Notes from Maine - 2025/09/14
Mom flew back home on Tuesday. Frankly, it doesn’t even seem like the same house that saw the beginning of July. Within a few days of her arrival, Mom had cleaned out the front gardens and painted the trim in the kitchen. My sister arrived and added new colors to the garden. Mom made sure that all the flowers stayed hydrated as they got established.
Mom painted the back of the garage and helped me clear around the fence line before the fencers arrived. She is tireless—never really happy unless she has a project to work on. One surprise project always crops up during a visit. It’s usually a task she happens upon that couldn’t have been predicted beforehand. This summer’s surprise project was massive. Mom cleared the entire back slope next to the barn. For decades, the slope has been overgrown with vines and thorn bushes. I believe the bushes were Japanese barberry. They’re horrible, dense, spiky demons, and they were a menace on that slope. Mom cleared them all away and put down grass seed for the horses. It was an action-packed visit. I’m leaving out all the smaller projects that took less than a day or two. There were too many to list.
My neighbors had a big yard sale yesterday. Dozens of cars lined the roads and filled the driveways. It made me think of the yard sales we had when clearing out Dad’s house. He was a careful curator of dump treasures. Many of his famous dump finds went to new, loving homes. Some remained behind and were either returned to the dump’s “Free Store” or they were relegated to a dumpster that my brother contracted for the final clean out. That memory kept coming back to me—how freeing it was to dispose of the last of the junk. Sure, those planks in the attic of his garage could have been used for something, but they were used parts looking for a project instead of the other way around.
I have stuff like that.
I have a wheeled frame downstairs that would probably fit my generator. I’ve never tried to put the generator on that frame. It used to be a giant hassle to dolly the generator around to the north side of the house whenever there was an outage. But last year I had the generator’s inlet moved very close to the garage door. I don’t need the wheeled frame anymore—why is it still in the basement? How many other nascent projects could I dispose of if I rented a dumpster for a short period of time?
Here’s the thing: I could easily take the wheeled frame to my dump. They have a big bin for things that are mostly metal and I have a lot of detritus that would qualify for free disposal. But that’s one truck-load at a time and there’s no deadline. If I rented a dumpster for a couple of weeks, I would be on a deadline to fill it up and clear everything out. That’s an alluring thought. It’s an extravagance, but that’s all part of the appeal. Some of the items I’ve been hoarding in the attic are “too good to throw away,” but if I’m renting a dumpster I would be obliged to make good use of the opportunity. I’m going to give this a little more thought, but the idea is quickly gaining traction. I could clean out the garage, the attic, and the basement. I might need two dumpsters. Maybe three.
I would be smarter to just move things across the street, one at a time, and put a “FREE” sign on them. That usually makes things go away. Perhaps I’ll try that today. I’m keeping the wheeled frame for the generator though. I might still use that.
