WHAT MADE YOU GRIMACE & GRIT YOUR TEETH TODAY?

Good to see you up and around and back here where you're loved. Please take it easy. I'd like to know that you'll be around for a good long time..

Oy. Healing thoughts and wishes flowing in his direction.

I read on. Glad he's doing well.

That is wonderful to hear, ehBeth!

Greetings to you, Hamburger.

Good to see you Hamburger

Sending you all good wishes too from the UK

((Hbg)) x

Things come in threes...

We went to Texas earlier this week to see Hubby's aunt...really sort of a second mother...she just has a few weeks/months left due to cancer. While we were there, our house sitter called. The sump pump failed and our basement flooded. While we were hurriedly returning, our good friends in same town in Texas watched their home burn to the ground. They just got out with their pets and the clothes on their back.

So comparatively, we got off easy.

Still, we've spent the last few days trying to clean up a huge mess here. I had a basement office...insurance will not cover a penny of it. (insert words of choice here)

Oh, my... how awful all around!

Sending hugs.

Oh no Eva!

That's a lot to deal with.

When it rains it pours, eh! That sucks. Knock on wood this is will be the end of bad tidings.

Thanks, guys! The last load of water-damaged carpet, sheetrock & furniture went to the dump today, and it appears I was able to save the old family photos & papers after all. Repair work begins Tuesday. Whew...I am tired.

ya know, I was thinking about you guys when I was watching the radar that day.

turns out you weren't home, and I shoulda been posivibing your sump pump.

hope you get it all worked out, rainy season is just beginning...

Oh yeah, it's all your fault!

We've been here for 13 years, and this is the first time it's flooded. The pump has a battery backup and an alarm. If we hadn't been out of town, we'd have heard the alarm and been able to prevent any damage. Just bad timing, I'm afraid.

Eva, I would cry lots of tears for your loss and hard work, but I'm afraid they would flood your basement again. A friend would not do that to you!!!

BBB

new toothbrush -- with unnecessarily wide handle -- does not fit in existing toothbrush holder...

Symantec keeps hijacking my emails.

This is about basically nothing, but gets to my sense of controlling my space in a strange-to-me context.

Background - not all that long ago I designed many landscapes and some of them involved stones and boulders and heavy grading. I had japanese mentors and know a bit about japanese garden design, was asked to do the japanese garden for an arboretum (that fell through, the donor had his own land arch). Also know a lot of ordinary garden design with rocks.

All that being true, I never rolled in much money, and now less abled, I live in a smallish (bigger than my primarily loved cottage) attached 'town house'. I'm not hurling my income at the yard, working at it gradually. So, the problem:

There is a narrow space between our two driveways. Say 24' wide, 18" mine.
My attachee wanted to concrete it as they have sort of cyclical car thing and relatives with cars. I said no, I like my 18".

First I had to get rid of the thorny hedge on my side, finally did dig it out but haven't replanted yet. Attachee suggested we put in a small shrub hedge down the middle and they would pay for it. I said ok if we chose the plant together. I generally like their sense of design, but the middle is on my property and I don't want to hate the plant.

I've got a list from my take on the smartest local nursery and need to review it.

Meantime, they have left so some relatives moving back to this city have a place to stay - but attachee and mate are around. Saw him a few days ago.

Today I get back from the grocery store and there are two f------ rocks plopped on the sand, ten feet apart. Let's say 12 x 15 x 12 each - on my sand.

So what?
One of the things I have had trouble getting used to here is the plopped rocks as decor. Visually, stone rises from the land, or the land falls from it - it doesn't plop as a bird or helicopter drop. (We buried big boulders at least 25%). Much of this neighborhood has plopped rocks every x number of feet in parking strips. Like the mammoth eagle drops the rocks in measured spacing before he flies off to find some prey.

This is intolerable to me - at the same time they think they are doing a good thing, and they are good people. Did the relatives do that at their behest? Was someone instructed to do that?

Well, I called and said to the machine that I wanted N and G to talk with me before going any further.
I need to keep my famous temper damped, but on the other hand they didn't follow our conversation agreement.
Given my own yard is one of the proliferators of what I now understand are sand spurs, I am not sans sin.
Attachee's mate's cell phone number is defunct. The relatives are on the clueless side - have parked blocking my driveway, for example.

Ah, I just said on another thread the neighbors are friendly but not invasive.
We'll see.

Grrrrr! No sooner did I install a toothbrush holder years ago, and they invented wide handle toothbrushes.

I can see the problem. They encroach, and pretty soon they think and act like the encroachment belongs to them.



Nicely put.

Thank you.

toothbrush has found a home on glass shelf above sink.
skinny-handle jespah toothbrush must be feeling quite lonely over there in the holder...

Woke up to 6 inches of snow. We had none yesterday.. Expecting another 3 inches, broken tree limbs and more power outages. This is more snow than we had all winter, in one day. Gotta love spring.