around the house
Turtle
"Padre! Padre! Come here!" The Girl had discovered a new dilemma -- I could hear it in her voice. (She's taken to calling K and me "Madre" and "Padre" of late -- I think it's kind of cute.)
"What?"
"There's a snapping turtle in our backyard, trapped by the fence, and Clover is going crazy with it."
I put on some heavy gloves and went out for a turtle rescue, only to discover
that L doesn't know what a snapping turtle looks like compared to a regular box turtle.
"Does that mean we can take it up and show everyone?"
"Of course."
Saturday
The day began with a challenge: the Swamp Rabbit Trail. Our goal was to ride the whole distance (well, the main part of the trail) and back again -- a total of 22 miles. For K and me, it was probably not that big a deal -- we've ridden further, and faster. For the Girl, it was no big deal: she's been cycling a lot lately, plus she's just young and strong. But for the Boy? His longest ride to date was 16 miles, just over a year ago.
Other than being younger and not as strong, he has another disadvantage: a smaller bike that cannot possibly go nearly as fast. Yet he soldiered through.
In the afternoon, he and I finished our summer project. French drain completed and completely hidden.
New
roof and drain system.
Birthday
K's birthday today. We tried not to make it too big a deal. A nice breakfast; a little gift; a decent dinner; her favorite beverage.
Our creative daughter made a most-original birthday card out of some of the color samples she's constantly collecting when we go to a home improvement store.
I spent most of the time outside. With the kids helping. From time to time.
Rain Insight
It was perfect timing, I tell you: I’d just gotten the preliminary trench dug for the French drain I’m installing.
I knew there were portions that needed a little more depth. I knew that there were passages that needed to be a little wider. What I didn’t know was whether or not to install a second line. Would my current plan take care of all the water?
And then it stormed this afternoon.
And I saw that all I’d done so far was perfect. And I saw exactly where I should install a second line to meet up with the first just past the staircase. And everything was so soft and malleable.
And so I spent another 2.5 hours digging…
Ice Cream Ride
In the morning, some more work on the trench. I got out an auger drill attachment to see if we might be able to bust through the clay with that and then come back with a shove to finish the job. In the end, we determined that the mattock (which I learned today comes from the Greek: μάκελλα) was, in fact, the better choice.
In the evening, a little surprise. In a nearby town, there’s a lovely little ice cream shop in an old train station. Looking about for rides on Strava, I figured out that we could in fact ride there by bike without encountering any truly busy road.
And so after dinner, we made the jaunt. It’s nice to go for ice cream and realize when you get back home, you’ve already burned all those calories.
Trench
Tuesday Around the House
We’ve had problems for years with water standing here and there on our property, but our massive flooding in February convinced me that it’s time to take the next step and start implementing a system to pull the water away from the house. The larger challenge: dealing with the front yard. This will involve massive amounts of digging, the installation of a fairly stout French drain system, and it will all begin with the removal of the shrubs in front of the two-story portion of our house. In other words, it will cost a lot in time and money, and we don’t have a lot of either now.
The manageable concern is the backyard. The water tends to gather in certain places due to poor drainage, which I’m fairly certain I’ve exacerbated over the years. Still, it’s not a major issue. Or so I thought. But when the lower part of the deck stairs began wobbling back and forth, I realized there was a problem. The wood of that part of the staircase has rotted completely, leaving nothing in contact with the ground. I fixed that last week. Now it’s time to deal with the water problem because it’s also beginning to rot the exposed portion of the support posts.
The Boy and I took care of that today.
Well, we began taking care of it. We still have a lot of work to do, but at the very least, we have uncovered the posts to the concrete (why would you then shovel four inches of dirt on top of the concrete? don’t you know that just hastens rot?) and removed the outer eighth-inch of rotted wood.
While we worked on all of this, K did some repainting: she’s got a few doors done and some trim. It makes the rooms look new.
L did her share of work but stayed out of camera view. Until the evening, when she was watching an episode of one of her shows.
The Boy, by then, was sound asleep.
Cleaning
A significant portion of our lives is involved in taking back to the outside the dirt we drag inside. When you have a cat and a dog, there's even more to contend with. When you have an eight-year-old boy, that grows yet again.
So today, the Boy and I took on his room, something that we've neglected for far too long. Sure, we've done some mild interventions, but nothing like today: everything gets dumped out; everything gets rearranged; everything gets cleaned.
