Home Work

It is nice to be home but now the work starts! The house sitter left the house pretty clean but once you dig beneath the surface it is easy to see the place needs a good cleaning. We spent the first two nights in the motorhome and are moving into the house tonight.

The landslide damage is pretty much repaired. They put up a new fence instead of repairing the old one. The new one is of equal quality, 8X8 posts all rough cut (full dimension) lumber, 1X8 boards, six feet high. It does not go all the way to the back of the property but neither did the old fence as it is 200 feet up a steep, densely wooded bank but it does go as far as the old fence did. The back is open to the deer so we will have to put in a couple of posts and add some wire farm fence to the existing farm fence to keep the flower eaters out. I will take the boards off the damaged sections of the old fence that they left leaning up against the house and there might be enough material for Brooks to do something with in the way of a permanent fence. Four of the old 8X8 posts survived, two long ones and two shorter ones,

Speaking of flowers, there are few left. The topsoil from the old flower beds is gone, replaced with rocky dried mud from the landslide. One of the down pipes from the roof gutter is missing and the perimeter drain is plugged with mud. I don't know if the Roto-Rooter can fix it or if has to be replaced.

On the other side of the house there is a year round stream that used to go into a rock (gravel) filled ditch and then into our drainage system. The ditch is plugged with silt and the stream is running across the lawn and down the driveway. The ditch has to be dug out, the gravel moved over to the low spot where we park the car dolly and a half load of larger rock put back into the ditch. This is work for someone with a much younger back so Beau, Norma's lawn boy, is coming over today to dig out 15 - 20 feet of the ditch or at least start to. We will then order the rock and he will come back and fill it. I told the sitter twice that she would have to watch for this same problem as it happened once before when the stream swelled up from too much rain and brought silt down with it and plugged up the drainage. It is a shovel and wheel barrow job as it goes across a lawn. I should have used larger stone to begin with, gravel plugs up too easily.

It will not be a quick process. I turned 70 yesterday and just do not have the drive of a 20 year old. Brooks is tied up working for the next month and will not be able to deal with the fencing problem so the deer will have the run of the place till then unless I can get a temporary fence in. I will have a look at it with Beau. In the meantime there are pounds and pounds of nails and screws to pull out of the old fence.

Time to get started.

New Fence:

Full Dimension Lumber

Plugged up drainage