The Fall of the year 2001 
... at our house

We learned that our baby kitty, Pork Chop, was born with an enlarged heart.  Sadly, he did not make it to his second birthday which would have been May 8.  He died of a stroke on 23 March 2001.  It was very sad indeed to lose our baby.  

We finally broke out of our draught this year.  It took a lot of rain before I could feel confident that each time it rained it was not just an aberration and we'd soon dry up.  Quite a few of our flowers did not bloom, presumably because they were too stressed or unable to put on bloom buds last year.  But all is looking normal again and better for next year's blooms.  In the fall, I replaced the azaleas we lost to the draught over the last two years.  

Our home water saga continues into it's third year.  We are still getting underground leaks in our water pipes.  The old, original underground line in back has been turned off for a couple of years because of developing leaks.  Doug decided this was the year to replace that line with new pipe.  After digging up the old line, he found he couldn't replace it after all because it is cemented into the ground where it comes out of the house.  So the new plan is ...  on hold.

We got a new well pump which Doug installed and so we now have well water again for outside use.  It's good to be able to water again as much as I want to.  We have plenty of water down in the well. 

Time to update that map of our water system we've made for the next owners.  Now we have a duel system of city water inside and well water outside.  All that remains to be done now is to trench from the well connection in the front and lay new pipe to the garage and points out back.  But that will be for another year because this year's big project was still ahead.  

The house needed a new roof this year so Doug planned to first rebuilt our porch roof to give it some pitch and better tie it into the existing roof.  We had three years of draught until the week he scheduled to build the porch roof.  The lumber was delivered, his time off from work was scheduled, he coordinated with his dad to help, and we got hurricane-type rains for days.   By the time the rain finished, we were 17" ahead of where we were in rain at this time last year, and 4" above normal.  

Finally it cleared up, turned hot, and the new porch roof went up.  Then, on my birthday, July 9, the roofers showed up and the entire house got a new roof.  

At the same time the roof was being changed out, we had The Second Great Tree Clearing going on in the back.  The county is going to put power poles along the county road in back of us and contracted with Asplund to clear the trees.  The county claims 80' of right-of-way and needed to take down 17 of our trees in back of our garage and along the road.  

Cutting down 17 mature trees on your property at one time is a big deal!  The tree-cutting service was nice enough to cut them into logs for burning in the fireplace.  All Doug has to do is split them, but many are over two feet across!  They left us two big truckloads of mulch, too, which I liked.   

In the late summer my Mom started going downhill rather fast.  She passed away on August 25, less than a week before her 89th birthday.  Doug and I made two trips to Greenville, North Carolina in August to see her.  On the second trip, we arrived just before she died; in fact, I felt certain that she was waiting for me to get there.  

Roy came from Virginia for the funeral, as did our cousin Jack.  In each case, it was good for cousins to get together who hadn't seen each other in a long time.  I'm sorry we didn't get a picture of Jana, Louie, and Roy together.  

In October I bravely took a trip to visit Roy in Ashburn, flying into and out of Dulles Airport where the terrorists hijacked the plane that they flew into the Pentagon.  We had a wonderful visit.  He took off work while I was there and drove me around the whole area -- it is very beautiful.  We spent Saturday driving and walking around Washington.  The hole in the Pentagon where the plane crashed is sobering to see in person.  More than a month after the crash, firefighters were still shooting water into the hole as we drove by.   

Last but certainly not least, the annual paw paw tree report.  Three years of drought, notwithstanding, we still have the three trees.  The big news this year is that for the first time, we had blooms!  Yes, about six on the largest tree.  They looked something like upside-down sweet shrub bush blooms.  That was the good news.  The bad news is that they all fell off.  We are hoping that that was just a reaction to the stress of the draught and not an indication of some kind of incompatibility with our soil.  Next year we should have a better idea about that. 

The paw paw tree progression since we started in 1997 looks like this:

2001

2000

1999

1998

100" (8' 4")

64"

48"

27"

90" (7' 6")

35"

23"

8"

41" (3' 5")

20 1/2"

16"

Well, that was our summer, on into fall.  We have plenty of wood to burn and are ready for winter.