Saturday

Out of life's most trivial mishaps and perturbations, few things can suck the joie out of the vivre out of you as readily as waking to a snowy April 27th, with an added bonus of a basement with a big pond of muck from an overflowing septic system.

None of this stuff catches me by surprise. They've been predicting for this day cold, snow, snow, cold for weeks now and when I go out to feed the cats, I take one last appreciative look at the daffodils...






... sigh deeply and go inside. Breakfast, in the kitchen.






It is a day to dig in on farmhouse chores. This includes doing laundry. And in doing laundry, I come across the basement pond that tells me that for the fourth time since I moved here (some five years ago), the septic system has a blockage.

I blame the curly willow, Ed blames the brand of toilet paper. In reality, it's a function of both. The curly willow was planted (way before my time) too close to the house and right over the septic pipe. Me, I would have chopped the tree down. It's too big for where it is and as of this year, we cannot prune the dead lower limbs because they are too high up, even for Ed. Thus it is starting to be unattractive, in addition to having gnarly roots that make their way into the septic pipe.

Ed refuses to take the tree down (as in -- it's not the tree's fault) and instead forges an alliance with the guy who has a profitable business cleaning septic pipes ("I like to chat with guys in the basement during a job!"). His pal (they've been friends for years) says it's the extra strength toilet paper that just does not easily dissolve. I would like to finish the sentence with "when caught up in the gnarly roots of the curly willow," but Ed is already amassing evidence by bringing up Consumer Reports ratings of toilet papers. Ours does appear to rank low in terms of "how easily does it disintegrate." So now, in addition to having a wet basement that sort of smells, I have to change our brand of toilet paper.

It is during this troubling morning, that my mom calls and asks if we could go couch shopping. Actually, she suggests that she herself go couch shopping, which of course is silly and ridiculous, considering that I am not busy with gardening or kids or anything more significant than mopping up a basement mess (and frankly, that kind of mess is best left to dry up and sweep up).

We go out shopping and I work hard on improving my mood, but it takes a while, in part because snow is whirling every which way and you just don't like to drive out onto your road on April 27th and see this:






My mom does locate a most perfect for her couch...






.. and the snow is far less copious that I had thought it would be, so things are surely looking up, though try telling that to the cheepers!






In the afternoon I finally tackle the problem of the farmhouse front room. It's become Snowdrop's playroom and it has many, many bits of toys that are possibly not safe for her brother or her cousin. I wanted to purchase a new fence and gate to segregate a safe area, away from the Snowdrop collection of incredibly small Lego pieces. Ed urged me to work with what we have. Today we worked with what we had -- pieces of plastic fence that I had once purchased with the idea that any toddler needed a secure enclosure. It was a dumb idea and we've used the panels for other stuff since.

Didn't we last make an enclosure for the cheepers out of that?
I cleaned it.
But it's wobbly!
Let's secure it with bricks.
But it's funky weird looking!
No it's not. Though maybe Snowdrop wont like it... 
This is not a worry. 
What do you think?
Well maybe.

We struggle for hours creating something that might work.

Outside, the snow continues to fall.

Rough times for us spring loving flower growing types!






And for chickens!






And for the daffodils.