So far, the plant mortality rate around here is zero, which is pretty damn impressive. Our yard is also covered with the flowers you see in the picture above. I think that they’re forget-me-nots, though I’d always thought that forget-me-nots were blue. There are definitely blue flowers here, but some of them are purple, and others are pink. They’re very attractive, whatever they are.
Unfortunately, it seems like the garden’s about the only thing going right this week. First my wrist started to have carpal-tunnel-esque issues. Annoying–especially since it’s somewhat more difficult to knit with a wrist brace on than it is without one–but not too bad. Last night I learned a very important lesson about making chicken wings at home (lesson: don’t do it) and managed to destroy supper and fill the entire house with smoke in the process. Then today, we found out that there’s a leak in the water service line, the pipe that connects the water main to our house.
Guess whose side of the pipe the leak is on? Yeah, ours. So after about two dozen phone calls to various insurance agents (who, predictably, told us that while any damage we sustain from the leak is covered, the pipes themselves are not) and plumbers (most of whom do deal with cover service line breaks) and referrals from referrals, we found someone who’s willing to do it next week, explained everything that they’d do, including telling us how they’d take down our fence, and is reasonably priced.
Sort of. Reasonably in the sense that I was afraid that this was going to cost $2500 or so, and it’s “only” going to cost $1250. I still about threw up when he said that. I realize how much work is involved (digging up the yard, removing the fence, drilling through the foundation of our hundred+ year old house…) and it’s a completely fair price, but it still stings.
He can fix it Wednesday, and in the meantime, our very, very nice neighbors have agreed to let us run a hose from their house to ours, so we can still do things like flush the toilet and shower. The water, we’ve found is sort of disgusting to drink even after it’s been filtered, so I think that I’ll be buying a flat of bottled water tomorrow. I never buy it–I feel bad about the environmental cost of all those plastic bottles, plus resent paying more for what’s probably just purified tap water anyhow–but I think that this one time, it’s probably worth it.
On the upside, the maybe forget-me-nots are in another part of the yard, so they’ll not be disturbed. All of the plants that I’ve started this year are in the backyard, so they’re safe, too. And the attractive green succulent that’s growing around the base of our giant tree is safe.
Next week’ll be better.