out or bring them in.  I have never grown them in this climate before and being in pots their roots would be above ground level.  I did a search to see what hardiness zone we are in using my zip code and the results were:  we are in zone 6a.  That would do damage to roses in pots left out.  I decided we will haul them into the unheated, detached garage which will almost be as cold inside as it is outside but they will be out of the drying winds.  We (actually my husband will be doing this) will carry them in after they have “hardened” for the winter.  I found out that roses build up a thicker cell wall as the temperature gradually drops  so you’ll want to leave them out to “harden” and bring them in before we get down to the below freezing temperatures.  According to some forum responses on gardening being inside out of the wind will be all they’ll need (and a little water) if they have had a chance to adapt to the cold.  I hope this works. If anyone has more information about what to do with potted roses, please let me know.

How I hate this time of year. Yes, the leaves are gorgeous but I hate putting everything away that we set out in the spring. In the spring it was fun taking everything down because there was a whole summer to look forward to.

Today I unpotted all the plants in the hanging baskets and washed them off. I grabbed the bird feeders to wash and put up for the winter. We’ll feed suet for the winter. The hoses and automatic watering system has to be taken apart and stored inside. The fountain, chairs, tables, BBQ and on and on has to be cleaned and put away. I have to move all my potted plants someplace that won’t freeze. That’s the one really big difference about living in a cold climate. In California, I left most everything out for the winter because you’d still get very nice days to BBQ and sit out on the deck and enjoy. I like potted plants and I could leave my potted rose bushes and some other plants out and they’d be fine.

I notice some of my neighbors seem to thrive this time of year…everything is put away on a certain date, like clockwork each season, and they seem happy while doing it. I just can’t get into it.

My husband brought down the storm windows to put up on our sleeping porch today. We saw the paint was peeling which gave me a sick feeling. We moved them to the basement where I’ll have to scrape them down and paint them quickly before winter. The winter snow and ice would ruin the wood if I left them as is. The weather-stripping on some doors and windows and fixing some caulking that is failing has to wait a week. I was able to find time to get one scraped, sanded and painted today. Five more to go. With all the rain we are getting I feel lucky to have a workplace in the basement to paint things like that.

The one advantage to the coming winter is we stay home a lot more. It’s the time of year I pick a couple major projects to work on. I’d also like to get a stain-glass window made for my son that I promised him a couple of years ago. Maybe it will happen this winter.

It’s OK to Love Your Old Erie House.

Higher-end craftsman houses often had stained-glass windows. Ours didn’t, so what does that tell you, ha. So either I was going to have to pay someone to make a custom-sized window or I’d have to learn how to do it myself because I wanted stained-glass windows. You can only put so much money into these old houses so the answer was clear. Read the rest of this entry »