Life of Wry

The secret to getting your teenager to eat more vegetables:

Let him play with the juicer.  

Tonight’s effort: carrots, celery, beets, oranges, apples.  

So good!

The plumbers come. They dig a trench two feet wide by three feet deep and, let’s say, about fifty feet long.

Give or take.

They pile the dirt in neat stacks along both sides, but mostly the north side. A week goes by while they futz about in the trench, extracting this and that from our sewer pipe. In fact, they replace the pipe. (This is all old news, I understand.) A tiny bit of rain falls, but nothing to speak of.  

Today, done with the installation and inspections, they set about to return the dirt to its hole. All the dirt. And, in fact, they do this, but after the piles have been completely leveled, we find ourselves short. There is not sufficient dirt to fill the hole completely:

It seems we have a remaining trench about 14″ wide, 6″ deep, and now about 40-45 feet long. 

So, it’s a fair question, the question being, Where’d the rest of the dirt go?

Peter and I were out driving this afternoon.. a frequent and regular theme until the boy gets his driver’s license. We have covered so much territory hereabouts. Truth be told, road driving is not really what he needs. We should be spending most of our time in downtown, navigating busy streets, parking all manner of ways, avoiding pedestrians… but he just loves to hit the open road (which gives us some nice time to talk, so I’m not complaining).

Today, when he asked where we should go, I said, “surprise me,” and told him to just drive wherever his heart desired, but make sure we’re back by 3:15 (about an hour).

Out on about Highway 16, somewhere west of Madison (I bet you didn’t know anything was out there), we came upon this:

Below the Rainbow Ranch logo, the sign reads, “Not Gay.. Just Happy.”

What do we think of this disclaimer?

Check this out:

This is what the plumbers finally found, after a couple days of rooting around (as it were) in our sewer pipes. It’s a dense mass of roots and sludge that had, over the years, swelled to fully fill the dimensions of the pipe that was supposed to be carrying out all our household waste. Somewhat unbeknownst to us, until it was very beknownst, our flow was seriously compromised. 

It turns out that where there is a seam or a joint in a pipe, it is possible for a root–even the tiniest of roots–to work its way inside, and once there, fed by a constant water supply (and who knows what other nutrients), can grow.  I’m not sure how anything got past this, but it does explain why we finally got to the system failure point.  

Here’s another shot with my garden boot (former sailing boot) for scale:

It was a significant and unique enough specimen that Troy the plumber sent a photo to his boss and his boss asked him to bring it into the shop so they could all get a first hand look.  

Yay us.

So, with that, our pipe’s been cleared. We’d already decided to replace the 60-year-old stuff with new pipes, so that happened today pretty quickly. Inspectors from two city departments have to approve the installation, and as long as there is sufficient downhill slope, this should happen within the next few days.   Meanwhile we can now use our showers, appliances and toilets normally.  We thought we might have to rent an outhouse for tomorrow night’s dinner party (ha), but now guests can pee and poop and wash up afterward to their hearts’ content.  

Next week, the trenches can be filled, then the task of replanting all the plants can commence.

Just a couple mini-vacation days/nights with Heidi and Susan in the wine country.. a nascent annual tradition. I missed year one because I went, unexpectedly, to Nepal. Year two was our French Laundry and mud bath extravaganza. We somehow missed last year. Back on track this year–my second, their third.

Came in late afternoon yesterday. Settled in, caught up a lot, headed to Oxbow Public Market. People around here do marketing well… everything’s so attractive and arty. Ate at Kitchen Door and had a great dinner.

Today, after a hotel buffet breakfast, we wandered into and around downtown Napa.  Gloomy day, but it’s dry and warm.  Here’s a shot of the Napa River. Lots of redevelopment money has created a nice river-side ambiance:

Explored many galleries, boutiques. Lovely downtown. Some minor acquisitions.  Resting up now–taking a Napa (get it?)–with reservations at Buchon in Yountville tonight.

This trip is all about gabbing and food, with a little shopping as a vehicle for more gabbing.  So fun.

Oh, and then there was this:

Stiletto art. (Pretty awful, no?)

A little backyard trauma here.  Recall, Frances and I have been re-visioning and replanting the backyard for a couple of years now.  Most recently, we came up with the brilliant idea to remove most of what had been planted on the center mound (initially designed in the late 80s) and, gorgeous focal point that it is, replant with a stunning array of grasses, most native: all sizes, shapes and colors.  We’d spent hours riding our bikes through the arboretum, making notes and making selections. Finally, in November (just three months ago) we purchased 50-100 or so plants from Lemuria and Redwood Barn. Here are a couple pictures representing a fraction of our hauls:

We arranged them just-so around the mound:

We carefully rejiggered our newly installed drip irrigation system so that each plant had its own little water source: 

Then we kicked back for the two winter months to let everything set roots and rest.  Which.. they did. Beautifully.  

