Today we got so much done and not done. I had always heard that when you buy a house and start working on it that you end up with other projects not quite planned for. That was definitely the story of our day at the Fuller house! The plan for today was to clean up the gutters, finish raking the backyard, clean up the brick flower bed, and clean up behind the shed in preparation for our garden. And what did we get done? Well, the gutters for sure.
What a yucky mess. Of course, it was my job to hold the ladder while my wonderful husband scooped and threw and sprayed with the hose. Even though it was not sunny, I had to wear my sunglasses just for eye protection! Then it was on to the next project. While Dave cleaned up from the gutter job, I started by raking the leaves from alongside the garage (the ones dumped from the gutter). And that is when we got detoured.
While raking the leaves, I noticed the rake leaving furrows on the ground. Very clearly defined ones, I might add. So of course, I squatted down to take a look. Hmmm...that is not dirt. Stand back up and scrape with my shoe. Yep, definitely not dirt. Time to get a better tool. I grabbed my son's little snow shovel (give me some credit here...it had a straight edge on it) and scraped along the side of the garage. And guess what we found buried....a sidewalk! Who in their right mind would bury a sidewalk under six inches of dirt and gravel?
By the time we were done digging and scraping and dumping wheelbarrow load after load, we had a sidewalk that started at the garage and ended about four feet short of the house. We also found a lonely little step...to...you guessed it...nowhere. Were these landscaping projects gone wrong? Or what? It doesn't matter, I guess. We love our little sidewalk. We plan on extending it fully to the house and redesign our fence to incorporate it. Of course, we still had some questions, like why did it end at the brick flower bed at the back of the garage? Which brought us to our second detour of the day - the brick flower bed.
Or so, we thought it was a flower bed. The original plan was to clean out the marsh grasses and milkweed from last year. We wanted to smooth it all out so that we could attach a downspout to a rain barrel for watering the garden. Seems simple and easy enough. We figured that the dirt would only go down a few inches, so we started digging. And digging. And digging...three and a half feet down and we still have not hit the bottom. It definitely is not a flower bed as we originally thought! So, what is it?
Unfortunately, we had to stop digging for two reasons...first, Dave got an emergency call and had to go to work; secondly, the middle of the dirt pile is frozen solid, we think, from the gutter dumping rain into it (which is why we thought it would be perfect for a rain barrel to begin with). Our wonderful neighbor came over while Daddy was working and she knew exactly why we had a sidewalk leading to a flower bed that is not a flower bed!
We have a sidewalk leading to the old well for the house! We are so excited. Now, instead of a rain barrel, which is not as pretty as, well, an antique style wrought iron hand pump, we are going to have a pump. First, though, we have to finish digging it out and find out if the original piping for the original well is still in place. And get a well permit from the city. And find buy a hand pump. And the list goes on and on.
So even though today did not go as planned, we are still very happy with our new discoveries. Stay tuned and see what else we may find.
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