Day #30 Digging under the driveway

When Brant Keiser from Keep Smiling Plumbing came here to replace a dead toilet last Friday, he noticed that my house, built in 1985, still had the old brittle horrible blue poly pipe running from the water main to the inside of the house. He saw it because he was down in the crawl space checking out my water heater that hadn't been working well. He recommended Jeff Guinn who owns Bulldog Plumbing. Brant does plumbing inside houses. Jeff works outside. Anyway, Jeff came over right away and gave me an estimate for replacing the blue stuff. He came back Monday to dig under the driveway and down to the front of my house, bore a hole through my foundation, and connect the new pipe. Whew! I'm happy to say it all went well, especially considering the fact that on Monday, just before Jeff got here, the outside pipe sprung a leak. If all this flap hadn't happened, I'd be swimming in a sea of mud.

Blue poly has a life expectancy of 7 to 14 years. Mine lasted 25. Hallelujah!

The other good news is that I had an opportunity to clean out a lot of the stuff in my garage (Goodwill, here I come!) to make room for the new water heater. Brant said a water heater had no business being in a crawl space. I trust my plumber, and I'm glad he's the one toting toilets and water heaters around, so I don't have to learn how to do it.

Speaking of heavy equipment, on the toilet day, Friday, I had three trees removed. One had fallen across my power line; one had obviously already been dying since most of its leaves fell off in June, and the third one was leaning precariously over my roof. E-Z Out Tree Service did a great job. The logs that remain, because I asked for them, have a gorgeous sunburst pattern of dead wood in the center of each of them.

With my new cell phone, I took some pictures of the wood, but now I can't figure out how to get the photos out of my camera and into my computer. My granddaughter says I can't email them to myself because I don't pay extra to have text messaging capability. And I don't have a little USB doohickie. Technology makes our lives a whole lot easier -- except when I don't know how to use it.

What does this have to do with bees? Well, it makes me glad I don't have the bees yet, because I'd hate to think of any of them being run over by the heavy equipment the workers had to use. I know, that's stretching it a bit, to make a connection like that... but I can't think of anything else to say about bees right now. I'm too busy contemplating my weary checkbook.

BEEattitude for Day # 30:

       Blessed are those who drive slowly in residential neighborhoods, for they shall keep us bees safe.

One thing I’m grateful for right now:

       The sunlight filtering through the many healthy trees I have left.