To Make You Smile Today

 

Thanks Marilyn, for sharing these with me to post.

Before and After

 Our driveway was finished on Tuesday afternoon.  What a difference!

Before:

After:

We had trouble with water getting into basement so we had a French drain put in.  He lined the trench he dug with pond liner first, then laid the perforated pipe.  A solid pipe continued under the driveway down to the barn.

Before:

After:

We have access to the barn as a garage, once the cement slab is fully cured and we have a turnaround.

It was amazing to see him with the excavator.  He never once banged the house or barn.

This morning after a hard rain from Ida the driveway is even more settled and packed down.  It's called hard pack.  .

Another contractor done.  Next is the house painter coming this month.  

The barn whisperer has been notified that the grading and driveway are complete.   His wife drove by as we ate our lunch on the front porch.  She stopped to remark on how well it all looked.  Next up for the barn, hopefully before winter, are doors and leveling the left side of the barn.

Tea and Blooms

 Friday, daughter Emily and granddaughters invited me to join them for tea and flower picking. Emily had booked an hour at Song Garden. We had tea in the tea house and picked all sorts of blooms to fill two canning jars.

Join me as I wander the grounds.

The tea house.

Now back to the tea house for tea.

And it was!

Fire Pit

 Look what we built Sunday morning?

We used this YouTube Video - LINK here. Our costs were about double of what they described and we had to use 12 stones to make a circle not 10.

The fire Marshall required that we have 1 foot of area outside the circle.  He was surprised that we built it so fast.  He came on Saturday to review whether our placement was okay and then I called him on Sunday afternoon to approve it and issue our burn permit (required by state law).  He was impressed.

We invited daughter and family over for a campfire Sunday night to inaugurate the fire pit.  Emily brought the makings of s'mores except no graham crackers - she substituted gluten free cookies.

After they went home, we sat outside listening to the radio (streaming from WAMU FM a Washington DC station) until the fire burned down.  It was lovely.

p.s. you can see the finished deck there too.  No real furnishings there yet so I'll save featuring that until until next Spring when we make deck furniture purchases.

And today the driveway is being redone!  Progress!