Update on Progress

Well, the day after my last posting, we finally got the power moved to its permanent location. On the 8th they came out to trench and drill for the underground power lines. Here you see them drilling 100' under the road to supply the back garage with power. The lines that used to run overhead across the road from pole to pole were actually illegal from the power company's viewpoint. This was how it had been when we became the owners five years ago. Poppy also wanted more circuits for the back garage, so we needed to upgrade the power supply eventually anyway. It was quite interesting watching them bore under the road.

They used an instrument that could follow the head of the drill as it bore underground and through the yard. The direction of the lines were taken right to the corner of the garage where wires can now come up to enter the garage.

This long flexible pipe was then pulled back through the drilled opening to carry the lines under the road. Now the work to actually run the lines and attach to the current garage power will be done eventually by Poppy and friends.

While they were working with trenching and boring, Jeff and Tony were busy setting the new meter base on the back of the garage. Then they dismantled

the temporary power pole.

The next day the big guns with the power company came to cut the power, put up a whole new unit on the power pole and run the conduit down to the ground. I was amazed how easy they made it look.

I would definitely not want to be up in that bucket maneuvering myself under and over hot power lines to work with this. That day I was home with no power for 12 hours. It was turned off at 7:30 am and after the guys worked hard to move the breaker box to its new permanent location and run the lines from the meter box to the breaker box, it was 7:30 pm before power was restored. That was one LONG day and I would not make it as a pioneer with no electricity. It was boring and nonproductive.

That afternoon Jeff's brother arrived to do more grading of the yard. Here he was scraping off the gravel in preparation for the cement driveway pad. Unfortunately, the ground was still quite wet, so it may take one more visit for him to get the final grade perfected.

Now, fast forward a week to today. The driveway pad was poured, as well as a small stoop outside the service door on the back side of this garage. You can see in this photo, last weekend Poppy got the new coach lights hung outside the garage. So things are shaping up quite nicely.

I imagine tomorrow they will get the back side completely done also. This will finish up the siding and we will have a finished exterior. A very welcome sight after all the waiting over these past five months.

Today the sun was out for a beautiful spring day after several dreary, rainy, cool days. It was wonderful to get outside and enjoy the beauty of spring. Here are those daffodils I caught peeking out just a month ago today. You can also see the hostas that are up almost 6" and ready to unfold and look beautiful along the front walk. Saturday our neighborhood friends will hold their annual "PPP" which stands for Pier Putting in Party! This is a tradition when we gather for an early breakfast and then men don their waders and help put in piers for many elderly couples, single gals and also share in getting each others piers in as well. This is repeated in the fall, but the PPP stands for Pier Pulling out Party. Such fun and we feel blessed to be a part of such a wonderful circle of friends. The best part about the PPP, that means boats will soon be launched. This means our enjoyment of watching the loons', buffleheads' and grebes' brief spring stopovers on our lake will be replaced with evening pontoon cruises as friends enjoy cocktail hour on the lake, circling around like the parade of water fowl that preceded them.