Renos' cont...

New Flagpole...old flag....lol...check out the brass ball at the top!.....we're nothing if not classy!

Pre Winter Reno's cont....

The Cat is doing a test to see what kind of soil we have in the back of the acreage...we have a woodcutter coming in to cut down all the trees and the cat is going to bury the remains of the trees and level the lot....the test was good....now we just have to wait for honest abe to cut down the trees...

The Liberals have nothing on us

I know, I know, since we hail from the Conservative Province of Alberta, just typing Liberals makes me shake :) However, since we live in a Liberal stronghold now (even though we still vote PC) we feel it is our duty to invest within our community, creating sustainable jobs etc etc...and anything that makes my lawn cutting duties easier, is just icing on the cake. We decided to fill in the ditches in front of our property, to save my blood and sweat for more important things. Howard, if you still read this, you should have warned me about ditches! A couple of phone calls, some high tech financial wizardry and before you can say "hey! you need a permit!" We were off and running so to speak. Roy Excavation was hired to do the work and what can we say? A reasonable price, excellent attention to detail, competent and friendly workers, timely completion of the task, I would heartily recommend Norman (the owner) and his company in a heartbeat. See below for our adventures in landscaping :)

Lynn vs the Machine!

The digger operator says "we have men who can take that out for you" Lynn replies "no thanks" and takes it out herself!...that's my wife :)

Dirt..oh yes, a little dirt

Let's cover up those pipes, it should only take a dump truck or two....

A lot of dirt...I mean a lot of dirt

Ditches only look deep when you're mowing them...but wait until u have to fill them with dirt...lol...it takes an awful lot of dirt, it was dump truck central here for a while.

Finished

Perfect, well except for the grass seed, that's for the Spring :)

Home Renovation Tax Credit At Work!

Who says the Conservatives can't help out us old retired folk? We saved the price of almost one whole set of stairs! We didn't do it for the savings, we did it because of the snow...now we only have to shovel the tiny bit by the side stairs and we can ignore the rest..Woot!...Woot!

Ah the rites of Spring

The snow is gone and with it the tedium of snow shovelling and snow blowing along with the prospect of seeing your house buried in snow. Now it is time to rectify all that we discovered was wrong with the design of the backyard that made our lives miserable during the winter. After careful analysis and severe number crunching coupled with several power point presentations, Lynn laid out her vision to make our lives better this coming winter. First, the front porch needs a new set of stairs adjacent to the house which would alleviate the need for shovelling 20 feet of sidewalk and six stairs. Second, the rear deck would have to go, which would eliminate many hours of shovelling and another six stairs. With her ever dutiful husband on board, what remained was finding the appropriate material to replace the deck. A beautiful cobblestone patio was envisioned by our landscaper but I think he was really envisioning building his summer cottage with his profits, so out went that idea. We settled on asphalt which we already had on the ground level in front of the deck but since the deck would be in the way of the asphalt people, it had to go. Lynn then enthusiastically tackled this major undertaking. As you can see, from the pictures below, it was quite the chore. These pictures do not show all the work that went into removing the stairs, railings and bench seating from around the deck but they give you some idea of what went on.