New Roof, digging my own grave, & harvest time.

Lori and I think our house looks so good with our new roof on it. We paid to up grade from 20 year to 35 year architectural shingles and it was sooooo worth it, they update the house a lot. Besides it was just $345.00 to upgrade so after 20 years have passed we

still will have 15 more years to go on the roof. $345.00 divided by 15 is $23.00 dollars a year. Sound investment if you ask me, looks wonderful too.


It is like a before and after pic, left side looks good!
I try, for the most part, to do all the work on our house. #1 because I’m cheap, not cheap like I don’t tip, that's just rude, but cheap like if I do it myself I can also do this project and this one and this one… with the money I would have spent on getting the first one done by someone else. #2 because even though I haven’t been blessed with the best spelling in the world I can build just about anything from a photo. #3 because I’m still cheap.
I knew that I could do our roof myself but I also knew that it would take me over a week to strip it off and redo it. Which brings me to #4 I don’t like it when it rains inside in my house!
They did a fantastic job. 6 roofers showed up at 3:00 PM and started by 8:00 PM they had the back done and half of the front. The next day they started at 7:00AM and got done with the roof by 10:00AM. So it took 6 highly skilled roofers one day to do my roof. It would have definitely taken me over a week, at least.
So it was one project I was happy to let it go; besides I had another big project underway.

Lori and I have been thinking of putting in rain barrels for some time, to be able to water the yard and fill/top off the pond in the summer when the water evaporates out of it. We do already have a small 88 gallon water collection sistine at the back of the yard that we pump the spring/rain water that collects under our house into to water the yard and fill the decorative fountain with but it is not enough to keep us from using what we consider a lot of city water.
We plan on expanding the garden next year so we are going to need to set something up to cut down on our water usage. Nothing will eat up your water money like having to se all city water. So I got two 275 gallon water tanks ( they were bought used )to collect rain water in and found just the right spot in the yard for them and proceeded to dig one BIG hole. I had to go down another two feet form the photo above.
Lori thought that a normal person would rent a backhoe for the job, no no too costly I can dig it myself and with the money I saved from not renting the backhoe I can put gutters on the house. I vaguely remember someone saying something about me having two back surgeries and that renting a backhoe was alot cheaper that spending another $75,000.00 on surgery. I can’t remember I was up to my neck in red clay at the time. Did I mention I was cheap?

Awwwww! tanks are in

The box is to catch rain water coming across the yard, the pipe coming out the right side goes down into the right tank then also fills the left tank threw a pipe at the bottom,(water find its own level so both tanks will fill and drain at the same time). The short pipe on the left side of the box will connect to the gutters once we put them up. The pipe to the left will be cut off lower and plummed to the back fence so that when I put in a shallow well pump ($99.00) we will have 550 gallons of water on a regular basis to water with.
All back to normal. The black square is covering the water intake box for now until all of the sticky red clay that was dug up washes out of the surrounding gravel.


We harvested most of our corn & onions, packaged them up in freezer bags for yummy eats later. I am very pleased with the gardening experience this year.

Glen