"THE GREAT FENCE"

 Before I get into the saga of The Great Fence, I want to show off the gorgeous colors of the autumn trees around here last week.  I went with a friend for lunch and we drove over to the Umpqua area.  My kind of photo shoot!  Old historical homes, pasture animals, old barns and beautiful fall colors......plus the ever wonderful Umpqua River.  "My cup runneth over!"   We had lunch at a delicious bakery.......The Lighthouse Bakery.  It's also a cafe and has vegetarian food.  Being an animal eater, I usually avoid vegetarian restaurants, but that menu has changed so much from what it was years ago.  Just delicious is the new version.  The Lighthouse does a great business and this is what supports, at least in part, a spiritual retreat center that I've yet to visit but sounds pretty amazing........That will be the subject for another day.
In the travels of last week, we stopped by one home that had such an assortment of  an autumn themed garden.  Not only the gorgeous trees, like this first photo of a liquid amber, but a cute outhouse, hay wagon, scarecrows, beautiful fall flowers, and just too many odds and ends to list them all here.  I put a couple of photos of it on Facebook, if you follow me on there.  The family all came out when they saw us out in front......first the son, visiting from Chicago, then his mother, then his son, then the father, then the daughter.....and then the family dog.  One by one and we all had a great gab-fest.  Such nice people!  And they do it up for Christmas also, so I'll be hoping to see that come December.....
The second photo is of a group of fishermen taking off on one part of the Umpqua River.  And the third photo is of one I took of the river from an overpass........I usually don't put my own photos on my computer's desktop but this one I had to........It's so beautiful!  And it was a beautiful day.

 So now it's the sage of "The Great Fence".   When we moved into our new home we noticed that a part of the fence in the back was leaning but didn't think it was that big a deal.  Then we had a storm come through that dropped quite a bit of water.  Compared to what we used to get in Port Orford, we didn't think it was much of a gully-washer, but it did do some damage out back.  It washed out a gully between the sod of the lawn and the weed-guard that held decorative plants against the fence......It looked like it washed under the garden beds and under the fence.  I couldn't see beyond the fence to see what the backside looked like but the fence was REALLY leaning after that.  Obviously, something was going on that needed looking into.  So......we had a maintenance man and contractor, Scotty, come out and take a look.  It appears that when the backyard was re-landscaped, the drainpipe that went under the lawn, either broke or just stopped without continuing out beyond the garden area......meaning under the fence.  No one actually knows this for sure at this point since it's underground but that's what suspected.  Another contractor came out and those were his thoughts also.  Doesn't really matter, except it has to be fixed.  Next week, the project will start........digging up part of the garden and lawn......dropping steel I-beams, a cement wall, 2 layers of treated plywood and some kind of cloth, layers of rock....a French drain and the the fence pulled forward attached to something or other. They say that the garden will look back to what it looks like now (minus the leaning fence) but I really, really have my doubts about that!  So today, there have been all kinds of utility men coming and going to make sure that there are no lines, wires, etc. that will be impacted by the work....Plywood has been delivered, and different men painting words on the lawn that means something to them.  Good Grief!!!  And "Yes, this will cost a pretty penny".  The good parts are that (1) it will be fixed so no further damage can occur and (2) they will start next week and will work at it straight through to completion..........5 or 6 days.  Oh.....a third plus is that we're meeting a lot of very nice people....and that counts for a lot, right??

The weekend is coming up and I wish you all a happy and fun time to be had by all!