We do things, occasionally

In Bathroom Progress news, the ceiling is finished and primed, and the walls have been primed. The ceiling needs another coat of primer and then paint. The walls will hang on for a while as I need to think about the trim, and whether/to what extent I want/need to strip it. Someone with an extreme affinity for silicone caulk got at the trim around the tub (did you know that it's nearly impossible to paint over silicone caulk? As far as I can tell, anyway). And the door frame has layers and layers of old paint (one layer, apparently, scarlet.)

In roof progress news, there is not a lot of progress. A preliminary consult with the green building people in Atlanta suggests that all the fancy ideas we have about heat-radiating barriers and double-layers roofs may either not work, or not work well enough to make them worth the expense and hassle of doing. Damn, I wish we could have had a metal roof... So we are considering just light-colored architectural shingles and the carpentry to improve the ventilation and c'est fini.

I garden news, it is finally not insanely hot! I have found the perfect mulch for the vegetable beds and the flower bed on the east side of the house - it's called "soil improver" and it's basically wood chips but not actually wood chips. Today I planted two smallish ornamental grasses next to the air conditioning unit, virtuously amending the soil generously with cow manure and mulching with the soil improver. They will grow to be about 5 feet tall and make a pale purple "flower" that's sort of feathery and rather pretty. I also dug over and improved some of the east flower bed, planted a cinnamon fern in the shady corner, and moved the bloody dock, which is still barely hanging on, to the improved area. This winter's goal is improving that whole bed, and moving things about.

In the vegetable beds, we have green peppers very happily producing; one watermelon with a pencil-eraser sized fruit, and a very few straggly beans just coming back from the dead now that it is cool and we have had rain. The cherry tomatoes are basil are doing okay, too. I dug over some of the dead places, improved and put in seedlings (from Lowe's) of red cabbage and broccoli.

Need to:
Get more soil improver and mulch the blueberries, raspberry, and blackberry (all of which were dry and unhapppy all summer).
Plant fall kale, spinach, carrots.
Resume work on the side yard (cut down smilax, work on removing large mock olive some more. Consider planting a flowering tree, if there's enough sun?
Consider raising the two non-raised garden beds, mostly for ease of watering/mowing.
Start thinking seriously about gravel driveway plans.