Kudzu Update

 

Kudzu on the Move!

Wee!

The saga continues. I think for many years to come, really, but this is just a short update.

After pulling all of the kudzu, ours and our neighbor’s (vacant house), we needed to do something with it.
Thomas met the guy who claims to own the house (though, according to the sign out front, it’s a bank, not a guy). But he said it was his, and was so thankful that we took care of his mess that he said he’d haul away all of the old kudzu for us. Something about owning a construction firm or something.

Do you sense a tone?
That would be because he never showed up and we still have mounds of kudzu drying up all over the Field of Despair. Well, I guess it’s the Driveway of Despair. Hmm, wonder if the Pit of Despair is anywhere near?

Re-enter Jerry’s trailer of wonder!
Thomas and I loaded it on up with piles of kudzu corpses and had it all ready to go down to Jerry’s for burning where it could then turn into useful fertilizer for his garden.

Enter freakish Atlanta gas crisis.
We can’t take it down to Locust Grove (about 30 minutes not towing who knows how much weight) until we can be assured that we’ll find gas to bring us back home and send Thomas off to work.

It’s been well over a week now. Thankfully Kelli and i can carpool a couple days a week and Midtown’s not that far away. But Thomas had to use my mower fuel so he could get up to a little tile job he had last night.

It seems to have eased ever so slightly today – Kelli and I were both able to fill up at the Citgo by our house; the ONLY station I’ve seen with gas in 4 days. They jacked the price of fuel up 20¢ though.
I know, it could be worse, but I thought that there was a price freeze in effect so that people weren’t getting gouged. Grr. Thomas filled up last night somewhere for about $4.39! Mom and Dad have $3.50 gas up in Michigan right now. (our gas is always cheaper than theirs)
I know a bunch of this is coming from people topping off whenever possible, but there must be more to it than that. ugh. I’m sleepy and cranky and well aware that things could be much worse than they are, but grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

 

Back view of the trailer

 

Turns out this was a three car garage

Remember I said we found an old structure? Our neighbors across the street filled us in on that – there was a three car garage that straddled both properties that was flattened by a falling tree limb.
Not nearly as dramatic and I’d hoped, but I think I’m ok with that.

Up next. . .

The COOLEST HV/AC MAN EVER!!!!!!!
We were lucky enough to find Mr. Dan Moss who is installing the new furnace that Thomas found on Craigslist. Yay Dan!!!!

I need to go to sleep now, but I have lots of pics and stories to post soon. Maybe even in the morning before work!

One pic now though – of a piece of old duct work (I think that’s what it was at least!)

 

Ode to Rust #1

Lake Santeetlah

 

The View From Our Tent

After all that crappy hard work, we needed a break. From Butters and our real jobs. Thankfully, so did some of our friends!
Last year on Labor Day, we went up to North Carolina for an amazing camping trip that involved kayaking and inner tubing on a lake, taking a stroll through an old growth forest and white water rafting.
It was quite a weekend.
This year, we couldn’t make it happen for the holiday weekend, so we made our own.

That picture up there? That really was the view from our tent. If you stood outside the door and took 13 steps (my steps), you were in the lake.
It’s just stunning up there; might be my favorite camping locale ever (thus far?).

This year we were short one day and part of our group met up with us on Saturday morning after a generator problem with a VW Bus stranded them in the local WalMart parking lot overnight. Turns out it’s quite the hopping place!
So, since we had sleepy friends and one less day, we decided to float around the lake all day (with Greg’s dogs!) and hang out around the campfire all night. Can I go back now?
Plus we got to stop at Colonel Poole’s on the way back home for BBQ – seriously, it’s really good. And I didn’t grow up with BBQ, not BBQ in the southern sense.

The View From Our Tent

Thomas and I in the Mountains

Self Portrait

Thomas and the Nearest Bathroom

Greg and his Traveling Caravan

Murray and Mandy in the Lake

Thomas in the Hammock

Palmer on the Wind Surfer

See Why I Want to Go Back?

1.75 Tons

 

Inside Out

 

Yep, all that was inside Butters.
Then we (mostly Thomas, but I helped) loaded all that you see up there on Thomas’ uncle Jerry’s 30 foot trailer and he and his dad took it to the dump.
The 1.75 tons comes in here. The dump charges you by weight, and our trailer full o’ Butters was 1.75 tons.

