Quick update

I'm trying to conquer my off-the-blog guilt by posting a quick (no picture) update. I have been putting pressure on myself to get good pictures, but it's making my postings less frequent... anyway, here we go...
1. Two weekends ago the open house on the beautiful rehab down the street went on the market-- they're asking 725k! For a duplex! I'll be surprised if it sells for that, especially with all the talk of the DC bubble deflating, but we'll see... I'll keep you posted.
2. No resolution on the dogs barking issue. We haven't had any other complaints, but we haven't been out of town for the whole weekend again yet, either. (We've only had complaints when we were out of town for the weekend, not just during the day when we're at work or trips to the store or something.)
3. The painter is still hard at work on the exterior. It looks beautiful! Unfortunately, our long spell of dry weather has come to a screeching halt. We had 7" of rain over the weekend, and it's been raining on and off all week! The good news is that the new gutters and the basement waterproofing have been successful investments, and the basement is nice and dry! The bad news is that we're also rapidly approaching "El Broke-o" status. AND I don't forsee any free (this weekend was free, next two are not) and dry (wet again this weekend) weekends until it's too cold to paint. So we may have to keep the Legend Alive and bite the bullet to pay the painter to paint the porch for us. AARGGGHH! I just want the porch to be done! I know everyone gets to this point, but we've been there for awhile now.
4. Porch update- after seeing the painter's awesome skills with what he calls "Kryptonite" this green fiberglass filler stuff, we paid him to fix the rotten column base. It's looking really good! And Aaron is almost done with the trim on the porch! He's only got about 4 more feet of quarter round to trim everything out with and then it's on to putty and caulk. As we've heard, "A little putty, and a little paint, makes the carpenter what he ain't!". Seriously, though, I'm just kidding. The trim looks great, but Aaron is (as usual) being hard on himself. Hopefully, we'll get a quote from the painter this week that won't be tooooooo painful and we can put the exterior work behind us for the year.
5. The aforementioned 7" of rain beat my beautiful zinnias to the ground. I found a few things out about these remarkable flowers when I ripped them out on Monday:
a. The seeds that they make sprout from the flower heads, then the flower heads fall off and the seeds take root that way. When I was a kid, my grandmother and I used to save the spent flower heads for seeds to spread the next summer, (I actually did that again this year) but I'd never noticed this behavior before! We'll see how many of these little guys come back next year.
b. The zinnias really attract centipedes. Centipedes (anything with more than 4 legs, actually) really, really freak me out. They move too fast or something, and they're the same color as a cockroach, and they look like they can sting me. I beat several of them up with a hoe, but there were just way too many to kill. We had a lot of (gloved) contact as I planted 8 big pansies, 64 grape hyacinth, 20 jumbo daffodils, and 36 crocus in that bed! Does anyone know anything about the small centipedes that are native to central Maryland? Are they harmful? They probably are good for the dirt like earthworms, but the earthworms look much more friendly to me.
6. Other garden news, the lantana that I bought to fill out the perennial bed in front in its first year has gone totally insane! I keep cutting it back and using it as filler with the roses for cut flowers in the house, but it's still taken over. The plus is that the neighbors like it. I've had a lot of compliments from people walking by. I hope that it doesn't choke out my perennials, but my rule is that if it doesn't come back, it didn't pass the test and it doesn't get replaced.
7. Two other reasons that I've been off the blog are that I had a test in solid state physics (I got it back, a B+, not perfect but I'll take it); and my husband's good friend Mike finally got his Volvo P1800 ready for it's first SCCA race. This is a project that would be good fodder for another blog, and I'm trying to convince him to start one. We were at Summit Point in West Virginia with him (crew!) almost all of last weekend. Aaron has many, many hours of work in on that car so it was a thrill for both of us to see it run (even in the 7" of rain that soaked all 3 of us to the bone!). It was so rainy on Saturday for qualifying (and Mike, also El-Broke-o didn't have rain tires) that Mike couldn't see and didn't push the car very hard. On Sunday, for the race it was much drier, but he blew something (probably the radiator) on the 5th lap and was not able to finish the race. Does that sound like an old house to you? Did to me, too! We're just so glad that it finally made it to the track and are really, really excited for next year.

Well, that's it for now. Maybe I'll just do a picture post over the weekend.