I inherited this house from my Aunt. I remember visiting her here as a kid, but it never occurred to me that one day it would be mine.
She always kept a lovely garden, and the house was always filled with fragrant fresh flowers. She was a friendly woman and company was always buzzing in and out. Today the garden was overgrown, the house was dusty, dirty, and still. No one has been here in over a year.
I brought groceries in, expecting to stay for awhile. I haven't decided whether to move in or just clean it up and sell it. I have plenty of time to decide, so in the meantime, I'll spend half of each day working on the interior, and the other half trying to restore the yard. I like hard work. It makes me feel useful. I'll start tomorrow.
I dusted the four-post bed and put on fresh, new sheets. I had a great first night sleeping in the old house. In the morning I dressed, made myself a cup of coffee, found the keys to the garden shed and headed out back. When I unlocked and opened the shed door, the suction created a huge plume of dust which prompted a coughing fit causing me to slop half of my coffee out of the cup. Clearly, I was not prepared.
After a quick trip to the local hardware store to buy face masks, steel wool, buckets, garbage bags, gloves, and general cleaning supplies I stopped at the gas station to fill the five gallon gas can. Ready to hit the garden shed again. I'm not known to be squeamish so spiders and rodents don't phase me. Rust does. I spent the entire day sweeping and dusting the shed and cleaning the lawn mower and all the other garden tools.
I ended up using a sharpened sickle and a weed whacking tool first. I raked everything up, bagged it the next day's trash, then pulled out the lawnmower the following day. I had already filled it with gas and now, just prayed that the old mower would work. I pulled the start handle and behold! I mowed the back yard, then moved the mower down the side strip to the front yard.
In the front yard, I caught a glimpse of movement to my left. I stood up and saw a guy was walking toward me from two doors down. He waved and smiled as he walked. I waved back. When he reached me, he simply introduced himself and welcomed me to the neighborhood. We chit-chatted for a bit about the neighborhood, and he left.
That evening, I had just freshly showered and threw on a shear, white, comfortable nighty and a soft, fuzzy, pink robe. I hear a knock on the door. I only know one person here, and indeed, it was my neighbor with a bottle of wine in his hand. I apologized for my robe, but invited him in anyways.
He had already popped the cork and re-corked the bottle, taking into consideration that I might not have a corkscrew available. I washed the dust out a couple of glasses, and he poured.