Seriously, let’s think about that for a second. Thomas tore that all down (as I think I’ve admitted before, I’m a bit of a wuss with the panelling) and I carried it all outside into that massive pile.

The top layer of that pile is another story. Icky night that was.
It was the day that we found out we needed to get rid of all of the kudzu, now. Thomas had pulled up the carpet in our office-to-be and found a nasty wood floor beneath.
So he started pulling it out, finding an even nastier wood subfloor beneath that.
Enter Kim, fresh off a long day of work.

I get in and Thomas gives me a crowbar and hammer and I start actually tearing out.
Turns out, it’s just panelling that I’m a wuss with. Floor? Well, rotted wood floor? I got that.
Ok, it wasn’t as easy as all that, but I was able to handle it. To a point.
I’m not sure what brought about the point, but it came. It may have had something to do with my foot repeatedly breaking through the subfloor, or thinking about the fact that it was about 9:30 pm and I had to be at work at 6 am, but I finally broke down and cried. In my defense, I think it should be known that I was holding the aforementioned crowbar and hammer – I mean how girly can I possibly be holding those?! Ok. I dropped them just prior to really crying.

Which sent Thomas into a concerned tizzy trying to figure out how I’d hurt myself now. Once he got me to talk (really a hard thing for me once I’ve started crying – ask my Dad, who learned that during a transatlantic call, poor guy). Anyway, once he got me talking, I think I gasped something along the lines of “we bought a rotted, termite infested house full of rat poo!” (yeah, I’ve left some of the more glamorous bits out – don’t worry about the pests though – both were WAY prior and have been dealt with).

A sweaty, dirty and kinda snotty (me) hug came next with Thomas turning into Mr. We Can DO IT!!! The Engine. He just kept reassuring me in his infallibly logical way; pointing out all we’ve done so far and how it’s going to be fine. He and his dad would be mudding the floor we were tearing out tomorrow and it would be done by the time I got home from work. It wouldn’t look like a pile of pallets exploded, it would be a nice, smooth concrete floor ready to be tiled. We would take care of the kudzu that weekend; he’d already called in help. He and his dad would take the trailer full of Butters away. . .all the while telling me how proud he is of me and what a trooper I’ve been. How he wouldn’t have been able to do this without me. How much he loves me. All the good things that I needed to hear just then. He’s a good man, that one.

It seems like that’s become our turning point – Thomas has even said that he was feeling just as beat down as I was and it took my breaking down to bring him up. He had to be the optimist and it helped put things in perspective, which showed him that it really was going to be ok.

whew. When I cry, things happen!

I don’t normally have photographic records of me crying – and there aren’t any shots here, but there are pics I took that lead up to the crying. . .

all that was in there!

The Pile at Night – that night

The Floor Mid-Tear Out

Rotted Floor

One of the places my foot went through

Thomas’ Dad (Tommy) mudding the Floor the Next Day

Thomas Mudding the Floor the next day

Life Outside of Butters

My life hasn’t been only working on Butters these past few months. Only mostly.
And don’t get me wrong – it’s hard and frustrating, but I love it. Probably because I’m doing it with Thomas. That, and I’m really stubborn and like to finish what I’ve started. As stubborn as I am though, there’s no way I’d make it through with him.
Enough of the sappy.

One of the things I did recently was go up to Michigan for my cousin Nick’s wedding. I would’ve gone anyway, but he also asked me to photograph the wedding.

Here’s one of my favorite pictures of the day – August 23, to be exact.

 

Really, what is there to say?

 

I’ll put a link in to the rest of their photos once I get approval from the bride and groom.

The Vine That Ate Butters

 

Our Kudzu Field - Two Months Ago

Or at least Butters’ neighbor.

Anyone who has ever spent time in the south or driven south, knows about kudzu (I refuse to capitalize it’s name – proper nouns be darned).

It’s icky.
It’s insidious.
Oh, heck, it’s downright evil.
And it’s in our backyard.

