I finally feel like I’m finally settling into our apartment. The entire living area has pictures up (although some frames still need to be filled). We had a couple of friends over for a while and they’ve left now, allowing Peter to go back into his normal bedroom. And I also paid my first month of regular rent.

I’m enjoying my apartment. I already had to get an appliance repaired. I was cooking a carrot cake in the oven and heard a strange noise. Upon further investigation, it looked like my oven was trying to time travel, with a bright white light coming out of it. Part of the heating element burnt through. Luckily, the carrot cake was saved by the toaster oven, and the oven was repaired in a couple days.

We do have a couple of horrid neighbors that have managed to keep us up at night. One morning I was going about my business and heard a strange noise. I couldn’t decided if it was the wind, an animal, or a baby being horribly mistreated. I opened the window and scared away a cat. There are these two cats that will stare each other down and start this kitty chorus of meows and howls and all sorts of strange cat noises. This can happen in the middle of the night, right outside the bedroom. My husband has contemplated anti-freeze. I think it might be useful to at least have a bucket of rocks we can throw from the patio. The kitty chorus only deserves boos and rotten fruit, but occasionally ends up with a captive audience that would much prefer sleep.

We went on a walk/hike yesterday to a local greenway. I forgot the camera, so no pictures, but it was lovely and you can try imagining it for yourself. The weather had scattered thunderstorms, so I brought an umbrella, but didn’t think much else of the weather. Scattered thunderstorms back in Utah usually means you might hit rain, but you are probably going to be okay and I never worry too much. The drive there was fine, but the sky continued to deepen in color as we pulled up to the parking lot. We exited into a slight drizzle and headed out along the greenway.

Within ten minutes it was pouring rain and we were huddling under the one umbrella I brought. I remembered that I had thrown a couple of ponchos into the van while I was at my mom’s back before we moved here. I thought they might come in handy and after putting them in had I promptly forgotten about them.  With the three of us huddling under one umbrella, they were quickly brought back into mind and we walked back to the car to pick them up.

At this point, we decided to go to a different starting point of the greenway and on our drive there found a covered pavillion and had a little picnic. Then we took off again, this time better equiped for the still pouring rain with our ponchos. There wasn’t a poncho for Peter, so he got the umbrella. This resulted in a lot of funny moments of a parent running after him trying to keep an umbrella over his head, while he didn’t care one way or another about getting wet.

The greenway headed off into a wetland and the majority of what we walked was a wide board walk. We did pass a few other people, one runner who was as wet as if he dunked himself a pool but still going at it anyway, and the rest with appropriate variations of rain gear. Mostly it was pretty quite and we were by ourselves. In the wetland something was making a terribly loud mating call or other sound. I wish I knew enough to know what it the world it was. Combine the mating call, rain, and mossy surrondings, it was quite an enjoyable walk.

It only lasted about a half mile, and then we all were sufficiently done with getting various exposed parts of our body wet and headed back home. But I’m glad the rain didn’t stop us from having an enjoyable time outdoors. With all the rain here, I think I might find myself indulging in a pair of cute galoshes for Peter.

*For all those interested we hike the Ivy Creek Greenway in George Pierce Park.

There are evergreen deciduous trees and I have no idea what any of them are. Huge evergreen deciduous trees just don’t grow in Utah. I also found this shrub in flower. In January. So super incredible for Utah-grown me.

Being in an apartment, I doubt I’m going to actually work in the soil. But it intrigues me. Not good soil, but it also has some of the opposite problems that Utah soil has–acidity and quick weathering due to humidity and heat.

Another thing that I’ve noticed lately is using pine needles as mulch. It’s always been on my list of items you could mulch with, but I didn’t realize people actually buy pine needles in large quantities and use it for more than just around a pine tree. Here are some bales they just spread out all over around my apartment complex.

Some landscaping blunders are the same, however. My apartment complex has some landscaping that is trying to be fancy, but is really just the overuse of hedge clippers. Even the trees are hedged into nice little prickly squares. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it could be the desired result of intensive formal landscaping. But that requires a lot of knowledge and work. More often it’s done by people just imitating that, and results in these hedges:

The bottom of the hedge is starting to die out. When pruning a hedge it has to be pruned in an gradual, upside down V shape. That way, light can reach the lower branches and they won’t die back.

The weather is warmer than Utah. Of course the weather everywhere has been warmer so I’m sure about that, but even the cold days here aren’t like the cold days in Utah. We’ve enjoyed the parks around here. Peter also got a bike from goodwill that he’s been enjoying. It’s nice to be able to go outside a lot, even in January. I will post pictures of the new place, but I’m working on decorations for the walls. Which has been fun, but also a little time consuming so I’m not done yet.

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We have a new home now. We drove in, looked at the apartment and signed all the paperwork that now means we will be here for the next year. The apartment is nice and spacious. We came with very little furniture, but by Friday night it was entirely furnished. That meant a lot of time spent at the store lately. I found good deals at Goodwill, Ikea and Walmart. The walls still need decoration, but its nice to have a comfy bed to sleep on and a couch to use.

My only reservation with the place is the thought that maybe I don’t need quite as much space, etc. and could have been paying less. But it is nice to have room for visitors (we already housed Joe’s classmate for a while) and there isn’t anything I don’t like either. My favorite is the pond (with fish) and walking path that’s right outside. We took a walk on Sunday and it was all misty and quite lovely with all the moss and trees around. Very different than Utah.

I’m enjoying the area as well. Everything is very close. Within about a mile we can go to a park or library, shop, and Joe can go to work. There are way more trees here, with lots of woody areas. Trees are a much better backdrop than sagebrush for everything. The weather has been warm–we’ve been out without any sort of jacket on. It’s almost been warm enough to actually run the AC. The GPS has been incredibly useful in finding our way through all the windy roads around here, but I’m starting to at least know my way to the grocery store, park, and library (we’ve been there a lot because we are still waiting for internet.)