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One side of the drainage trench was dug.
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And the perforated pipe was attached to the catch basin and set in place.
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The hose was deployed to simulate rain…
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And water flowed.
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When installation was deemed satisfactory, backfill was added.
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From the lovely little plywood backed dirt piles .
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Hard to believe this took two men almost 8 hours….
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But when my husband is involved there will be some serious chatting along with the working.
😉
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One afternoon, when the temperature was near 90 and the humidity level was almost as high, my husband decided it would be a good time to start ripping up the old deck. You know, the one we hired a contractor to rip up and rebuild.
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It was hard, heavy, hot work. Which is why we’re paying someone else to do it.
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An hour or so into the demolition, said contractor showed up…
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And was a little surprised the husband had already started the project for which we’d hired him.
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But they worked side by side, in the heat…
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Because no one told him husbands who are bored with retirement need to keep busy.
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In less than three hours…
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All the rotted old wood planks had been ripped up…
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And hauled to my husband’s truck…
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Because yes, he would dispose of them as well.
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Remind me again why we hired a contractor….?
🥴
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My husband is a late night snacker. No matter how large and satisfying a dinner I serve him, he always has room for popcorn.
And since we’ve established he hasn’t worked out the proper bowl to kernel ratio of his new air popper…
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It won’t surprise you to learn that every morning when I walk into the kitchen I begin to search for strays.
Stray unpopped kernels on the floor that I find with my bare feet…
Stray unpopped kernels that land in my cutlery caddy…
Stray popped kernels that fly into the sink and behind the microwave…
But this morning?
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It seems the bird caught one.
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🤣
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You know the ones, they start out innocently enough, swerve and then drive you straight to Hell. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Mine was this past Saturday when I attempted to do some gardening. Pansies needed to be planted in my pots on the barn porch… but this did not go as planned.
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All I did was pick them up, I swear! The bottom fell out of one, the other split in half. I should have quit then, I really should have… but no. I decided to fire up the old weed wacker and trim.
I trimmed around my garden beds, I trimmed around the apple trees and then I trimmed around the septic tank access block.
Bad idea. Very bad.
The ground was still wet… which caused my foot to slip… which caused the weed wacker to knock the cement cover askew… which rammed a piece of rotted wood in the frame….
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And… well. It went downhill from there.
Literally and figuratively.
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I’ll spare you the odoriferous details, but trust me… they were epic. 🤢
Suffice it to say we spent the entire afternoon with our heads in the septic tank.
I do not recommend this as a relaxing weekend activity. Not one little bit.
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A new concrete tank cap was purchased and maneuvered into place (God damn! Those things are heavy.) and a new frame was built so yours truly is not able to repeat this mishap.
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I kept trying to tell my husband it could have been worse. The cover could have fallen into the tank and someone… I’m not saying who… would have had to climb in to retrieve it.
Oddly enough, he didn’t find that the least bit funny.
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💩
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It seems that little red bitch has given up the Barn Mahal and moved in even closer to yours truly.
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Lately she’s spending all her time in, on and around our back deck grill…. and I fear another nest has been built.
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This does not bode well for future cookouts.
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Although…
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I’ve heard people do eat roast squirrel….
😈
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My husband finally fixed two of the three leaking gutters he put up a while back. Although gerry rigged would be a more apt description.
The repairs involved rolled metal sheeting and so much cursing I disappeared into the house for most of it. But when I went to check the progress on the barn a few hours later….
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I marveled at the non OSHA approved stabilizing device he had employed.
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Extension ladder in fear of falling over?
Tie it to a post.
🥴
When that repair was complete, he moved onto the section of leaking gutter on the garage and gathered his tools.
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When I followed him over and saw a section of tree limb was involved? I did what any self respecting spouse would do… and went back in the house.
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But at our house, not in the way you might think.
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This is one of our stone walls. It’s the smallest and has been falling in on itself for years.
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Mainly because when my husband built it 19 years ago, he didn’t listen to me and dug it level to the higher edge of lawn.
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You can’t tell but there’s over a two foot difference in height there.
Anyway… on July 2nd, the start of the holiday weekend, I came home from the grocery store and found this.
