While I knit… (I think the yarn is Malabrigo Washted, not Mecha, in which case the London Sky tag in the bag was indeed the wrong one.)

We have a shed divided in two parts that was added onto the house maybe before we were even born. The near side had built-in shelving on both sides, the other side nearer the street was open space for a trash can, lawn mower, that sort of thing, with a concrete floor.

Which got jackhammered out when we had to remove the redwood root up to the house five years ago.

That involved my hauling out a good hundred pounds’ worth of wet rainy redwood needle droppings that, over time, had broken through the very aged plastic roof out there. Everything else got moved to the other side of the shed wall.

The near shed had accumulated construction stuff over the years, now-rusty paint can remainders, tangled hoses etc etc and made worse by that sudden extra, and with that broken roof, very little of it was in good shape.

We didn’t replace the roof because we wanted to replace the whole structure and you can’t anymore because of updated fire codes and we wanted to have that shed so it all just sat there.

I got quoted $1500 for clearing everything out. Then a grand. Money that was easy not to spend since you couldn’t see any of this unless you went past two gates on that side of the yard. It was hard to let go of the thought of getting it done ourselves, to acknowledge our bodies had aged out of the task (although those wet needles had definitely made the point.)

The fence guy of two weeks ago offered at $400. Not including the broken roofing, but we can do that, we just needed the heavy and tangled stuff dealt with and those crazy long pipes one contractor inexplicably stuffed up at the top out of there.

They came today. They transformed the place. The condition the shelving was in was threatening to pull the whole structure down, but the shelves are gone now as well as everything that was on them and the structure looks the most sound it has in many years. It just might last after all.

Time for metal freestanding ones to go in there.

On their way out, the two men asked if I wanted to keep the spade with the handle that would rip your skin off. No.

The blue –? I’m not sure they knew what that thing was; it sure didn’t look useful for anything they could think of.

I laughed and explained that the day our moving van came, the neighbor across the street had come over and said, I saw them take a snow shovel off the truck. What do you think you need THAT for?!

I told him we’d rent it out for $75/hr if it ever snowed here.

Good old Mr. Seedlock, long gone. I thought of him and how it would make him laugh and told the men, It stays.