Diary of a Manor - Day in the Distant Future

Unbelievably, it is the 3rd of January, 2011. I had intended to keep a blog of our experience. I have a Wine Journal that my daughter, Angelina, gave us. We keep it by the phone at Piglet Manor. I've been pretty good about filling that out.

This blog? Well, not only had I forgotten where it was (Google) but I had forgotten where it was. Obviously, I have just found it again.

Start of a New Year. Last year had lots of fun and lots of scary. We had a big, family Independence Day party and sleep-over. Clay got cancer. Those were the extremes. We also have the vineyard acres ripped and prepared with ground cover for the vines that will be planted this Spring. So it was all over the map.

We picked the olives from our two olives trees with Brandi and Victor one weekend and Clay by himself the next weekend. That garnered us 1.5 gallon of very green and spicy olive oil, much of which we gave away for Christmas.

We took out about 1.5 acres of overgrown kiwis, intersperced with spiky, nasty, overgrown pyracanthus. Clay and I did about 2/3's of it ourselves. Bill and Scott, Chris and Sharon and Joey helped us remove the balance in one, long, dirty, cold, drizzly and extremely fun day.

We've had tons of visitors, practically somebody every weekend. Everyone was fun and everyone is welcome.

Diary of a Manor - Day Two

We woke up comparatively bright and early, both suffering from a bit of a hangover. We had two meetings scheduled with contractors. First was Ed Flores, an arborist, with whom we traversed the property, identifying trees and deciding what needed to be done. It's a lot but he can also manage the overgrowth, pruning, digging up unwanted vegetation, etc. It's sure to be expensive but needs it. We can and will do a lot but we have neither the skills nor the expertise to know how to do most of it right. Then we met with David Leff, an architect, to discuss the house. He encouraged us to keep it and build what we want from its bones. We were happy to hear that. It will also be a lot of work and again, sure to be expensive, but we are anxious for the house to be updated. We spent a lot of time roaming about the property. Had to get back to the coastside early because we had wine work to do down here. Clay's also taking a course through UC Davis, and had a paper due, so he isn't getting a lot of down time. Well, no down time.

Diary of a Manor - Day One

Today we drove up to Piglet Manor, the first day as owners. As owners, we spent most of our time at Home Depot and WalMart. There always seems to be things we forgot, and that after spending over $500 at Target and Cosco in SSF. The house suddenly didn't seem so funky, even though we knew it was. It seems like when you put your own spirit into it and call it home, no matter for how long, you want to defend it against people who would call it a POS, like me. Clay bought a shop vac and vacuumed all the corners and sills. The little house was clean, just unlived in, so the spiders had been busy. We tried to make some sense of all the stuff we brought up and then prepared to go out to dinner. We're on well water and the shower head was so clogged with minerals that only two little, razor-sharp streams of water came out. I washed what I could and called it good. We have a lovely dinner at Zazu, drank too much wine, and went to bed.