Not Really What I Had In Mind

Saturday morning broke through sunny, clear and beautiful.  An absolutely perfect day for gardening!  Just cool enough a long sleeve shirt felt good until you started working, then the short sleeves under it were just right. 

I had big plans! Get the whole garden cleared (two open patches and all the beds), and get the peas in, and the potatoes, and the lettuce and the spinach, and get the tree I took down worked up, and get the mower deck on, and clean out the barn, and get my fruit trees in, and solve the baryon asymmetry problem (oh, just look it up if you really care), and get my tower up, and extend the mission life of the Hubble, and translate the entire Bible into Minoan - including concordance (once again, you know the drill - Google it if you don't get it.), weed the strawberry bed, and have another cup of coffee.  It was one of those mornings!  I was feeling about as good as I've felt since December and was going to make the best of it. 

Fred and 'the girls' being somewhat helpful..

...mostly.

I was well on my way to actually accomplishing two or three of the things on my list (not the baryon, Hubble, and Minoan bits) when I got a text from De: "Water Emergency". Getting a text like that is never good.  It's especially not good on a beautiful spring day, and hugely not good when you know that likely means there is water where it does not belong in disturbing quantities, which is just what I found. 

2 minutes later the water to the downstairs toilet is shut off.  2 hours later the water, which had made its leisurely and meandering way some 20 feet into the living room, was up,  the small rugs were out, and the hardwood floors were being dried by a big fan.  2 minutes later I discovered the toilet was NOT clogged.  2 hours later I had come to the conclusion I was going to be using my shovel for something other than dandelions in the potato patch.  2 minutes later I had resigned myself to the task.  2 hours later it was pretty much done.

Step One:  Locate and dig out the clean-out.  Unfortunately, it did me no good.

Step Two:  Start digging up the tank.  Fortunately, more than 1/2 of this was done with the tractor.

I'll spare you, gentle readers, the indelicacies of a detailed description of what I found when I got the lid off the septic tank, but I was able to get it all working again.  (That was an especially wonderful thing 'cause by then I REALLY needed a shower.)   I will say however, based on a messy bit of forensic evidence and a somewhat more tidy bit of speculation, Granddaughter #2 may be getting a bit more supervision in the bathroom.

I was about as whooped as when I took down that tree, but Sunday was another day and after Church and lunch, with a bit of help from son Adam and De, we did get the peas in, the onions in, and the potatoes in.

Son Adam being very helpful with the peas.  Pics of the hog panel trellis later.

'Girls' being decidedly unhelpful with the potatoes.  Thief!  Thief!  Get back here with that!

 All in all, while it really wasn't what I had in mind, I suppose I have to count it as a productive weekend.  The garden can wait just a bit longer, I'll manage to work around the stuff in the barn, we'll all just have to wonder about the baryon asymmetry thing, the chainsaw will still be there when I'm ready, the Minoans (if you can still find any) will have to hold on for a more worthy translator, the tower can sit on the ground right where its been for two years, the Hubble will have to just hang in there until the James Webb shows up in 2018, the strawberry bed isn't that bad, and it's too late in the evening for more coffee.    

And tomorrow is another day.

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark