A House is a Hole…

There is an old saying that a boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money. The same can be said about a house: it’s a hole in the ground where you pour money. Since Friday the 13^th, we have been pouring lots!

When I broke my leg, we noticed that the toilet in our bathroom seemed to be leaking a little bit. We stuffed a towel around the bottom to catch the moisture and changed it out a couple of times a week.

When my daughter left after the first of the year, we also noticed that the one in the guest bathroom was starting to make strange noises every time it was flushed.

Time to call out the plumber.

He arrived on Friday morning, and by the afternoon, he had completely rebuilt both of them. No more leaks, and the guest one had a completely new flush mechanism. Not cheap, but at least both were working well. (And they were nearly twenty-five years old, so a refresh was not unwarranted.)

Then, on Saturday evening, the 14^th, we were watching a TV show and heard a giant CRACK, sort of like a huge blast of thunder next to the house.

Larry looked at me. “Was that on TV?”

“I don’t think so.”

We looked out in the yard, and one of our large pine trees had come down. The roots had given way with all the recent rain.

I have hated the tree ever since it showed up as a volunteer a number of years ago. I asked Larry many times to remove it, but he liked it and wouldn’t get rid of it. I actually feared exactly what happened—or worse. And the pine needles were clogging up the motors and filters on the waterfall. Larry dutifully cleaned them out periodically, but he refused to do anything about the tree.

We live at the top of a hill. The very top was cut away when they built our house in the late 1970s, and the material removed was used for fill for the houses across the street. They have topsoil. We do not. We are on bedrock (good for earthquakes, but not so hot for growing things).

Plants don’t do very well in the yard because there is nowhere for the roots to take hold. I have been afraid that one of the trees would come crashing down on the house. They were getting tall (about 35 feet each—and there were three of them).

The good news:

• ·         It mostly missed the house and fell into the back yard
• ·         The only collateral damage was to a couple of irrigation water pipes and outside lights
• ·         The gutter was bent but not so badly that it has to be replaced.

We called a local tree service, and they sent a couple of guys out right away. They cut up the big branches and stacked them in the front yard, promising to return early on Sunday morning (at 7:30 a.m.).

They arrived right on time, as promised, with a huge truck and a wood chipper, and began cutting up the debris. We also asked them to cut back the other two large pines, trim the jacarandas, and shape the Japanese maple. (These projects were years overdue.)

It took nearly six hours, but by the afternoon, their truck was full of tree trimmings, and the work was completed. We were very fortunate, even though it was a very expensive job. At least no damage was done to our house!

Several thousand dollars later, the big tree is gone, and the others are now trimmed down to a reasonable size.

I still hope the rest of 2023 will improve…