Then the sewer pipe issue (see previous posts).  

So today, Frances and I dug up all the plants (about 50-75 of them anyway) and relocated them to a remote part of the yard–some in pots, some just on the ground in their own lusciously moist dirt (thank you recent rains!):

And cut and removed giant sections of the irrigation. Some we strung from trees, some we coiled out of the way. 

Here’s a shot of Troy (one of Hall’s Plumbing guys) crowbarring out one of the boulders that’s in the way):

And never mind we just had the dry creek bed re-rocked and its boulders re-set. But maybe I said that already..  

Here’s what the mound looks like with most of it cleared of plants and irrigation. We’ve made room for a two-foot wide trench and a place to put all the dug out dirt. Hall’s had run a TV camera through the pipe to check it out and to determine the pipe’s path through the yard, then they marked the area to be cleared. 

It’s all a bit heartbreaking. Still.. it could have been a lot worse. We can be grateful for the fact the line goes straight back, that it missed most of our trees and the play structure (future garden shed), that we’d not yet put in the new hardscape (coming in spring), that we’d already removed a whole bunch of plants, shrubs and trees, and that the irrigation is now all above ground and easily moved out of the way.  

I’m also extremely grateful Frances’ schedule allowed her to drive down from Chico this morning and squeeze this emergency job in before work and between the rains, and that I am now headed to Napa for a few days of friend time.  Meanwhile… Jim and Peter will be here on short shower and minimal flush status… if they’re allowed those things at all.  

It’s all good. 

Of course, right? It’s plumbing. There are no good stories with plumbing.

After determining that the slow drain issue was our problem and not the city’s, we called Hall’s Plumbing (at Ganesh Works’ recommendation). They first had to locate the line, then they had to dig up some perky new bulbs.  This is what they discovered:

Yesterday’s backed up toilet was today’s smooshed, undulating orangeburg sewer line in dire need of replacement.  (Maybe not dire, but if you’re rolling the dice on the life of your compromised sewer line, you best not miss on your bet.)

Orangeburg is apparently a sewer-line technology used in the late 50s that proved to be poorly thought through.  (Though, now that I think about it, it did last some 58 years.)

So instead of waiting for the next leak and/or clog–we have both now–in the line that stretches from our house to the city’s sewer system, we are coughing up $5000 to replace the pipe altogether. This means digging a trench across the entire backyard, removing the damaged pipe, and then replacing it with the new one. Bonus: it will be made of a tough, modern material and will certainly outlast us.. so hopefully we can cross sewer drama off the list of future homeowner problems–for us, as well as the next generation.

Tomorrow, bright and early, Frances and I will be temporarily relocating all the native grasses that we just planted a couple of months ago, and which are now in the line of fire. The plumbers will also be taking up all the newly re-laid rocks in the dry creek bed, including the brand new barrier cloth that was installed a year ago. They’ll be moving large boulders that were carefully and artfully placed by the rock people, taking out a number of other shrubs, and we may lose a crepe myrtle or two. It will be a mess, with muddy dirt piles everywhere. [Hangs head.]

All for the cause.  It’s a good thing, I’m sure, but oh so frustrating about the yard. Oh so!

While I was deeply ensconced in my office watching evening gowns on parade and speeches (some really good) and Hollywood glam, Jim was doing this:

The good news: Jim has no interest in the Academy Awards so missed nothing. The bad news: Jim has no interest in plumbing, either, but had no choice but to get to the bottom of on overflowing toilet and slow-draining drains.

As posted by Jim on Facebook:

The problem with driving down Pleasants Valley road is that you end up singing that Monkee’s song for the rest of the day.  You know the one:

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Charcoal burning everywhere
Rows of houses that are all the same
And no one seems to care

You’re welcome.

Okay, forget that… It was another between-storms kind of day, here on the verge of spring in the valley.  Which means:

First poppy in our front yard:

And another weekend, practice-driving outing for Peter. We headed west…

Here is Russell Boulevard looking its blue-sky-white-cloud best.. lots of mistletoe on those walnuts:

Alfalfa, perhaps, along Stevenson Bridge Rd:

We continued south along Stevenson Bridge Rd, west on Sievers, south on Hailey, west on Sweeny to 505(S), until we got to I-80 (W).  Got off at Pena Adobe and meandered over to Pleasants Valley Rd.  Traveled along for awhile as the clouds began to build up again …. so pretty in its broodiness:

We headed up Mix Canyon for a steep thrill. Peter decided to get out of the car again and go for a little run. After the rains, the creek was flowing pretty impressively (off to his left):

More road shots along Pleasants Valley:

And a peacock sighting (look carefully). This guy flew in front of our car and landed in the bushes.. I shot this as we sped past:

And then we headed home along 128/32, with a final stop at In ‘n Out.  This makes the boy so happy. Was supposed to be a baseball scrimmage day in Rocklin, but got rained out… so this was the next best thing.