Hole in the Wall

Sunday, February 8, 2026

For the last several years as I’ve been digging in my back yard I’ve been saving the bigger rocks that I’ve dug up. They are now in a big pile on the north side of our house. Lisa asked me to save them because she thinks they will come in handy for future landscaping projects in the yard.

Meanwhile, I have finished up the wall in the backyard and I was getting ready to apply the finishing touches and move on to the next project. Unfortunately, Lisa is anxious to put in some more storage sheds but I had to explain to here that we have no room for storage sheds and the only way that could happen is if I pushed the wall further down the side of the house to open up more space. Guess what I am now doing. Yes, my wall isn’t done, it now has to be extended another twenty feet or so.

That wouldn’t be so bad except for the big pile of rocks that currently sit on that side of the house. I explained to Lisa that those rocks had to go in order for her to get her storage sheds but I wasn’t willing to move them twice. We had to either do something with them or they were going out in the trash. So now I have another project to finish before I can even start on the extending the wall which was a project that I wasn’t planning on.

Our long range plans always included taking out the plants in the front yard and extending the pavement. Well, we can’t really do the pavement right now but Lisa and Jeff decided that we could take out all the plants, level the ground, put down a weed barrier and then put the rocks on the weed barrier. That turned out to be a lot hard than it sounds.

The biggest problem was the Birds of Paradise. Those suckers have a huge root system that took forever to dig up. Jeff and Zander did all that work while I did my best to save the few plants that Lisa did want to keep.

We have a beautiful Double Delight Rose that hasn’t been doing really good in the shade so I moved it out with the rose that Lisa planted in memory of her mother and they both look a lot happier out there. We also moved several of our Agapantha’s that needed more sunlight than they were getting.

So in the process of doing all that, I poked a hole in my plumbing which didn’t bother me too much because the valves were right in front of the front window and I knew they would be an eye sore, so I took this opportunity to move the valves to the edge of the house where they would less bovious and more easily hidden.

So there I was working on the plumbing and I “gently” leaned against the wall and my shoulder went right through the wall.

Just when I thought I was essentially done with my yard, it has now snowballed into four projects that are all waiting for me to get to them. Uggh. I’m not really all that upset though because I have known for a few years now that I needed to get to the pillar that has the stucco falling off of it so I will just do that along with the wall which was also obviously in need of repair. I guess that is now five projects that all need my attention. Now if I can just find a couple of weekends that I can work on them.

--------------------trivia--------------------

Alcohol is far more harmful than any other drug, legal or illegal. 

Heroine is #2 and crack cocaine is #3.

-----------------------------------------------