Busy busy, stress stress stress

Wow...two months since posting and a lot has been going on:

- Our garden is planted and we're drowning in turnips.

- After testing out three different lawn mowers, we decided to allow our yard to grow into a meadow and now just mow around the house, the garden, the new trees, and paths leading between everything.  We like the way the tall grass and wild flowers looks better anyhow (and we checked with the neighbors before making the transition), but we're waiting to see if we'll get in trouble with the county.  The sound of the wind in the grass is also very nice.

- We made a gate for our chicken run, although we still let the chickens run free when we can keep an eye on them.  For the most part they're behaving and haven't discovered the garden yet- partly because they stick to the mowed area around the house.

- Chickens now respond to voice commands (mostly).

- Demand for backyard eggs is up due to fear of avian influenza.

- Another house mystery solved: We discovered the outlet for our downspouts.  For some reason the previous owner decided to pipe all of the downspouts together, run them through the crawl space of the house and out the other side to drain who knows where.  Like everything else the previous owner did, this made no sense...even before we found the outlet...which was in the ditch in front of the house...at a higher elevation than the crawl space...draining all of the water from the ditch back to our crawl space.  After much digging, it has now been removed and the sump pump we installed just after moving in hasn't been running nearly as much, even with recent rain.  Our downspouts are draining into ugly black pipe for the moment, and we still have a giant pile of fill dirt sitting in our driveway, but so it goes.

- Installed a French drain around two sides of the crawl space, which feeds into the sump pit.

- Made two 100% cotton mattresses.  Half a dozen people have slept on them and they've all been too polite to say anything negative (most even said good things!).  Sometimes I nap on the guest beds just for fun.

- Still trying to give away a 7 ft jacuzzi on Craig's list so that we can turn part of the master bathroom into a laundry/ utility room.  I know, I know, we should just hire a plumber to take it away.  Other things for sale or free: 30ft flag pole, realistic looking fake fireplace, seven land line phones, vertical window blinds, fancy 1980's doorbell.

- We are expecting a baby in November.

In addition to the above, our young neighbor was hit from behind by a car while biking to work along our 35 mph street a few weeks ago.  He was killed.  As far as we know, there were no penalties for the driver.  We are still struggling to adjust to the news and how to respond.  He had no family here and there has not been any local reaction.