Rose Arbor

Thank goodness the roses arrived today. We decided to spring for instant gratification since everything else in the garden takes forever to grow in what passes for soil on our hill. These yellow climbing roses grow wild all over the place around here, but we've never seen them in a pot and trained to grow up a post like these . They were delivered this morning and OilMan and Dana put them into their own big pots and tied them to the posts of the arbor. says, As Dana says. "the whole reason they exist is to be on your arbor!"

Back in the house, our bathroom project, unbeknownst to us was rapidly going south. The plan was for the pebbles to go on the wall in our bathroom and tile installed to replace the wood floor in the guest bath. David came on Monday, tore out the floor and removed the toilet from the guest bath.

On Tuesday two guys arrived and installed most of the tile in the guest bath and most of the pebbles in our bath. We chose the pebbles from a small sample and they were to be the feature wall, so I was relieved when we finally saw the whole wall of pebbles and liked them. A lot.

On Wednesday one guy came back and finished installing tiles and pebbles. And, oh by the way, somebody else will be here tomorrow to do the grout. When you are down to one toilet in a bathroom full of men working, this is not good news….

Today one guy arrived to do the grout. He had it half done when we went in to have a look, and we hated it! You could hardly see the pebbles for the grout. They looked like little islands of rock floating in a sea on concrete! I will spare you the details of the many phone calls that ensued and the many dead ends we hit, and just mention that reinforcements were sent to help dig out the grout which was rapidly hardening. It takes a long time. It is very noisy. And messy. But it will get fixed. Eventually. We don't really know when that will be. Persistence and patience are required.

I think I'll have another glass of wine….