... and that's how we learned something new about plumbing

Q: Why won't our outdoor faucet let any water out?






A:
Ah ah. The guy at Ace said, "You haven't been drinking out of that, have you?"

A few pictures from a few weeks ago

Our good friends (http://www.houseofkee.blogspot.com/) came through Chattanooga a few weeks ago. We liked seeing them.



Walking bridge + ice cream = don't you want to come visit us, too?



"I see a Cardinal"





Waffles (picture from the rental, not the new house)

Weekend Surprise

This weekend Mark and I did a little yard work together. We put anti-weed plastic down in a few of the flower beds, trimmed back our invasive mimosa trees (our neighbor said: mimosas are so beautiful -- I'd like to have them fill the slope between our houses... It's not unlike saying she wants to cultivate kudzo, but whatever), and cleaned out the gutters. The gutter that runs along the front of our house goes down a drain pipe that goes into the ground. The pipe then runs about 12-15 feet underground and empties at the road. This weekend, we put a hose at the top of the pipe and noticed that no water was coming out the other end. Time to clear it out. So Mark cleared out some of the grass that had been growing in front of the opening and stuck his hand as far up the pipe as he could reach. He knocked loose some leaves and mud, but not much else.
"Sarah," he says, "come stick your hand in here and see what you can reach" (you see I have no muscles and therefore have skinny arms).
So I stuck my arm in the pipe and the tips of my fingers just grasped a root or two. I pulled. Out came not only the roots but some muck stuck to them:




I kept pulling. I guess the water had knocked some stuff loose because all of a sudden it was like that magic trick where the scarves keep coming out of the hat. The root-muck-rope kept coming. I kept pulling slowly and gently so it wouldn't break. It kept coming. Mark started yelling. Our neighbor came out to look.

Twelve feet later the rope ended:




Sick, huh?