100 word minimum

Nice

For the past I don't know how long, a helicopter has been transecting the sky over my neighborhood. I assume it's a search helicopter, but the searchlight isn't on, so I don't know if they're accomplishing anything besides rattling my windows. [It's not the police, it's military exercises. I wouldn't go so far as to call it the "sound of freedom." [via]]

Another of life's little victories: The new package of cat food announces "Great new flavor!" and the cats actually agree.

I spent the morning filling out tax forms and writing checks to the US Treasury. Yes, it's quarterly tax time. It's too bad it comes just two weeks after I have to write the really big checks. On the bright side, I got a beer with brunch afterwards and took a nap this afternoon.

This weekend was absolutely beautiful. The air was crisp, clear, and that perfect temperature that people with really overpriced properties and earthquakes get all year. The rosebush is ramping up to its first glorious blooming of the season and is covered with palm-sized pink blossoms. The azalea is blooming better than ever this year (also pink) and Oz is taking all the credit because he put fertilizer on it last year.

So. What else could we do but have Oz dig a ditch across the backyard and trample on the lilies of the valley?

Last winter, when I had my porch floor replaced, I discovered the source of all our moisture issues or, at least, all the moisture issues relating to the house. The chucklehead who put the porch on the house routed the roof's rear downspout to a small, brick-lined hole under the porch, about four feet from the foundation. In one of my intro to engineering classes, we had to convert inches of rainfall and square footage to gallons. Even in a light rainfall, the roof is going to shed a lot more than ten gallons of water, which is about the capacity of that hole. I had assumed, based on some suggestive old photographs, that they had routed the downspout out into the garden where the water might do some good. Alas, no.

Water, while necessary for life and all that, is kind of bad for houses, which is why we use our drainage piping to carry the water away from the house. Unless we are chuckleheads who use a little drainage piping to deposit the water right at our foundation, and then stuff the remaining drainage piping (exactly enough to wrap around the house and carry the water out to the sidewalk) under the porch. Wimpy chuckleheads. They knew what they were supposed to do.

Well, it's done now and I documented the process with pictures that do not lie. The next owner of my house will be so pleased, I'm sure. Oz dug a trench from the downspout and around the front of the porch to where we could run the pipe above ground under a deck and through the alley. He got royally smeared with multicolored dirt in the process. My yard has red clay and rich black dirt in the flower beds, one of which the pipe now runs under.

Me, pointing at the nice flower-bed dirt: "Hey, that's good dirt. I really like that dirt."

Oz, glowering: "It's just dirt."

Now I'm looking forward to the next rain. I want to watch the water coming out of that pipe and flowing away, away, away from my house. I'm also going to get some impatiens and coleus to plant in my nice, black dirt. That flower bed's been fallow for too long. Before Oz dug it up, I rescued some sweet woodruff and transplanted it to another bed. The sweet woodruff is a volunteer, descended from one of the first plants I put in my garden the first spring I lived here. I could maybe spin that into a full circle sort of thing, except that it's not. It's just time to get back out in the garden.