Passing the Time

Saturday was one looooooooonnnnnng day.

We continue to plug away on the dogs pen, both desiring to get it done and avoiding it like the plague. Unlike landscaping it's just not fulfilling, it's much harder work.

In the first picture, many weeks ago, I moved about 4-5 yards of dirt from the planting beds at the front of the house to the space the dog pen would be in, giving the plants good clean fill.

We finally got to the dog pen to level it, it's on quite a slope, the drop is close to 2.5 feet over a 15 foot long space. Unfortunately, as we started working on it we quickly realized that creating one massive flat level surface just wasn't going to be easy, it would require us to excavate a lot of dirt from one end and raise the other end too, which we expected. However we quickly realized this wouldn't work as the fence is 6 feet tall in this area and raising the height of the ground would risk the dogs 'finding' their way over the fence.

For people who think, naawwwh, wouldn't happen, think again. when I first got Ginger as a 1 year old, she saw a squirrel in the neighbors yard... hop, skip and a jump -more like flying leap, she jumped a 4 foot chain link fence. Anything remotely close to that height is risking a jail break.

So "plan B"... a terraced dog pen. AFter several trips to Lowe's for a few loads of concrete blocks and assorted odds and ends, we finished 8 hours later. The kicker... because we terraced it, we didn't need to 4 yards of dirt I moved there... nor did we need the 5-6 yards of dirt we had delivered last week for this very project... crap.

Soon to follow "plan C", where we figure out what the heck to do with the dirt. We aren't without ideas... we're without motivation. If we wait long enough, like months, it will all wash down the hillside!

In the coming weeks we'll build a dog house and landscape around the pen to get them some shade, the pen has full sun from 7 AM to 4 PM...trust me, we have the sunburns to prove it.

Enjoy the pictures from the planting beds out front along with the flowers from my very cool husband as we get back into the swing of life, living and our weekly date nights.

Lastly, we spent our date night at the drive in. We live 'close enough' to one of the remaining drive ins in CT, there used to be 42, and very few remain. We went early, filled up on burgers, dogs, popcorn and my coveted Twizzlers. As the sun went down we listen to cheers of "movie! Movie!, Movie!" and assorted honking horns from the anxious crowds. We watched a double feature, Fantastic Four followed by Oceans 13. Both great movies and being at the drive in was loads of fun, it's like its own unique culture, or cult, or community. Families with their kids playing on the playground or tossing footballs and Frisbees, teenagers on dates, it was really cool.

I think we'll be back again, though I admit it, staying up to watch the double feature, which ended around 1:30AM was pretty tough. Tougher yet... my continued struggles to sleep past sunrise, alas, such is life. But as my friends with kids would say, sleep is over-rated anyway.