Spring Fever!

After months of cold, rainy weather, we finally had a super warm and beautiful weekend. Normally the rain and cold doesn't bother me. I actually like the rain. But after spending 8 days in Belize last month, it was very difficult to come home to the cold.

These are a few pictures that Mark took in the backyard yesterday. The pines have their candles, the firs are budding, the goldenchain tree is covered in lovely plumes of bright yellow, the azaleas are on fire with blossoms, and wild lupine are stretching for the sky. It is so beautiful. If only our grass looked as good.

Our backyard grading project received official OK from the county last week. They tried to find a place in the county code that would prevent us from landscaping. They tried several times. They still have not learned that Jill knows how to read the code, and I will push back and make them look like idiots if they insist. I thought that by kicking their sorry butts in a lawsuit 3 1/2 years ago they would realize that I'm no pushover. But that butt-kicking just made them angry, and they have tried in vain to stop us from legally finishing our backyard.

One of their good ones this time around was that they tried to say that they needed to see a 1-ft scale topo map of the before and proposed "after" project in order to consider our application as "complete". I knew this would run about $10,000 to do. So I looked up the code, and they only require a 10-ft scale topo. This 10-ft topo is in their county mapping sytem already. When I pushed, the idiot planner we are forced to appease said that he just needed to see that level of detail to determine whether or not the project would be stable. I asked him to show me his engineer stamp and to explain why the stamp of an engineering geologist on our plan guaranteeing the stability of the project was insufficient. He decided to back down.

Now the fun begins. A real sprinkler system. The LAST lawn planting. Shrub beds. And FINALLY a swingset. I'll have to blog about that beauty later.