A dumpster, a plumbing emergency, and leaves…..sooooo many leaves.

So we finally rented a dumpster. Or rather, I finally convinced Mike that we needed to rent a dumpster. There’s still lots of stuff in the house that needs to be cleaned out (we could probably fill the dumpster just with what’s in the attic) and we have three outer buildings – two small sheds and a garage – that are all just chock full of junk. There may be a few gems buried in there somewhere (there is an old-time scale in one of the sheds that’s super cool; I’ll post a picture once we get it out) but most of it looks like junk. And we have very little storage space in the house so we could use the space in the outer buildings, even though structurally, they’re all just hanging on by a thread. OK, so maybe they’re not THAT bad, but they definitely need to be rebuilt.

Anywho, I’ve been busy throwing junk away while Mike is working so he can’t scrutinize what I’m tossing out (have I mentioned he’s a bit of a hoarder?). Hahaha. Just kidding honey, I’m not really doing that. EVERYTHING I’ve thrown away is most definitely JUNK, by both of our definitions…….promise. 😁 While I was showing Mike something on the porch that I thought we should maybe keep (well, I’m not just storming through the house throwing things away willy nilly), I suggested we go look at the faucet in the yard that I found a couple months ago.

Now, we know we have a water leak somewhere between the street and the house because our water bill has been WAY too high and we’ve fixed all the leaks inside the house. We’ve been kind of avoiding it because it may involve hiring a plumber to identify where the leak is and fix it, a costly endeavor.

So as we’re looking at the faucet, I turned around and saw another faucet up against the house that I hadn’t seen before. This one was about as tall as me – weird. So we walk over to it, I jiggle it, kinda, and as Mike is saying, “don’t do that!” we hear a crack. Oooops. Mike listens, and sure enough, he hears running water. I couldn’t hear it, all I heard was rain drops. Did I mention it’d been raining for two days? Yeah, so everything is wet, including the ground, which we now have to dig up to find where the line connects. Mike sent me in the house to get some tools and as I’m coming back out, he calls, “Never mind! Call the city! We need to shut off the water from the street! I hit the line and now it’s REALLY leaking!” This one I could hear. Fortunately, there is a customer shut off valve right by the city shut off valve. We just needed to locate it under all the leaves (as the title implies, I’ll be mentioning leaves later in the post). So now we dig…..and dig……and dig. We follow the line all the way around the house just into the back yard and find, an open-ended pipe. Huh? That makes no sense. So Mike decides we don’t need to find where the pipe connects; for now, we just need to cap it off at the joint where the faucet meets the water line. We stop and make a trip to Lowes to be sure we have all the materials we need. We go back to the original faucet and start digging out a little more dirt so we can get to the pipe and dry it off. It’s pvc so we need to glue on the cap, which requires a dry pipe. So, Mike cuts the pipe at the joint and glues on the cap. We wait 30 minutes just to be sure it’s set. We go back outside; Mike runs to the street to turn on the water while I watch the newly capped line. “Nope!” I yell as water is spewing out of the line just below the cap. Remember that crack we heard when I jiggled the line? Yeah. OK, so we can’t use THAT joint. Now we need to dig to find another joint. This could take a while…..in the mud…..in the dark. Fortunately, we only had to go about 8 inches to find the next joint. The junction was on a steel line which is a little easier to cap. We just need to screw on a metal cap….and fortunately, Mike has one of those. But first, we need to unscrew the line that’s connected. Did I mention it’d been raining for two days, and the ground was saturated? And it’s about 10pm at this point? And we’re working in mud? In the dark? Fun stuff!

So Mike gets his wrenches and tools that he needs and starts wrenching on the pipe to unscrew it. It starts moving so he keeps turning…..and turning…..and turning. At first I thought he was turning in the wrong direction…..you know, righty tighty, lefty loosy – that was going through my head. But I didn’t say anything initially. I figured he knew what he was doing. This is how it goes:

Mike: Grunting and heaving

Me: “Is it getting any easier?”

Mike: “No” More grunting and heaving

Me: Tentatively, “Are you sure you’re turning it the right way?”

Mike: With confidence, “Yeah.” More turning and turning, grunting and heaving

Mike: “Shit!”

Me: “What??”

Mike: “You were right, I’m turning the wrong way.”

Me:

Funny how easy it was to come off once the correct turning direction was implemented. So now the cap simply screws on. But…..it doesn’t. The end of the pipe was stripped…..from all that wrenching and turning…..the wrong way. So, we dig for the next joint. Fortunately, again, we didn’t have to dig very far. This time, the pipe is unscrewed properly (😁), the cap installed quite easily, and although we’re both exhausted and covered in mud, we’re happy that we don’t have to use buckets of water, from across the street (see my first post) to flush the toilets.

And then there’s the leaves. So.many.leaves. Now, the simple answer for leaves in the yard is to simply mow them and allow them to nourish the soil. Yep, that’s our plan…..for the large front yard. But the back yard, the dog’s defecation area, is a much different story. As most of you know, we have three dogs, two of whom have a high metabolism. Which means they both poop no less than four times per day, and that’s just in the yard. They each usually go during our daily walks as well.  Now, this is a new discovery since our yard in Michigan is much larger. I usually just collected all the poop once per week. But since this yard is much smaller, I’ve vowed to stay on top of the poop scooping detail and I’ve become very familiar with they’re daily excremental habits. I thought, at most, each dog pooped no more than twice per day; once for each meal. I was sorely mistaken!

Anyway, the fallen cigar shaped, various shades of brown leaves closely resemble the shape, structure, and color of dog poop – making it very difficult to see said poop. So, to make my life easier, I decided to rake the leaves in the back yard. Now the good news is, we live in the city so we can just pile the leaves up by the street side and the city will come collect them. The bad news, they still have to somehow be transported from the yard to the street side. I did my first sweep a couple of weeks ago and we used a large trash bin on wheels to get the leaves to the street – not the most efficient. This week, I did a second sweep of the yard (the leaves just keep falling) using a recently purchased cargo wagon from Lowes – much more efficient. But still, A LOT of work raking and collecting.

I also decided to collect the leaves from the driveway; it was blanketed with several layers. Simply walking into the house from the driveway resulted in dragging no less than five leaves at a time into the house. Bad enough I have to rake the yard but now I’m sweeping up leaves in the house. It took an entire afternoon just to clean the driveway. Mike came out once he was finished with work to help. As he was scooping up a pile and placing it into our wagon, a gentle breeze dislodged a vast array of leaves from a nearby tree. I chuckled at the irony and said to Mike, “God is laughing at us – ‘Oh, you silly humans…..raking up your leaves.’ “

Now for the photo dump.

The culprit:

One of the sheds - there’s so much stuff we can’t open the door all the way!

So many leaves:

Our cargo wagon:

Leaf piles in the backyard - this is the 2nd sweep. So many more on the first sweep:

After cleaning up the driveway: