I had to be at the old place in the middle of the day Tuesday to meet the people who were going to haul away our second fridge. Or, since we don’t actually own the other fridge at the old place, I guess this one was our only fridge. How we (Ray & I originally) came to have a refrigerator of our own in addition to the appliances that came with the rental property before moving into the Ballard place 21 years ago, leading to some years later when said fridge died Michael & I buying a replacement so we still had two fridges is a tale for another day. Regardless, since someone needed to be there the meet the haulers and sign paperwork, and since we’d disconnected the internet service at the old place, and there wasn’t any real furniture (so I didn’t want to haul my laptop there and try to work from home the whole day), I took most of the day off and spent the time I was waiting digging up the irises.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, these irises are descending from a small bag of rhizomes my grandma gave me some years before she died. Every few years I’ve dug them up and thinned them, usually finding some people to take the excess off my hands. I’d mentioned on Facebook a few weeks ago that this might be the last time I’d see grandma’s irises blooming, since we don’t have a yard at the new place. And a bunch of people, including several of my in-laws, said if I did want to dig them up they would take some. And one former co-worker pointed out that she had kept some large irises when she lived in an apartment without a yard in a one of those large, half-barrel style containers for several years until she bought a house and could plant them.

So many people offered to take some, I figured that I’d try to dig up the whole bed. Fortunately, the part of the structure that is transplantable (sometimes people call them bulbs, sometimes corms or tubers; when I looked it up to see if I was using the correct term, I learned that anatomically the part in question on irises is a rhizome) tends to grow close to the surface and half the time above the surface (particularly if you’re a bit overdue on the thinning, because they start growing over each other), so there wasn’t a lot of actual digging. I had to use the tiller a lot to loosen the soil, but mostly it was a matter of just pulling them up, shaking off the dirt, and piling them. Then I went through the pile to cut off the flowers and leaves so that I only bagged up the part people will need to replant to get them growing again…

The digging/pulling up took about an hour. The trimming took another hour. Then gathering up the trimmings to fill the compost bin was about a half hour beyond that. The fridge was picked up in the middle of that. Then Michael got off work and came to the old place to meet me and decide how much cleaning we had left to do inside.

While I had been digging and trimming, I had also pulled all of the bins and shelves and such from the fridge that belongs to the apartment and run them through the dishwasher, which made cleaning the rest of the fridge a lot easier.

After we assessed what was left to do, I loaded up the final Value Village run, while Michael mopped the bathroom and wiped parts of the kitchen we hadn’t quite finished. When I got back he asked me to look in the bathroom and tell him if I thought it looked finished. I did and came back and told him yes.

I starting hauling garbage and recycle out. About 10 minutes later, Michael asked if I had looked in the bathroom and did I think it was done. Again I told him I had, and yes it was done.

I started bagging up and loading the cleaning supplies and other things we wanted to keep into the car. About 15 minutes later, Michael asked if I had looked in the bathroom and did I think it was done. I got a little snappy that time.

He said he didn’t remember asking the previous two times. So then he asked about the kitchen. I looked around, said, “Yes, it’s done. But even if I closed my eyes I would say yes because it looked fine to me earlier, and it’s clear that we both need to stop, go home, and rest.”

I did do one more walk through before we locked up and got in the car. Michael opined on the drive that I was probably hypoglycemic and that was why I got cranky. I held up my fingers at the next stop light and they weren’t trembling, so I said, “I don’t think so.” When we got home and I checked my blood sugar it was exactly 90, so technically not hypoglycemic, but I had also drank a canned mocha with 11grams of sugar during the drive home, so 90 was probably a climb up from where I was before.

We’ve notified the property manager that we’re out. The electric company asked us to take a picture of the meter when we left to email them. To do so I had to climb into the flowering bush in front of the old place that always really sets off my hay fever, so of course I’m all congested and such today.

Over the last five weeks I’ve been composing in my head a list of things I won’t miss about the old place. This is an attempt to keep me from being too cranky about involuntarily having to move from a neighborhood I love. That bush is one of the things I definitely won’t miss. There used to be two in the front yard (and because it is a hardy thing that stays green year round in our climate, it is a species planted in lots of yards, apartment complex green swaths and such all over north Seattle), so at least it wasn’t as bad as it used to be.

I’m also not going to miss having to park on the street—never knowing how close to the house I would be able to park when I came home from grocery shopping, specifically. We don’t have a covered spot to park at the new place, but we have a space that is ours. So, yay!

I probably shouldn’t share the rest of that list. No one wants to read another person’s list of petty annoyances, right?

We aren’t finished with the move, in that we have a lot of boxes to unpack at the new place. But we’re hopeful that will go faster now that most of our time and energy aren’t going into finishing up at the old place.

I went to bed early last night, and suspect I will again tonight. For a few days, anyway, I need a bit of a rest.

But it is nice to be out!