Setting stones

A lovely late summer day, a day to be spent on the beach or relaxing by the pool, and the start of Labor Day weekend so an extra day's relaxation to look forward to. Bliss. So what do we do? We look at the circular drive that we can now see from the dining room and den and decide that we need a fix for that flooding problem, and we need it NOW.

I had found a great stoneyard, Mother Earth, and so we went to look at the river rock and pebbles. our idea being that we could create a channel that would slow down the force of the run-off and cut the erosion. Three hours later a bin of river rock was delivered (this place has the best service) and Steven started to create. After a dip in the pool, two Alleve and several glasses of red wine he finally stopped complaining about the pains in his back and knees and fell into bed. The next day he quickly completed the job, and neighbors stopped to say how great it was we were tidying up the front. On Labor Day I transplanted some hostas from the backyard to the new riverbed. I hope that they will do well here as they'll get more sun and have more space to spread out. It looks so pretty that Steven wants to order another bin of stone and continue along the front of the property even though we don't have an erosion problem there. He must have forgotten how much hard work it was. We'll see if he still feels the same way next weekend.

We finished the holiday by removing the last carpet, which went much faster than the others. Either it was newer and had less dirt on it or we have it down to a fine art now and can go into the carpet stripping business. I slapped a couple of coats of paint on a bedroom closet and we are all ready for Pete to install the bamboo in the other bedrooms.

Tree trimming

As I am writing this the tree surgeon and his crew are hard at work taking out some of the conifers nearest the house. The weather couldn't be better for this sort of job: sunny with low humidity. When they have thinned out the spruces we will be able to see out from the dining room, plus let a lot more light in. We have done the landscaping in stages, taking out a little at a time so that we maintain our privacy but still allow people to notice the house. Steven was very concerned about the loss of the firs by the front door but the tree surgeon convinced that at twice the height of the house they pose a considerable danger to the property and anyone in it should they come down in a storm.

And there was light

It took all day and half of the evening but we have lights on the circular drive at last and hopefully they will be high enough that the guy with the snow-plow won't knock them down this winter. We are now able to walk around the property in the dark and not fall over anything. The electricians also traced the problem with the shoting lights in the rear hall. Some genius had wired the outside tree lights to one of the hall switches. When it rained or got humid the lights outside shorted and so did the hall lights. It took three call backs and six hours of work to discover that, so imagine what the bill will be. In their defense there are four switches that control the hall lights including one double switch next to the exterior light switch so who would think that it could be a five-way switch?