The Deer

Just thought I would make a note of this.

I met one of our neighbors for the first time on Saturday. She had the nerve to make a comment about the lack of concrete deer in the front yard and wondering what type of "taste" we had.

Neighbors can be so hilarious sometimes. Seriously, as if we're the ones with bad taste.

Yes, we realized that the previous owner left them there for us. We even knew that she had purchased one of them especially for us. We realized all this and it didn't stop us from selling them all to that other nice old lady for $80 on craigslist.

Its Been A Year! (?!?!?)

Its been just over a year since we closed on our dear seventies house. I can hardly believe it. Time flies when you're having fun, or at least when you are incredibly busy as we are this month and next.

Kitchen update: Subfloor is done. Wiring is done. Sheetrock is partially done. Need to finish that and add backerboard to the floor and we will be "GO" for cabinet installation. I'm still pushing to get that done before July 4th. We'll see. I know that seems like a long time from now but we will both be gone from now till June 10th (in SPAIN, and Orlando...). I will be gone the next weekend. August will be gone the weekend after that. And that's all the weekends there are in June. AAAH! Can't think like that... not right now...

So, in honor of our one year anniversary of home ownership, I thought I would post this little update on the yard - the one thing that really didn't need "updating" from the previous owner. Instead, it just needed to be kept alive. There have been trials and triumphs along the way, as you can see in this slideshow.

Farewell, Woodland Creatures

**Que the "Bambi" soundtrack** We've just passed a major milestone at the Johnson residence: the sale of our four lovely deer statues which were left here for us by the previous owner. We will miss them, but not that much since we made $90 off their sale. This was only my second Craigslist sale and I got calls from 2 lovely old ladies. The first promised to be here by 7:30pm to pick them up, so when Old Lady #2 called, telling me about how long her husband had wanted some of those, it broke my heart just a little bit. Unfortunately for #2, Lady #1 did turn up on time with cash. She was overjoyed according to August. And only maybe 60, not quite old enough for her love of deer yard ornaments to be cute. Old Lady #2 was REALLY old, by the sound of her voice... I wish I had more little deer statues to sell her. Alas...

In memorium, here are some shots of the deer with Bethany from last weekend. (side note: Bethany got stranded overnight at the Denver airport, so we got a fabulous and very unexpected visit from her. I encourage all of you to route your flights through Denver... You never know...)

A final tribute: This is hilarious for about the first 30 seconds.

Our Yard and Flowers

Photobucket Album

Patio Sprung a Leak...

A couple days ago, we decided we needed to "understand" our sprinkler system......

So as I toggled through each of the 5 subsystems on the control in the garage, Mary-Hall was out in the yard running around making note of each sprinkler location and what subsystem they were on (we got to use the two-ways -- breaker, breaker). All was looking good until we got to the last subsystem and Mary-Hall noticed a large amount of water gushing from underneath our concrete patio in the back yard.......so I figured I would be fixing a leaky sprinkler line this weekend.



I started digging (and hacking through tons of very healthy tree roots -- I'm guessing this thing has been leaking for a while). After tunneling a pretty decent piece underneath the slab, I finally hit plastic -- then I began to gingerly carve out around the pipe. It was then that I noticed the oddity......

Whoever put this slab of concrete down, laid it right over the top of an existing sprinkler. That's right -- they've been watering the underside of this concrete slab for no telling how long. Crazy....




















So, needless to say, I was surprised but in a good way. It was much easier to run to Lowe's and get a couple of pieces of extension to move the sprinkler out into the flower bed, than it would have been to fix a leaky section underneath that slab.



I'd probably still be digging it out right now.

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