July 30-August 14

            Most years, we take a trip up the coast in the Bus (and before that in a Prius, and before that in the Accord, and before that in Buttercup, my 1984 Volvo wagon). This year, however, we have decided to stay home and work on our house. What with one thing and another and pandemic, we have actually not had time to work on our house much in the last few years, but this year we decided to use the vacation money, time, and energy to stay home and rebuild our side yard.

When we first bought our home in 2008, our side yard looked like this this (yes, that’s my butt):

It was actually our first home improvement project, so we got a circular saw and some screw drivers and built the worst gate in the known universe, and then we made it our Shangri La: See Picture at the top of the blog.

But the pond leaked, and the plants grew, and over time the Shangri La of our mediation space descended into “Have you checked the pond out there? I can hear something is wrong.”

Raccoons. They love running water, and our Shangri La was definitely their favorite hangout. Eating succulents from the root? Check. Killing goldfish? Scales. Taking the pump out of the pond to hotwire it for their DeLorean? Gotcha. And then let us speak about our house and the lack of rain gutters, and what water does to wood? Maybe you have the picture already, but our idea this lovely summer day was to start anew, to rebuild what we had lost…

            Which brings us to Day 1, Demo Day, and that was pretty awesome, black widow spiders notwithstanding. We got the old deck out and ready to save, the old pond out, and we were flying high…

            Which brings us to day two, and the terrible, terrible digging of the holes, which was proceeded by the Awful Necessity of Hauling Extremely Heavy and/or Ungainly Objects (4X4’s and concrete). And now, here we are at day 2: The leveling of the fence posts, Oh Holy day!

            The plan for this part of the blog is a trip book where we only go to hardware stores, so if you want to tune out, feel free to do so (assuming anyone reads this). This blog is really a way for me to keep a diary of my life, with pictures, and all I plan to share over the next part are lessons learned and pictures of our progress. For my dear friends and family who read this, much love, and for anyone else: digging holes in sandstone is hard work. Thank Goodness we had my father’s old rock hammer.