This morning we heard that she had a relatively peaceful night, considering that it was her first night away from the litter, and first night in a crate. There was one bout of whining, which turned out to be related to a fecal explosion. After some cleanup and drying, she was down for the rest of the night. I expect her to be even more tired tonight, as Michelle and her kids will have the entire day with her. :)
I haven't mentioned our great sprinkler project for a while. It's been oh-so-slowly advancing, working our way through one challenge after another. The most recent challenge was the startling unavailability of good topsoil, the consequence of a building boom here in Cache County. We finally managed to scrounge up the loads that we needed, with about 300 cubic yards delivered so far, and another 200 or so coming in the next week. All this dirt is needed to smooth out the low spots in various places in our yard. There were minor low spots over nearly the entire three acres, but the worst bit is in our back yard (just a half acre or so). In that area there are big stretches that were almost 18" lower than they should have been, and it takes a lot of dirt to fix a problem like that! We're also, finally, addressing the edges of our driveway. When we put it in three years ago, to get the levels right the crew had to raise parts of it 6" to 8" above the yard. We've now put in dirt to slope the yard nicely up to the edges of the driveway, so you don't have to step off a cliff when walking from the driveway into the yard. The back yard right now looks a bit like a WWI trench warfare photograph – there are trenches everywhere, and in just about every direction. Many of them, as I write, have pipes and wires in them. This morning the contractor is scheduled to arrive and finish them up to the point where we can pressurize the entire sprinkler system – a major milestone indeed! At that point we can enable the irrigation schedule for the south part of our yard, and perhaps keep our lilacs and white birches alive. Within a few days we should be able to do the same for the north part of the yard – and the contractors will be ready to lay sod (in the north) and sow seed (in the south). Assuming this all happens by September first, that means the project will have taken 13 months with this contractor, and 29 months from the first contact I made with the first contractor (who never actually started the job, though he came out, surveyed, and made an elaborate plan). Somehow I never expected the #@(#)*)$@#^^@#!)#(*^% sprinkler project to be the most difficult one to accomplish of all the things we've done to our new house!
What, you don't consider Clemson a collage?
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