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Because the husband decided July 4th was the perfect time to redo the corner of the wall where stones were starting to slip into the ditch. He enlisted a friend, dug a trench and figured this jerry rigged engineering marvel would work.
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A slab of untreated wood, a line of black stakes and yes, God help me… roofing shingles to hold back the dirt. Not what I would call aesthetically pleasing.
There was a discussion. Followed by a heated debate. Which turned into the beginning of an argument. I offered multiple solutions and they did not go over well. Naturally the husband wanted to do as little lifting as possible because, you know… rocks = heavy. But if you’re going to rebuild a wall? You can’t just do one section, and after some (not so) gentle persuading, he finally saw it my way. Since the slipping stones were his main concern I conceded defeat on that point and we eliminated the corner.
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Filling it in with dirt which we will then seed or sod.
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And then the real work began.
If you’ve never built a rock wall? (And I mean a real New England cement free rock wall, with rocks of all different shapes and sizes and weights… not the nice flat ones you buy at a landscapers) Trust me, it’s work!
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Which is undoubtedly why my husband only wanted to do a corner.
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Silly man, he really should have known better.
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Day one? It went something like this:
Move rocks, install barrier, argue with wife, remove barrier, curse wife under your breath, fill hole with dirt, move rocks, curse wife again, start rebuilding entire wall when all you wanted to do was one corner, move rocks, curse wife under breath one more time because you can and she’s too far away to hear you.
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To be continued….
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The new guttering installation continued and moved to the back deck.
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Where a lovely rose I planted last year is starting to bloom.
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And since things were not going smoothly with said installation….
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I concentrated on the gardening.
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Look… my first gay feather!
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Installation complete, it was time for the hose.
The water test did not go well.
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Not well at all ….
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So…. peonies!
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And Lord Dudley Mountcatten who was watching water leak from the gutters through an open window. When the cursing started, I moved around front.
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To the old stone garden bed under the crabapple tree the previous owners had made. I added some hostas and New Guinea impatiens this year.
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And constantly wonder why they didn’t use the same size stones all the way around.
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No, not the depression.
Sorry, not the brothers either.
I’m talking about the colors.
Living in Maine, most of our winters are white. But there’s also a lot of beautiful blue…
And when a storm is moving in?
It’s really quite lovely.
These were all taken through my dirty winter windows last month, so be kind.
But spots and all..
You have to admit winter blues are pretty.
Even the ones that turn out kind of weird.
You may remember me posting pictures of our little red barn/shed.
We use it as a shed, but it was originally a small barn complete with horse. The horse is long gone…. and 40 odd years later?
The barn/shed is almost gone as well.
Falling apart?
You could say that…
Rotted wood?
The mere fact that it’s still standing never ceases to amaze me.
It’s horrible. An eye sore on our otherwise lovely property. The bane of my existence for a long, long time.
It’s state of disrepair is the main reason we spent $50,000 and 7 years of nights and weekends building a new and much larger barn.
The plan? All the mowers and weed whackers, the snow blower, the tractor and assorted yard tools that were in the shed/barn were supposed to go into the new barn…. and the eyesore would be torn down.
But that never happened, and now the husband….. who has already filled the new barn with CRAP wants to rebuild the shed/barn to continue housing the mowers, tractor etc.
So this is happening.
Husband deemed part of the interior framing sound, and started what I thought was deconstruction of the back half…. which needs to be completely rebuilt..
Now my idea of deconstruction consists of ripping off the roof, then the walls. The husband’s?
I’m not quite sure.
He put up a new piece of wood…
Ostensibly to brace the roof… though why you need to brace something you’re tearing down is beyond me.
But look at the piece he’s bracing! Rotted doesn’t begin to describe it…
Then…
Yeah. He trimmed it…
The rotted piece of wood.
He sawed off a section of wall… by hand, even though the chainsaw was right there.
And made a bigger hole.
He elongated the brace….
And added wood running along the bottom.
He was supposed to be tearing it down…. so WTH?
Naturally I had to ask.
And naturally, he wouldn’t answer.
It was hot, he was cranky and I dared to question his technique.
Silly me.
River's world..... 