The roof is finished and it looks terrific (photo above)! It will be so nice to have the leaks stopped which will stop the ceilings & walls from deteriorating further. We’ll have Sprick Roofing back to do the shop & store room roofs when its time.
We are on the agenda for the August 28 Historic Resources Commission. The proposal came to 16 legal-size pages plus one addendum! We resolved the parking lot issue with the city, but we need a written report from a specialist certified arborist to confirm that our plan will work to save the old black walnut tree. The closest arborist of this type is 45 miles away, which means we’re paying $80 per hour of driving time plus working time! And that’s actually pretty inexpensive for this type of arborist. He’s a specialist on paving that will minimize impact on trees.
Yesterday we rented a small backhoe and Brian had a lot of fun! He cleared all the blackberry bushes from the backyard, and removed an old, overgrown lilac. I wanted to save the lilac but it was beyond that, so we’ll plant some new ones. The photos above show before (top) and after (bottom) from about the same perspective - quite a difference! The backyard looks so big now, and we can really see how much our property slopes to the north. We also found many beer & soda cans and a lot of trash. I was hoping for some old treasure lurking under the bushes, but no such luck. Brian also pulled up stumps in the front yard and I went behind him collecting the flower bulbs he’d uncovered. There were a lot; I plan to add those to the landscape plan as well.
There was an old metal shed in the yard next to the walnut tree. When Brian moved it with the backhoe we could see that some creature had been storing walnuts under it. There was a carpet of walnut shells about 3 inches deep! I tried hard not to think about which creature it might have been, but by removing the blackberries we’ve reduced the rat habitat. We should see fewer now that we’ve been getting things cleaned up.
