Aaaack--it's been way too long!

Please forgive me! I am shocked once again at how long it's been since I posted!

We are here; we have completely moved and we live in That House now. We've even had out of state company twice! Several family members have come to spend weekends with us. I cannot BEGIN to say how gratifying it is to finally have enough space to allow a thing like that to happen! *big beaming grin*

The bad news is that we still don't have a working kitchen sink, the bathroom sink leaks into the basement, and the diverter is stuck so we can't use the shower, only the bathtub--but hey, at least we do have running hot and cold water!

I am still very worried about the brick wall on the south side of the house. It will be quite a while before we can get it repaired, since that means taking it down completely, scraping the mortar off all the bricks, and having a mason re-use the bricks to rebuild the wall. The cheapest bid we got was $10,000 and that is way out of our reach right now.

I've begun telling the rain to go away every time it threatens, because having a river in the side yard is not good for that wall at all--and it has rained so much that water is now seeping into the basement. Dry days are my friends. Hot windy dry days are my saviors! As the water evaporates out of the yard, it also seeps back OUT of the basement.

I bought a fridge that was too big to go through the kitchen doorway, so we punted... it lives in the dining room. The washer and dryer are still on layaway and when they are delivered, they'll have to come in through the mudroom--which is okay by me since that's where they're going to live! The fridge is big and the washer and dryer are heavy duty, because I'm planning for lots of company.

We have more weeds than grass in the yard, and I'm all excited to see if the violet-looking weeds in the back yard really are violets. The ones in the front yard surprised me no end by sending up a weedy yellow flower that wasn't a violet at all. We also have henbit, dandelions, and miner's lettuce as far as I can tell.

The big trees in the back are maples.

Last night a young yellow-crowned night heron came to visit our backyard and caught bugs for dinner; we were thrilled to see it!


Forgive the blurriness of the pic; we were afraid the bird would fly away if we opened the back door, and so the pics were taken through the window without a flash. Tis a young bird; the full adults are a bluer gray with streaks rather than spots on their backs, and in breeding plumage they have long white feathers coming off their heads and draping down over their backs.

I admit I was completely enchanted! A heron... a HERON... in MY backyard! *big beaming grin*

We aren't unpacked yet and the place is a mess; we moved in without finishing the floors (I pulled forty more nails out of the living room floor the third day we were here) and it startles me that we can live like this... but yanno, we can, we are, and everything will be okay: we're Home now.