March Madness

The moving van with our furniture rolled into Houston on Wednesday. It took the movers about 7 hours to unload everything, put together our beds, then remove the contents of some of the many cardboard boxes that held our belongings. Luck was with us that day, as some unpredicted rain began to fall minutes after the last of our furniture was carried safely into our house. We were authorized by Jim's company to have a "full unpack," but we opted for a "partial unpack" instead. This left us with approximately 40 boxes to empty out ourselves, half of which currently remain full of stuff. Two observations that I have recently made: 1) Movers unnecessarily bundle up every single item they transport in thick, beige packing paper, including pillows, bedding, and stuffed animals, and 2) Heavy-duty cardboard boxes have a distinct odor to them, and while it is not exactly an unpleasant smell, it is one that I am not enjoying. Today we brought bags and bags and bags of used packing paper to our nearby recycling center. We intend to bring lots of these stinky boxes back to Michigan with us to use for our eventual move to a condo.

We shopped today for plants and trees to spiffy up our yard and to replace the foliage lost in the freezing weather this year. Everyone who was out purchasing landscaping items was grumbling about the harsh winter they had just endured down here. It still saddens me to see so many palm trees with their fronds cut off and so many tropical bushes that have turned brown. My latest idea was to spray paint all of our dead plants green, but Jim does not like that plan, so we have begun to chop everything to the ground to see what grows back. We bought two Queen Palms, three Holly bushes, two Azaleas, a Southern Magnolia, and a tropical-looking reddish thing this afternoon. Tomorrow will be spent planting everything. We are also still working relentlessly to get our pool cleaned out. The biggest obstacle we have run into is the constant barrage of little pollen-seed-type things that fall out of the nearby oak trees (these southern oaks are not like northern ones!) and turn dust-like when they hit the water. As soon as this seed season is over, we will be all set. The temperatures have been very pleasant since we arrived in Texas, anyway. It was sunny and near 80 degrees today.