July Updates

We have been busy working on the yard and have again neglected the blog. It is hard to believe it is already over two months since the last post. Very slowly but surely, we are getting a natural gas line put in. Eventually we hope to make the switch from oil heat to gas. Because of the patio in front of the house, among other things, we have had to do a lot of the preliminary work ourselves. That work mostly involved a 2' by 2' trench almost 50' long from the house and around the patio. Eventually the workers from the gas company are going to come and run the line the rest of the way to the street.

While we had the yard dug up and had some extra soil, we extended the terrace on the south side of the house to make the relatively flat area next to the house larger. That terrace is all the bare soil and wall of rocks in the pictures. The grass is planted, and hopefully we can coax it to grow in the hot summer weather.

The lilies seem to be enjoying the summer weather, probably all the recent rain more than the current heat. The bulbs we planted in one of the new flower beds have grown into sturdy plants, some over 3' tall. The flowers pictured were cut from those plants.

With the current wave of yard work complete, it's back to the garage. We're going to start putting up the new drywall to cover the new insulation. We can't close the walls yet because the plumbers still need to get to the gas lines going through the kitchen. Depending on the gas company, hopefully the plumbers will be able to do the gas work inside the house by the end of August.