Some more of summer odds and ends

Here is another "gardening" success:
I am not much of a gardener, but I bought this little vine on sale at WalMart this spring and got rewarded for saving it. It looked sort sad and I expected it would die, but I wanted something with flowers on that side of the house so I gave it a shot and it took off. Sadly, I lost the little tag that said what it is -- starts with an M but that's all I remember. The flowers are gorgeous, I think.

Gardening fail:

We got home from Ben and Kelli's after Eli's baptism bbq and found about 15 pigs in the yard. There used to be lilies in the pic above; we'll see if they return next year or if they ate the bulbs... A bunch of pigs were in the yard for a long time while we were in Turkey last November and dug up a few larger patches of grass which are just beginning to look OK now. This time there were less of them and they stuck to the flower bed above and under this one tree, which actually looks OK -- they only dug up some weeds there.One thing about pigs, they know how to dig. If I could direct that we'd never need a tiller again. The dogs are never quite sure what to do with pigs in the yard; mostly they wait and watch and hope we get home soon.

Home Improvements:
Recognizing if we didn't get a new roof before the next winter it could get ugly when the snow fell this time, I made a couple of calls and got some bids for our house. The cadillac of roofs is probably steel that looks like shingles. We have a friend in town who got this on her house, and it looks great. It would truly be the last roof we ever put on this house (50 year warranty), but at $25,000 we thought maybe it wasn't the best investment and opted for asphalt shingles again. A few weeks ago a man came to buy a pig and he gave Lou two of his business cards, saying "You need a new roof." Well, he was right, and he was a roofer. So I called him up. He remembered us and said he wondered what we ever did with this roof. His bid was good (under $6K), his attitude was great, and he and one other guy started and finished the whole thing in 2 (longer than 8-hour) days, taking off the old shingles and putting up new ones with new drip edge. They even put the DTN dish back so it worked right! Driving here from Yakima, they probably didn't want to add more miles to the job by finishing on the third day. After the hot day we had today, it should be all stuck down and ready for winter. :o)
Now to address the concrete at the back door steps, and a stair railing there too ... it's only been "the next thing on the list for next year" for 18 years!

Other project:
I am in the process of "helping Ben" get his stuff out of his old bedroom upstairs so we can make that into Lou's office/study. Slow going on the clearing out, but it is going... slowly. Of course, once I start thinking about this sort of thing it just takes on a life of its own ... I decided the red carpet up there has to go, so I am checking into laminate flooring. Floor, paint, furniture, maybe a new door (with glass panels?) It is beautiful and organized in my head. We'll see how it turns out! In the mean time, Lou is doing his class work at the desk in Dayna's old room.