Happy Memorial Day!

In tribute to America's heroes, this weekend I embarked on the landscaping equivalent of the Bataan Death March. Only it wasn't so hot here, and I was doing it willingly. So, really, they're not alike at all, except for the misery.

First I put in the sandbox, with some help from my Sainted MIL, who not only babysits but also helps amend hideous squelchy clay-ey soil. Huzzah! You gotta get you one of them, especially if you've got soil like mine - those MIL's are reeeeeeal handy.

Then I got all motivated to finally fix The Window Well Situation. When we bought the house, the basement windows on one side of the house were separated from a flower bed by a long, untreated 1x10, which the home inspector said we needed to remove asap to prevent termite damage and the apocalypse and similarly tragic stuff.

Needless to say, we didn't do jack ... until last fall, when we bought the metal window wells and Jason excavated one piece of the wood and tried to install the metal. Only problem is, the waterproofing scheme for our basement apparently involves a 3' wide sheet of plastic that comes out at right angles to the house for the entire length of the foundation, about 6"below the soil surface. So when you try to dig a hole to put in a metal half-pipe around a window, you hit the plastic and decide it's a bad idea to puncture it, lest your entire basement fill up like a swimming pool. And the metal pipe wasn't far enough in the ground to actually clear the edge of the siding, so Something was going to have to Be Done. Which is why it sat cockeyed and half-installed for months ... until yesterday.

Yesterday and today I dug holes, I ripped out boards, I bought bricks, I installed bricks, I bought more bricks, I installed bricks, I forced Home Depot people to use a forklift to reach down a new pallet of bricks when I used up all the ones on the pallet I could reach, I took my Sainted MIL with me and bought more bricks, I installed more bricks, I turned over dirt, I hoed dirt, I added sand and compost and manure and peat moss, I got my Sainted MIL to hold the chisel while I broke bricks in half with a sledgehammer (BOO-YAH, BABY!), I got my husband to help turn over the soil and hoe the soil and dig the trench to keep the weeds out, I planted flowers, I replanted nameless perennials that kept regrowing in the previous flower bed, despite numerous attempts to Round-Up them into oblivion, I removed excess soil and used it to patch some of the sinkholes in the yard, I watered and fertilized and Preened, and I didn't fall over dead from the effort, although I can barely move my fingers because my forearms hurt that much despite massive doses of Tylenol and Motrin.

And I still have more to plant this week, but I think it's looking pretty good so far, even without the massive truckload of mulch I'm going to order tomorrow ...

Just look at the fine craftsmanship! You'd never know that my Stonemason's Motto is "Looks level enough to me."

And while I was doing all this, Jason was sitting on the couch eating bonbons. Oh, no, wait - he was down in the basement, vacuuming up mouse poop and fixing holes in the foundation and adding insulation to the tops of the walls, all in a space that required him to bend over backwards and reach blindly into the rafters while standing on top of the clothes dryer. I'm not sure whose job sucked worse ... okay, it was his, mainly because mine was voluntary, and his actually needed to be done (and involved fiberglass insulation, expanding foam that's now covering his forearms and hands, and wearing a respirator).

Why did it have to be done? Because last week we finally found the mouse that's been pooping on the dryer ... or rather, Bella found the mouse and proceeded to kill it and leave the still-warm corpse outside the door to the guest bedroom so my Sainted MIL almost stepped on it when she got up to pee. And she didn't even scream - see, she is a saint.

Luckily, we both managed to get the worst parts of our projects done today, so we can finish up the last bits over the next week or so, as weather and level of medication permit. In the meantime - K's mom and/or K's brother, what the hell is this?

They're on the left of the main photos - about 2' tall with downward-facing flowers at the top, lobed leaves at ground level (foliage looks kinda like clover, kinda like coral bells). Blooms nowish, won't die even when Round-Uped twice last summer. I inherited four of them, and I'd like to know what to call them since they seem to want to stay.

And how am I feeling tonight? The only quote I can come up with is from the Jerky Boys (watch starting around 3:55 on the timeline): "My ass is killin' me." I have GOT to learn to shovel with my other leg, too.