A Little More Buttoning Up

While the meteorologists said today would be the warmest day of the week, we still had a few tiny, tentative snow flurries this afternoon. Of course these arrived just as Chuck was climbing the ladder to clean the gutter on the front of the barn. Because our barn is old and swaybacked, even after extensive renovations, our fairly new gutter has a matching dip in it. The gutter guys who took the installation job were none too pleased with our obvious contentment with a less than rectilinear structure, but gutter us they did. The consequence is that every autumn, after the last oak leaf from the tree next to the barn has drifted to the ground, Chuck climbs up the ladder and empties the troughy part of the gutter of its accumulated debris. If for some reason Chuck does not climb the ladder, come spring, little green shoots will start sprouting up in the lowest point of the gutter; a jaunty spring green feather in the barn’s cap!

Another task we tended to today was checking the drain in our cellar. Late this summer, we noticed what we initially thought was just the opening of a chipmunk tunnel in our driveway. But then it got bigger - and deeper. Luckily it got smaller and eventually disappeared. But during the expansion, contraction and deconstruction, we began to have a nagging worry that the hole might just be over the approximate line our cellar drain runs along. Considering the excitement we had last September with our waste pipe, we vacillated between the narrow range of out of sight, out of mind and putting our heads firmly in the sand. Today we pulled our heads out, dragged a hose into the cellar and ran water through the cellar drain. The important word in the last sentence was “through”. It worked. No puddles formed at my feet; another bullet dodged!

Hmmm... I think I’m beginning to understand why people move to condominiums...