Day 263 September 21 - Long Day

Let's just say that the way it's going Friday is going to be really short.  However, I'm winning the competition that we have among ourselves at the desk each week, which is kind of surprising since the road to the store closed for reconstruction yesterday morning and sales dropped 40% for the day.  Ouch...

This time last year I used my down time to completely redo my front yard.  I brought in topsoil.  I regraded, and reseeded/overseeded the entire yard.  And to top it off I enlarged two tree rings into one large, freeform planting bed extending from the sidewalk to the front porch, wrapping across the front of the yard to the large oak closest to the street.  I moved several hostas and other perennials, edged it and mulched and really started building the foundation for a new planting area.  These pictures are from October after the grass had regrown and the beds had been mulched.  I've discovered that newly seeded lawns do much better if you keep people off of them as much as possible for many months.  The ropes stayed up until mid June this year.

In July every one in the neighborhood got a letter from Columbia Gas telling us that they were installing new gas mains, services lines and moving all of our meters to the exterior rather than leaving them in our basements.  What the letter didn't say was that the new mains and service lines were going to be in our front yards rather than the alleys and backyards where they are currently located.  I came home from work several weeks ago to find what looked like an open grave and two large piles of dirt on my new lawn.

I've been in this house for 20 years.  And in that time this farmer's daughter has done extensive landscaping to the entire property.  You can definitely time that someone in the design business lives here.  This week I've come home to see that they have started running the service lines and setting the meter locations.  My neighbor to the north has his new meter located right next to my driveway.  Right next to where I park my truck.  This ought make getting into my snowy driveway a real treat this winter.  But the truly best part of this is that every yard on the street so far has been trenched to install the service lines.  This is completely contrary to what the directional drilling approach that project manager told the neighborhood would happen at the public meeting.  Since the only possible path to the only possible area they can install a meter on my house is also the most heavily planted.  I expect that this is going to cause real problems.  Because if they think that I believe an excavation/mechanical contractor is going to give a rat's behind about protecting my rather expensive and labor intensive plantings, they are idiots.

I'm getting rather tired of hearing that "You don't understand construction," when I politely ask to speak to the project manager.  I've never quite figured out why anyone would assume that a soprano voice or boobs make construction incomprehensible.  Never mind that I've worked in the construction industry in some capacity or another for about 30 years now.  Tonight my yard is the only one on the block without a trench, and that's because they have no idea where they can run the line as I refuse to take unpaid time off from work to let them fool around.  This wasn't my bright idea and I'm not shorting my paycheck to accommodate them.

My fibery fun for the day was getting about 10 rows complete on the beret.