The Ups and Downs of Home Improvement

The two car garage is up in the air and scheduled to come down in a matter of days.

This has been a matter of great discussion in the neighborhood.
Our elder statesman stops by each evening to check on the progress.

 I won't do a play by play of all the ridiculous challenges we've faced getting this thing up in the air and the walls poured, because I think at some point, my husband would prefer to forget the pain of childbirth and just enjoy the results.  No Amish were killed in the raising of this garage, although one came close (twice)  Thank you GFCI!  Amish and electric just don't mix.

After the garage is set back down, the center "post" will be removed and the two narrow doors will be replaced with one wide door.  This will require relocating the electric panel around to the side and jack-hammering out the floor and replacing it with a new floor.  Then, a drain line must be dug to take gutter water away.  Which brings us to project #2, which is the house foundation.

For weeks now one wall of the office has been held up by a bottle jack.  Which, honestly, is a lot more than was holding it up before.  The dry fit blocks will be replaced with poured concrete.  And if possible, a sort of dry well under the new deck will be created allowing access to the crawlspace through a mini-door.  But that is contingent on the amount of fall (grade) we have from here to the woods behind the garage.  Because the "dry well" will not be very dry unless we put a drainline in. The house sat about a foot higher than the garage as it was.  Now we've elevated the garage over a foot but the surrounding surface still slopes away from the house.  Although we have not gotten the transit out yet, it looks like there is plenty of slope.

Then we will be replacing our side steps with a nice wide deck and some decent landscaping.  Because right now it's a construction zone.

So what is happening in the garden?  We are in the heat of July, which isn't all that hot this year.  Regardless, some of my decorative annuals are past their prime and looking tired, but other things, like the Portulaca, are just coming into their prime.  It is hard to get rid of something that is past it's season.  I've found if you cut them back and ignore them for awhile, you may get a second season in the fall.

My garden routine every evening is this:
 Water any wilty pots.  I cut out over half a dozen container plantings for just this reason.
 Kill 5 dozen Japanese Beetles.  At least.
 Pick up the windfall apples so the deer won't have a reason to stop by
 Do at least one chore that is bothering me most

These day lillies are doing their best to dress up our side entrance

No matter what routine I have in the garden, there will always be one thing that is picking at my brain.  Something that needs to be done but I don't want to do.  I make myself do one thing each evening.  It may be grubbing the purslane out of the beans, trimming the dead stems on the tiger lillies, or harvesting a tub of potatoes.  But one dirty sweaty chore must be done every day.  I save really big jobs like renovating the strawberries for weekends.  I can't spend every evening just strolling around with a glass of wine picking dried lily blossoms.