No joy in mudville

We've reached the end of March, and things don't look a whole lot different than several months ago. The main things you will notice are that the tarp is getting gradually more shredded, and recent rains have left the ground significantly muddy. Our backyard is beginning to look like the aftermath of some terrible war. But some progress has been made, and Henry hopes to work on the roof this week, and perhaps put in the glass walls in the following week. After that the tarp can come down, which will be a significant improvement, and may help towards thawing relationships with some of the neighbors.


And we should also be able to start some of the landscaping soon. Most of the following photos were taken at the landscapers farm last weekend. The picture below is an example of the horsetails that will be used to the left of the tea house, to hide the compressor for the air conditioner.


Then in the left most corner of the yard will be several Holly trees like this one.

These will be interspersed with winter berry bushes:


And we picked out several boulders to be placed in front of the tea house.

Construction resumed

Henry restarted regular work on the tea house during the past two weeks. He is now predicting completion in about 6 weeks, but this remains to be seen. All of his past estimates have been wildly optimistic compared to the actual outcome.

We heard nothing from the neighbors regarding the letter I sent. I'm hoping that this closes the chapter on complaints from them, but that may be too much to hope for. The sad thing is that if we were building a three-car garage with vinyl siding, they probably wouldn't have had any complaints at all.