Memorandum Monday and September’s Five in Five

There’s a bit to report this Monday. We’ve done quite a bit of work on our house in 2016. All the bathrooms have been refurbished, and all of them received new plumbing. We’ve added a new chair to the living room, a new bed in the guest room, and a new sleeper sofa in the den. The last of the big projects was replacing our front sidewalk. It’s been in the planning stage for several years, actually. At one time, we thought we’d relocate the front walk, but in the end, decided just to replace the cement sidewalk with a brick walk that would match the one on the side of the house which was there when we moved in 31 years ago.

Here’s a look at the sidewalk in mid-September:

Notice that my beautiful Korean pear tree is already dark brown. Sadly, it’s not from the change in weather, but a fungal disease for which there is no effective treatment.

About a year ago, Matt and Tracy pulled up the cement sidewalk that led to the kitchen door. At that time, we still planned to move the sidewalk toward the center of the yard. Tracy laid down pavers to get us through until the new sidewalk went in.

Last spring, Matt started his own landscape business, and he’s doing all the work himself. It’s very nice to have him around every day, and I have lots of photos of the process. For today, however, I’ll stick with the photos I took this weekend.

You’ll notice the Korean Pear tree is now gone. If I were a crier, I would have cried the day it came down. We’re not sure, but we think we’ll replace it with a Kousa Dogwood in the spring. I had no idea what was involved in replacing the walk, but it was much more involved than I imagined. Matt is meticulous so everything was done very carefully.

This week the lawn has to be regraded, and a new bed will be designed for the glider and the new tree if we choose to replace it. He’s also going to resize the bed around the light pole. One thing I really wanted was to have some of the existing beds cleaned out and replanted with a lot fewer plants. Matt has two of them done, but there are still some hostas that need to be moved from the front of the house behind the holly. I love to look out my studio window (top left) and see the new sidewalk. It’s a bit of a consolation for no longer being able to watch the birds in the pear tree.

On Saturday Matt and Betsy had an out-of-town wedding to attend, so we babysat for Skylar and Ella. Maddy went to her Aunt Pam’s. We had a great time, and I took the opportunity to collect some photos for Sandi’s 5 in 5 monthly meme. Here’s Ella writing and drawing at 23 months old.

Five photos in five minutes; it’s a fun exercise and you can join in right at Sandi’s blog, itchifingers.