P³ Update

Work continues around the house. Last night, I cut the wires for the electrical feed to the outside outlet that'd been installed on the patio. Because of where the line ran, I needed to take it out before I could take another course of timbers off the patio, and it just seemed safer to take the wires out at the on/off switch inside. I then pulled up the buried line.

A lot of digging still needs to be done, as well as moving pavers and figuring out where the dirt will all go. I've been using a manual tamper to compact the dirt that goes into the pond, but I haven't been too systematic about it so the pond does have some shifting soil. It's supposed to rain tonight and into the weekend, so hopefully water filtering down will help compact things some, freeing up space for more dirt.

Even if I end up putting another 15 square feet of soil into the pond (and I don't think there's that much left to fill), I'll still have a lot of soil under the patio to dispose of. There are some low spots in the yard that we can put some of it in, and more will be needed to try to figure out the new grade for the upper garden, but we are likely to be left with a bunch of dirt. It could well be that we keep some of it under the deck (assuming we build a deck to replace the patio), but that still leaves the question of stabilizing it so that we don't end up with somesort of mini mudslide in the future.

Of course, the pond/patio project (the p³ of the entry's title) can't dominate everything: I still need to cut the ogräs, clean the gutters, and tend to other tasks, like the dishwasher, which has been overflowing a bit. Last night I replaced the door seal, which improved, but didn't completely solve things. I think this weekend I'll be checking the drain and other parts to see if I can figure out what might be the cause.

Celeste Update

Celeste must be entering another leap/stormy period. Her sleep has grown quite erratic. Actually, for the first half of the night, she's better staying asleep once she finally gets there, but she really fights going to bed. Plus, when she does wake in the middle of the night, it's more difficult to get her back to sleep; sometimes, she's up for an hour or three playing, crying, generally not sleeping ...

Hopefully, she'll ease into this phase and her sleep will even out in a few more days — usually the first two nights of a leap are really tough for her sleepwise — and she'll be able to focus on new developments (including her breakdancing).

Today, Celeste's big excitement was a trip to the farmers market in Riverdale Park, which is held in a parking lot next a CSX rail line. Celeste, who is always interested in big trucks, buses, etc., got to see a freight train pass within 10 yards of her. I'm not sure she was able to really process what it was, but she wouldn't take her eyes off it ...