Still a Few Surprises

Most time when a house surprises you, it's not good. Bad wiring, a busted pipe, etc. And after living here 6 years now, there are not too many surprises left. But recently, we found one.

For all this time, going up and down the basement stairs several times a week at least - to clean the kitty litter, do laundry, run on the treadmill, etc. - we blindly assumed that this was an AC vent. It looks like an AC vent, and was not in a completely illogical spot, given that our upstairs intake is on the wall on the stairwell.

But when we worked with the HVAC company this summer to optimize our new AC, we realized that it was not hooked up to the house's ventilation at all.

We finally popped off the vent. And found a lightbulb socket! Pop in a new bulb and...

Ta-dah! Operated on the same switch that turns on the overhead light in the stairwell:

Minor, true. But still a fun little surprise. The toddler now claims it is "sunny" when she climbs up and down the stairs.

A Tale of Three Trees

We have a new member of the family - 10 days ago, a Zelkova errata arrived in our yard, to one day create some of the shade lost when our white oak was removed. We didn't want another white oak because they are very slow growing (we are impatient) and can grow to be gigantic, as we knew from experience, which would not work well in this new home across the driveway from the old one. And honestly I don't think I'll miss the acorns and baby oaks (or the leaves, at least for a while - this year our front yard is so  empty compared to previous autumns). And so here is our little zelkova, may she grow big and strong.

In other tree news, our hawthorn did what it was supposed to and turned a lovely shade of orange with bright red berries.

I've been busily spending my evenings - or at least my evenings until we set our clocks back and it got too dark - pulling out more ivy from the backyard. I forgot a "before" picture but I think the giant circle of brown makes it pretty clear where the ivy used to be. We tilled the soil and put some grass seed down, though it might be too late for this year.

It's been a long time since I worked on this - 2011 according to this post. After clearing so much of the yard, the last little circle just wasn't that annoying. But now I'm ready to convert the whole thing to grass (with a little bare soil/mulch around the tree). With a little one who wants to run around and play in the yard, we might as well get as much yard as we can. Plus the tree will probably be a lot happier without being choked by ivy.

Speaking of little one, we got behind with leaf clean up when it seemed last week like the trees dropped all the leaves at once. She kindly agree to help us out:

No surprises here, but we didn't get very far. These leaves are definitely a multi-day process.