Thomas and I received a call from a (very friendly) city official giving us a warning about the removal of our kudzu. Basically, we needed to get rid of it or we’d be in trouble. ’nuff said.
Besides, I’ve had nightmares about the stuff, and I swear it was trying to eat Thomas’ ‘68 VW Bus, Melvin.
You scoff, but you didn’t see it. I was too horrified to take a picture, just started pulling the vines out from under the bus until I realized that some had grown up around the clutch cable! (yes, I know what a clutch cable is. I’ve even helped put a new one in :-p 

For those of you who are a little unclear on just what it is that I’m railing on about, kudzu is a vine. A very fast growing vine that was brought to the US from Japan by some well-meaning person, I’m sure.
It grows like a normal plant in Japan, but in the southern US, well gosh. It’s just so happy.
Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

Kudzu (クズ or 葛 Kuzu^?), Pueraria lobata (syn. P. montana, P. thunbergiana), (sometimes known as foot a night vine,mile a minute vine, Gat Gun, Ge Gan^[1] and The vine that ate the South) is one of about 20 species in the genusPueraria in the pea family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. It is native to southern Japan and southeast China in eastern Asia. The name comes from the Japanese word for this plant, kuzu. The other species of Pueraria occur in southeast Asia, further south.

See the common names? I’m not the only one with a chip on her shoulder.
But there are some really good hearted people who try to look at the bright side of kudzu.
Check out this site about kudzu gazing – sorry, make that kudZOO.

But I digress. Thomas and I didn’t have the luxury to see the bright side. We needed to see the uprooted side, and soon.
Once again I was truly and deeply grateful, touched and humbled by the generosity of our friends.

Greg and Chris, two of Thomas’ long time roomates, came over and spent an entire Saturday helping us remove the kudzo from our property (and our neighbors – we’re betting on karma. Karma and common sense; it’ll come back quicker if we leave it just next door).
Anyway, they came over and worked their butts off – remember that it’s still summer here in Atlanta.
Greg brought his SUV with 4-wheel drive along with some heavy chains. We (mostly they) rolled a bunch of k into a bale, wrapped the chains around them, hooked them to the trailer hitch, and we (mostly me) drove the truck out, pulling the k up. It pulled the truck sideways on several occasions – that’s just freaky.
Freakier still was the fact that we found an old structure hidden in the kudzu!!!

There was a, a what? A house? Garage? Shed? Who knows – but it was about 14′x50′ and straddled the property lines of both of our properties. Cleaning up some of the trash the next day I got to pull on some of my archaeology days from college to work out a time frame.
There was a good bit of red “DO NOT ENTER” tape buried in there, so I’m assuming it was condemned, and around the mid-to-late1980s since there was a styrofoam Burger King container. I don’t remember seeing those since I was fairly young – anyone know when they quit using styrofoam boxes?

There were also toys, a christmas tree stand, broken chairs, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ball (still inflated – Chris had fun with that), an old tin double decker bus toy (I’m so keeping that), broken dishes, some old (but not old/cool, more like old/crappy) tools, a flat tire (with wheel) and way more soda bottles and cans than I like to think of (oh, and beer, malt beverages, that sort of thing)

Thomas has named the spot where the kudzu was the “Field of Despair”.

Really, it looks way worse than it did before!
But maybe I’ll have fewer nightmares – about that, at least. 

I meant to go to sleep a while ago, so I’m going to cut this short.

Hopefully I’ll have a cool panorama of before kudzu to post in here soon – our friend Jarrett’s on the case (he’s our climb happy friend who cleaned our gutters – another amazing friend)
Yeah, I need to pause before I get all teary about all the love. It’s really just wonderful.

Our Kudzu Field – Two Months Ago

Greg and His Rake

Some time in the middle of the day

Mandy Helping Greg

Random Weird Beetle

A Much Deserved Break

Chris and Chain

My Heroes

Mandy and Murry – Our Mascots for the Day

Our Good Luck Praying Mantis – it landed on Greg’s car and hung with us for a couple hours. Even while I was driving!

More of the Afters

Under the kudzu – the Mystery Building

goodnight!

Walking Around Butters

My aunt Jerry pointed out that I skipped a rather important bit on this here blog; the overall shots of the house. I suppose it hard to get a feel for the whole when I’m only showing vignettes.

So here you go!

You’ve seen this one, but it belongs with all the others

The little stuck on overhang is where you go up to the front porch

You enter from the side, sort of

The Side (from our driveway)

Can you see the little patio-esque area? Before the red brick are some steps down

Those stairs go up to our temporary kitchen upstairs

Not the most exciting post, I’m afraid, but full of pictures at any rate.