Tote That Gravel

We were up early today. Actually, I was up early. Lisa didn't get any sleep at all, her ear noise having kept her up all night long. Still, she still had enough energy for us to get some work done this morning. Lisa decided that we could use more concrete blocks; however, there was only one 16 x 16 block left over at the hardware store. We hauled it back to the house and settled it in next to the single block I pictured yesterday. Then we went over to her father's house, where we filled a wheelbarrow with gravel from a pile that they have there and rolled it back over to the old house. We surrounded the five staggered blocks with gravel so that there are no abrupt edges, and we hope to keep the drainage better in the area and act as ballast, holding the blocks in place. I reckon we'll see how well it worked when the rain returns tomorrow.

There's more mowing that needs doing, but some of it needs to be done near the church, and we don't like doing that on a Sunday morning during services. Even thought we don't attend that church (her father does), we don't like being bad neighbors. Besides, Lisa was running out of steam and needed to rest. When I came in to check my mail, I was reminded by Cheryl's Twitter posts that there was a Formula 1 race today. I'd forgotten about it, but as good luck would have it, Speed TV's replay was running about then, so now I can sit down and watch the race at Lisa's father's house. We'll probably mow more of the outer field today, and then possibly replant grass in a section of the field where we'd killed the grass by piling sawdust from the fallen tree.

Enough Done for This Trip

One of the challenges of trying to work through such a large backlog of chores is that often when you start one job, you discover something in the way that you have to do instead before you can even start the other one.

( Wasps, mold, mildew, brush piles, and patching holes in the lawns )

I am completely wiped out, but feeling pretty accomplished. We got a whole lot of work done this weekend. While much still remains -- and will probably always remain, that being the way of property maintenance -- I still can feel that there's nothing to fault my efforts. We did luck out a bit, with my not flying back until tomorrow (a consequence of cheaper air fares on Monday afternoon and a very generous supervisor) and with us finally having a stretch of good weather on a weekend. Still, I feel like I could sleep for a week right now.

Lisa is glad we got so much done, but she's still sick from the cold/flu, and her ear continues to wail at top volume. It's no fun at all, and as of this writing, she has not slept for 38 hours.