I'd like to introduce myself, me llamo Mommy: OF A Garden, a pool and an island

This year we put in a raised garden, mostly because they tend to keep the rodents out better (ironically I have yet to see a rabbit or a squirrel on this island) and partly because we don’t have a tiller. But I have since learned of another benefit of putting in a raised garden. When we built the garden we brought in topsoil to fill it. That makes all the difference in the world when it comes to weeding. In this area the soil is more clay than anything and is rock hard. With our wonderful topsoil garden, all I do is move the clay slightly with a hoe and voila! weeds come out like nothing.

So with our house came a pool. We swam in it once last year, and then took about two weeks to close it. I’ve never owned a pool. I’m following Marc’s lead on this one. Well wouldn’t you know that every time we went to look for a piece necessary to close the pool the piece was not at the house—back and forth to the pool store we went. Finally it was all in place; we were ready to put the cover on. I pulled out the cover, begin to unfold and exposed a former mouse nest—complete with a few dead babies for fun. Well most pool stores were closed by this point so I pulled out my handy duct tape and patched all those holes.

Knowing that our pool cover was patched with duct tape and having been forewarned by a number of people as to what we would find when we opened the pool, we were completely content to see this…

…The bottom of the pool.

There was some debris and a bit of duct tape, but it was clear, not black. On top of that, as you can see on the first photo in this blog, there were no leaves, barely any water, and a generally clear pool cover—apparently that makes some people jealous.

So now we putter through the pool opening process, which has been a bit delayed by the need to make our neglected deck look better. A little semi-transparent weatherproofing, a lot of hours and some wonderful friends and family brings you this:

Believe me, that’s great improvement. And just an FYI—trellises suck. Keep that in mind should you be building a deck.

An now, my island. As I may have stated in an earlier post (or perhaps not), we live on a island. And as all you wonderfully sharp readers know, you need to cross water to get to an island. The most common ways to do this is with a bridge. Now should that bridge require construction, chaos ensues. And that my friends is the state of my commute. Since the construction began, my commute has lengthened by about 10 or 15 minutes most days—and then only on the way home. But recently my fellow commuters have decided that they don’t know how to drive. On Wednesday it took me an HOUR AND TWENTY MINUTES to get to my house. People, that’s unacceptable. So Thursday, having faith in my fellow commuters, I head home on my normal route and immediately take the fist exit off. Backed up traffic, not again. So for now I take the longer route—you know, the one that moves—and get home after a bit more driving. My mother finds it amusing to tell me “I told you not to move to the Island.” Gee, thanks Mom.

And that is the story of the garden, the pool and the island.