Sleeping was a bit better last night although I still woke up at 1 AM...and 4 AM...and 6:30 AM. I finally got up at 6:30 AM because Chester was making a racket.
I spent the day doing some yard work. First I gathered up some pea gravel to create a smooth bed at the bottom of the front steps. On top of that bed of tiny gravel particles I placed a flat flagstone that is about 18" wide and 36" long but only 1 to 1 1/2 inches thick (that's why the pea gravel bed. There's less chance of it cracking with the finer stone beneath it.) Then I started shoveling more dirt and broadcasting it around the lawn. I worked until 4 PM when suddenly the blackflies went crazy. They had been nibbling on me all day but as the temperatures cooled after a front moved through, you would think I was the only supply of food for miles around. I surrendered and went inside.
I've still got some dirt left and will use it to level the steps I'm going to build on the slope in front of the covered porch. It's pretty steep there and can get slippery with a little snow or even rain. That's also the path the meter reader from the electric company must take to get to our meter. I figure I'll make both his trip to the meter and my comings and goings from the basement to the deck just that much easier. I've saved 6 sections of 6 x 6 left over from deck supports that will do well as the lips of the steps.
I may also build a low retaining wall of stone or landscape timbers at the base of the slope to create a slight terrace. Some erosion has already occurred on the slope and many stones from the fill have come to the surface. All this work on the slope (steps, low retaining wall of landscape timber or stone) will make mowing the lawn a bit more difficult but if I can get some plants to grow behind the retaining wall it will be worth it. I'll just have to be careful of what I put in there as that area is beneath the power line right of way. Of course the power company would only be really concerned if I were to plant some fast growing trees that might threaten their wires, but there's also a transformer on the pole out there that has to be serviced via cherry picker so I don't want to block access for a truck to get back there.
Today's weather was...well, schizophrenic is what it was. The day started out warm and humid, built to scattered thunderstorms around noon when the temperature was in the mid 70s, and then got cooler and breezy as the afternoon wore on. We could actually hear the steady rumble of thunderstorms to our southwest as the front moved through, but we got only a couple of drops. And the temperature didn't just slowly drop, it noticeably dropped. I mean, you could actually feel the temperature go down as it dropped nearly 20 degrees between 1 PM and 6 PM. There are frost warning out for the valley tonight as the sky is clearing and the wind is out of the north again.
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