Mark My Words

I am constantly in awe of my wife.

Tara says I give her too much credit, make her sound too good on my blog, but I am truly impressed by some of her endeavors. The latest example: we really wanted to grow strawberries…but we have a yard full of critters who would treat those berries like their own personal buffet. Tara’s solution? A homemade cage to keep ’em out.

That’s pretty ingenious, right? (Plus, it’s always sexy when she breaks out the chop saw.)

The strawberry plants came from the most impressive nursery I have ever seen. SO many babies in diapers! (J/K. It was a plant nursery.) Ebert’s Greenhouse Village, to be exact–a name that seemed like hyperbole to me, until we pulled into the parking lot. This place, which started out as a humble family farm in rural Ixonia 50 years ago, has blossomed (pun intended) into 28 greenhouses spread over 55 acres. Complete with food carts and live music. I swear, it feels more like an entertainment complex than a garden center.

Getting there took some effort. Ixonia is barely a dot on the map. Beautiful setting, but it’s the very definition of middle of nowhere. It took us 30 minutes traveling down multiple two-lane county roads in what felt like a giant zigzag pattern. Totally worth the roundabout trip, though. I don’t care about annuals and perennials like Tara does, but even I was impressed. Just walking around the place is a feast for the senses.

Amazingly, we (she) didn’t even buy all that much. Just the two flats of strawberries and a few tomato plants. Once she gets the garden planted next weekend, we’re planning on making a return trip to stock up. Preferably on a weekday, because the place was hoppin’ last Saturday.

While Tara was busy working on the strawberry cage, I spent hours in the hot sun digging up a metric ton of lily of the valley—first using a shovel and then by hand. When I mentioned this to my mom, she was aghast. “I love lily of the valley!” she declared. I have nothing against the stuff; the little white bell-shaped flowers really pop against the green leaves, it smells nice, and it played a pivotal role in one of the greatest dramas of all time (Walt tried to poison a kid with it on Breaking Bad)–but it spreads so aggressively, it’ll take over your yard if you aren’t careful.

As much as we appreciate Dick’s landscaping, we have cursed the man more than once for planting lily of the valley and wild ginger and dead nettle, all of which have been thorns in our sides since day one. They grow rapidly and muscle their way into our garden beds and borders, crowding out the native vegetation. We have spent the last three years removing as much as possible–no easy task, because their extensive networks of underground rhizomes are all interconnected. You can’t just dig up each individual plant; you’ve got to attack those roots with gusto.

Here’s one section Tara transformed in 2024:

But there’s a lot more work to be done:

Come 2031, we might have a handle on all this shit.

On a positive note, I’m making great progress against my biggest nemesis, the poison ivy that has bedeviled me for years. I roam around the property with my spray bottle full of glyphosate-based herbicide, scrutinizing the ground closely for those telltale leaves of three, liberally dousing any I come across. There’s a lot less of it now, and many of the former problem areas are completely free of the devil weed.

I’ll notch that up as one small victory in a bigger war.

A 1,158-Day Milestone

We recently hit a big milestone without realizing it: As of May 1, 2026, we have lived in our Fort Atkinson house longer than we did in the Rapid City house. I guess that means Dick > Doris.

I knew we were getting close, and when I busted out the slide ruler and did the math last week, I learned we’d surpassed the 1,157 days in our RC home on the first day of the month (yes, I’m a numbers geek). This boggles my mind. Despite having spent 166 weeks in MarTar Manor, living here still feels like a novelty. Tara and I often step onto the deck, gaze upon our property, and say, “I can’t believe this is ours.” Happens all the time. I suspect because we both moved so often growing up, anything resembling permanence is hard to fathom.

We both agree this is a much better house. Sure, I miss that groovy wood-paneled SD basement (not to mention having three full bathrooms versus one), but overall, everything about this place is better–the layout, the usable space, the privacy. Plus, nobody keeled over dead in the kitchen, so: bonus!

There’s an even bigger achievement looming on the horizon. On November 7, we will have officially been Sconnies longer than Dakotans.

Unless we move before then, of course. I make no promises.

How long have you lived in your current house? Does it still feel like a novelty?