The Hill...

During the summer, the Hill dominates a lot of our life. I have managed over several weeks to weed the flower beds on the top of the hill. I still need to travel down the hill to work on those but they are not visible to any but Claude and me so they are last on the to do list. 

Tuesday, May 21st, I was going to weed the lowest water break. This spot would be fun with a Japanese theme to it. To have it look great, I would need to spend oodles more time there. This morning, I was just trying to get the first weeding of the summer done. I took these two pictures to share my 'thank you' with Nissa and Todd for their Mother's Day gift of purple weeding tools. At some point, I would love to get a concrete Japanese lantern to put somewhere in this bed. The bed goes on behind where I took the picture. I believe that would give me the inspiration for other plants to reside near this little Japanese Maple tree and the lantern. 

Thursday, May 23rd, I took some pictures of the front of our home, just for the record. Claude and I both feel we need to be ready to sell at some point. Could be a few more years but we feel we need to be ready. I felt some summer pictures might be a good thing to have one hand just in case this happens in the winter. 

Friday, May 24th found me again weeding. What I thought would be a quick weeding turnout to be much more time consuming and difficult. At one point I paused and looked behind me and saw this lovely view. That is the one thing about weeding, this hill offers some amazing views. This is looking up on to what we call Area 11. It is the empty lot we own next to our home. It is for sale if you know anyone who might be interested. I do really love this picture though.

Friday, May 31st found me hurrying out of Eagle Bend to go spend the morning with Papa before Claude and I flew to Utah. There was traffic I had to slowly go through to get over the bridge. This bridge is the only way in and out of Eagle Bend. They have been taking down the wooden beams on the sides as the wood is wearing away and installing metal beams. The wood is neater looking but the metal will definitely last much longer. It seems they found a metal box attached to one of the beams and it was impeding their replacement work progress. Rachel Southworth, the current City Commissioner over streets, called Claude and left a voice message asking if he had any idea what the metal box might be. So, after I crossed the bridge, I parked my car and walked back to see if I could take a picture or two to text to Claude. 

I took these first three pictures and texted them to Claude while Rachel called the work man to talk with him. He told her I was at the bridge taking pictures and texting them to Claude. We assured her the name on the top of the metal box was Doug Smith. He bought the old farm and developed it into this little Eagle Bend sub-division. Doug told them he knew nothing about that box. 

We noted there was not power to this box. It also had a bracket attached to the bridge rail that was the kind you would wrap cord around on a boat. I suggested to the workman that it might have something to do with the USGS Gauging work. The old gauging station tower is still on the property. A new gauging station has been built and hides nicely in the trees with sensors going down into the creek. The workman received permission from Rachel to cut the lock on the box. He did and this is what he found.

Turned out to be a manual gauging station. There is a metal weight on a cord. The cord is wrapped around a reel like a fishing pole. When you turn the reel it lowers the weight attached to the cord to the water. As you lower it, there are numbers on the side indicating how many feet from the base line where the water level is normally. At that time it was a foot above normal levels. We had rain the night before. Very cool. Also, very nice to have an answer as to what was in that metal box.

Yesterday I got home from visiting Papa and took this picture of someone with a little back hoe digging a hole. It appeared to be right on our property line so I sent this picture and set it via text to Claude.  

Our soon-to-be-new-neighbor, has almost finished their home up the hill. You can see his roof in the distance. He had talked to Claude about connecting to the sewer. To do that he will have to dig into our property. 

As the day wore on I peeked out a couple more times. Then when he was finished, I walked up the hill and took seven more pictures for our records. The trench was actually going up the hill to his home. It appears to be for a water line, maybe?? 

Such is the excitement of life on our Hill in Sadieville. Riveting, I know!!