Crap.

Literally. Our annual Spring blocked drain pipe to the road was more than just roots this year. The pipe was crushed to a 1/2" opening. Lucky me. Money we saved to live off on in case the state shuts down for a month was the exact amount needed to pay for a new pipe to the sewer. I know I should feel lucky that we had the money available, but somehow I don't feel it.

I have spent the last few weekends working on a garden that I thought was in great shape. I wasn't planning on adding to it, but a friend was thinning out her garden. Last year many of her perennials went to the compost pile. So I volunteered to take her extras. She had so many that I was pretty busy. Again thinking that when I got done planting I can just enjoy my garden this year. I would thin out my own garden next year. One garden area project ended up being a much larger project than I expected. I am hoping the effort will be worth it - many of the plants were stressed when planted, so it looks nasty. I am expecting it to be stronger next year.

What I wasn't expecting was removing 12' of garden in the front of my house to accommodate a drain pipe. (This is most of the plants from the top photo.) I got home from work and spent the rest of the evening trying to find temporary locations for all of the plants. Later this morning I got a call from Ram-niss. They couldn't find the drain pipe and are now going further down the porch. He wanted to know what plants I needed to keep. "All of them!" was my reply. So now he will be moving more plants. I have no idea what our lawn is going to look like. Somehow that isn't nearly as annoying as redoing 5 years of gardening this weekend.

I thought I was going to be able to sit back and just enjoy my garden this year.

Did I meantion that the dryer died? It has the same symptoms that it had last month when we paid for a repair man to come and fix it. Ram-niss and son purchased a used dryer for less than a repair man. We can still dink with it on our own, meanwhile we can continue with the laundry... once the sewer drain is repaired...