This has been our lives for the past week. Roger had some post nasal drip last week that led to congestion in his lungs. And I guess I caught his 'cold' Monday of this week. So he's going on a week of the junk and I just started. He kept us both up every night coughing. I'm keeping him up coughing this week. This week his lungs seem to be working on getting all that junk out. Lovely. Roger stayed home from work two days last week. But he's plugging away regardless. Poor thing. I've had to cancel about three engagements I was participating in this week and one birthday party. Boo. That's no fun. I hope it doesn't last long. We have lives to live. We don't have time to be sick. I feel like I'm not getting anything done. We do have some good news to share and I'll get to that soon. When I have more energy.
Austin and the surrounding areas received quite a bit of a storm last night. Of course, we got very little of it. North Travis County and Williamson County got the worst of it. Three tornadoes were spotted up there. We were at Butler Park, a cool new park near Auditorium Shores and the Long Center, with a group of neighbors when the storm rolled in. We had just enough time to run through the drive through at Sandy's for dipped cones before the drops began. It started to come down pretty hard as we approached Mopac (Loop 1), but of course, as we drove south, closer to our homes, the rain began to let up. South Austin always misses out on all the good storms and rain. We were all hoping it would be coming down at our homes, but no, it was not. So we went inside as the lightning and thunder rolled around us. We finally heard rain drops, but knew it wasn't going to be a lot. But I'm not complaining. We'll take any rain we can get. I checked the rain gauge this morning when I was mowing the back yard. It said we got 3/4 of an inch of rain. I was kind of disappointed but glad we got something. That meant one or two days I wouldn't have to water the lawn. Then I walked over to see how much water was in the rain barrel. I figured it might be half full from only 3/4 of an inch of rain. I couldn't believe my eyes as I approached the rain barrel and saw water around the top edge. It was over flowing with rain water! Whew-hoo! I had used almost all of the water from the last rain and now it was completely full again. I am so glad we finally got the gutter downspout redirected to the rain barrel. Roger had mentioned when we finished that he wondered how he could connect two barrels up so one would over flow to the other. I pretty much laughed at that because I was like, "Yeah right. Like we'd ever get enough rain to have overflow much less fill up two barrels." Now I wonder...
Roger and I got the idea from several HGTV shows about turning outdoor spaces into another room of your house. We also thought it could add some privacy on our deck. Since our deck is up higher from the ground, we can see right into our neighbors' backyards and homes. We started this project a few weeks ago and I was finally able to hang the drapes today. Three weeks ago I shopped around for outdoor fabric, brought home swatches and we decided on a striped fabric for color and price. Then I sewed the panels and tiebacks. I might have enough fabric leftover for some bench cushions. Two weeks ago Roger and I began the task of hanging the outdoor drapery hardware. It wasn't easy. We went through several ideas before we figured out they wouldn't work. The space between the arbor joists is only 2-3 inches wide so we really had to get creative to be able to fit our hands and tools in the space to hang the brackets. Finally it dawned on us how to make it happen and we did. And I was able to find outdoor quality drapery rods on sale plus I had a coupon. You know me, I never pay full price. They look really cool and add a little more privacy and shade on the deck. I really like how they turned out.
We brought the rain barrel from our old house with us to the new house. There was no way I was leaving that rain barrel there. I bought it through the City of Austin. It's a really nice rain barrel and I would have never paid what it costs retail. But through the City of Austin I got it half price. I got it all set up in the back yard a couple weeks ago. We missed out on some really good rains before that. Well this week we finally found the time in the evening to work on diverting a down spout from the house gutters to the rain barrel so we can take advantage of all the rain that hits our very large roof. The rain barrel on its own does not collect much water from our infrequent rains here in Texas. But with a down spout from the gutters it can collect a lot. The night we finished diverting the down spout it rained a little during the night. We were so glad to have the down spout done because the rain barrel had a quarter of water from that little rain. And I have plenty of rain water to water my potted plants. We always intended to do this at our old house but never got around to doing it because we didn't have gutters at all on the back side of the house. I love being able to water my potted plants and eventually my vegetables with free, healthy rain water instead of paying for treated city water. Although Roger wasn't sure about this rain barrel when I first brought it home, he loves it now. I think he thought it was going to make the back yard a little too eclectic, hippy, Austin-ish for his tastes. But the savings, how cool it is to take advantage of our large roof to collect rain water, and the fact that it's not that unsightly warmed him up to it. If you are a City of Austin water customer you should really take advantage of this deal. Even some surrounding water districts are eligible for the rebate. There's always a waiting list for the rain barrels, but it's definitely worth the wait.
