Sunday, November 11, 2007

House

I totally swear this post will be shorter than the previous one which went on forever.

So my Better Half's brother swooped into town a little while back and performed various Home Repair services for us. He did this last spring and thus we have a shed. This time he crafted a garage organizer/canoe stand, mostly from scrap that he thriftily obtained from the builder's supply place we frequent (not a BigBoxO'HomeImprovement but a smaller place with better prices and no patio furniture etc). That being done, he then threw together an awesome arbor for our back patio.

I'd go into a long, boring explanation of how the sun pounds down on that side of the patio and makes it inhospitable in summer, but you don't care. Really, you don't. All you care about is the arbor, and well you might, because it is indeed awesome. Considering the materials cost less than a hundred bucks, and 30 of that was paint.

So without further ado, and kindly disregard the mess that is our pre-winter-cleanup patio, I give you The New Arbor:




It is our intent to plant viny things like perhaps grapes or wisteria on either side and let it grow up the sides and meet in the middle, but of course we can't plant til spring.

That lumpy brownish thing to the right of the center of the photo, up against the house, is a fantastic clematis that grows from a few sticks in the ground in winter to become the rampaging behemoth you see there. It blooms giant dark purple flowers all summer. It came with the house so I can't take any credit.

What else did J's brother do for us, you might ask? He fixed the front and back doors which both had deadbolt issues, repaired the sagging gate on one side of our fence, installed a new light fixture in the dining room, and shored up a light fixture in the baby's room that we installed but one screw was stripped or something so it kind of drooped.

Did I mention how much I like it when he visits?

We do pay him for his time but it's very casual and we all like it for the fun we have together too.

As if all this was not enough, he took J fishing and here is what she caught: an 11 pound silver (or Coho) salmon!


Internets, we ate it for dinner and have three packages in the freezer! And two of them are big enough to make for company! It was the yummiest salmon ever.

3 comments:

Jeff and Charli Lee said...

Most excellent aborage. He and I would get along well, since I built 3 (much smaller) arbors on our property over the last few years. We grow everything imaginable up and around those suckers!

p.s. Can you fix the pic link so we can enlarge it?

Impetua said...

I'm not sure why it won't post the pic correctly, but if you go to http://impetua.multiply.com/ you will see the original post, and that picture will enlarge. In fact it will enlarge to astronomical proportions, such that you would need to hover near the ceiling to see it properly.

Jeff and Charli Lee said...

Funny.