Jim Goings

I went rafting this past Saturday with Steve and Christian.  It’s been years since I’ve been, but it was awesome!  As always, All Adventures Rafting was excellent!  We had a great time!

Here we are at the top of Husum Falls.  I’m the only one in the boat actually paddling with any shred of power.  Of course, I have lots of experience paddling.  Yeah, I pretty much just tooted my own horn.

Hunkered down in the “crash” position, we’re take the plunge!

We’re going under!

We have achieved submarine status!

Steve almost fell out!  Luckily our guide had quick reflexes and grabbed him before he did!

We’re alive!

The word “landscaping” makes me think of something artfully done by a skilled professional.  Perhaps a better word for what we did in our front yard is “yard makeover”.  We pruned the trees and covered the gnarled roots with weed barrier fabric and bark dust.  We also created some bordered areas and used weed barrier and bark dust there as well.  The biggest part of the job was choosing plants and digging holes for them.  The area in front of the house is pretty much clay, but we filled in the area around the plants with dirt and new soil.  Hopefully the plants will survive.  I have my doubts.

Whether the plants live or die, the front yard looks much better!  I need to add some seed and fertilizer to the lawn, but otherwise I think it’s in good shape.

We planted a few varieties of plants.  The ones flanking in the top of the photo are Pieris Japonica (Purity Pieris).  The one in the middle top is a Winter Daphne.  The other three are varieties of Hellebore.  They are all flowering evergreens, so they should look great all year.  You can see all of the plants close up on Flickr.

We were going to plant a couple of plants here next to the big tree as the lawn doesn’t grow well here due to the massive roots.  However, I dug right through the Comast cable.  Luckily, we don’t use Comcast, so it wasn’t a problem!  I decided to stop digging anyway so I didn’t cut through the Verizon FIOS line.  Well, I still managed to screw up and drove a stake through the FIOS fiber, killing our phone, Internet, and TV.  I called Verizon immediately and told them what happened.  They laughed (and probably pointed), but were very kind and sent out a tech the very next morning.  He installed a new fiber line on top of the lawn marked with yellow caution tape.  We were back up and running in no time!   They are supposed to send a seperate crew out to bury a new line.  They never said how much this would cost me (if anything)… I hope they tell me beforehand.  I’m half-expecting some ridiculous charge on my next bill.