Nesting

I don’t know if this happened to anyone else, but early in my pregnancy, I developed an unhealthy interest in throw pillows.  Seriously.  I thought about throw pillows all the time. And slip-covers. Good Lord.  What the fuck was wrong with me? I looked at slip-covers on Amazon AS A LEISURE ACTIVITY.  If had some free time in the day, I would think to myself “oh goody, I can put in some hours on Amazon researching slip covers.” Thankfully, Sean recognized this as a nesting activity and didn’t divorce me, but we did have some hard conversations where I tried to make him care about the throw pillows.  Sean’s studied indifference to these important decisions made me realize that, if the baby was going to have a proper home (one with decent upholstery an accent decor) it would be up to me to make it happen.

I continued nesting hard-core throughout my pregnancy with activities that included painting a mural in the baby’s room, knitting probably 20 different baby hats, and scrubbing every stain in our carpet with a toothbrush and a peroxide solution. But, at around 8 months, my nesting hormones made it absolutely clear that the thing I needed to do right then, THAT VERY MINUTE, before any more time was lost, was landscaping.

We live in Ohio near lake Erie, or, as it’s also known, Practically Canada. So, as you may imagine, January is not the time of year when most people focus on yard work.  However, Sean had spent a lot of time this last Fall clearing the impenetrable thicket of poison ivy, buckthorns, and multi-flora rose off of our hillside, and I was anxious to get the area cleared of sticks before this year’s batch of tender young poison ivy popped up.

I devised a method of building beds LIKE A GENIUS that allowed me to dump all of our assorted sticks, bark, and general wood debris into one place and build some natural looking curved beds. (A friend of our hilariously pointed out to us later that they look like actual nests.) I waddled up and down that hillside hour after hour, dragging sticks, and hammering in wooden stakes to hold the beds in place until the nesting hormones were satisfied.  Afterwards, we reinforced each bed with 2.5 ft. sections of rebar. The next step will be to fill the beds with dirt, leaves, and compost and plant them with daylilies, chives, and strawberries.

Now that the baby is here, my nesting hormones are extremely satisfied with my January landscaping efforts.  I stare out the window at them all the time as my baby sleeps screams contentedly in my arms. To Sean’s enormous relief, I am back to my normal state of not giving a shit about throw pillows, although I still can’t stop knitting baby hats. I’ll keep you posted on the hillside “nests” as we plant them and post more pictures soon!

• We ended up buying the Surefit stretch slipcover in a minty green.  It looks pretty good because the seat cushions are in their own case, so it acts more like a normal couch.  It does show dog hair, but this may not be a problem for those of you who have well behaved dogs that can be trusted to stay off the couch.
• The throw pillows have down feathers that poke through their cases and stab us (and the baby) whenever we’re on the couch.  We hate them.

Here are some photos of the "nests" at the top of the hill...