AUTUMN WREATH TRASH TO TREASURE

Regular readers know that I have a favorite place to look for bargains...our downstairs trash area!  Our building has trash chutes on every floor, and they feed into a separate room, but for boxes and other things that people can't put in the chute, there is an area (indoor) near the loading dock where people can put the things they don't want.  I've found quite a few cool items over the last few years.

This has to be one of my favorite finds.  Went down there to throw some stuff away and do my normal reconnaissance run and didn't have a chance to miss this!!  A decorative wreath wrapped in some plastic and just tossed into the top of the dumpster.  I snatched it up in the blink of an eye.  I checked it over, expecting to find it broken or missing some flowers...

Nope!  It is in perfect shape!  It incredibly detailed with lots of color all around it.  Greenery with reds, oranges, yellows, rusts and even little white flowers.

Here it is, temporarily hanging on the door so I could get a picture.  Seeing it hanging up, it's definitely an Autumn/Fall wreath.  Our only guess is that someone had it for the Fall, they moved and decided not to take it with them?  Oh well, their loss and our win!

We can't WAIT to have it on the new front door at the farm next October/November!  One less thing to buy for future decorating needs, ha.

RAIN DELAY NEW HOUSE UPDATE

Not an April Fool's joke, ha.

Last week, we were supposed to have a surprise...our foundation pour.  It was on the schedule but tentative because of the chance of rain.

Well it rained.

A lot.

The driveway held up BUT the side was just too flooded.  The concrete company was worried that if they had a driveway issue or a truck stopped and they had to drive off to the side, they would get stuck.

Yeah, see the above, that was a fair point.  As the builder said, this was the first rain since they put it in, so they needed to figure out and find any problem areas/soft spots that might still exist.

The culverts did their job by flowing water under the driveway instead of over it but, as the building superintendent said, "it's just as flat as flat gets".

All this digging is going to change my mowing pathways but we're looking into a lot of clearing later on so I won't worry too much about that right now.

On the plus side...

...we got an upgrade on the driveway/road!

They decided to improve on what they had already done.  So, they added more lime, more soil to build it up a bit more and make it even more firm and then they topped it with crushed concrete and gravel.  It looks even better now than it did before.  They are not worried about the driveway though...on the day of the pour, there will be 14-15 trucks each weighing 85,000 lbs plus the pump truck which is another 60,000-80,000 lbs.  That means there will be a total of 1,145,000 lbs on the driveway!

It's not going anywhere now!

We asked if there was an option we had and he said that maybe after we move in, we might want to run a ditch alongside the driveway all the way to the front of the property/road.  Our house sits at the high end of the entire property.

Now fingers crossed for dry weather.

As the old saying goes:

"You can't rush forever"