Driveway Moments

As many of you who have visited us (in the past, obviously. We no longer "visit", do we?) know, we have a long and treacherous driveway. Torturous, really.There I am above, attempting to not fall into one of the many( and very deep!) holes that decorated our driveway. As we share the driveway with our neighbors, we often shared thoughts as to how we needed to get together and fix it up.
Bob- and myself in a far more limited capacity- had wheel-barrowed many a stone to try and fill the larger holes but it was beyond our abilities. We had discussed getting a pick-up trucks worth of gravel and filling holes- or more radically- purchasing a dump trucks worth of gravel. (The cost is NOT in the gravel, but in the delivery.) We assumed we'd all get together and spend an afternoon spreading gravel (such fun!!) and split the cost. Our neighbors volunteered to call around for pricing...

Picture of "the old driveway" complete with central raised strip of grass.
Imagine our surprise when I was told by A + K (names hidden to protect the identities!) that they'd contacted a local company and the entire driveway was "being done"; and not just dropping a load of gravel, but leveling and scraping and pounding and packing. We contemplated the cost of such a lavish operation (initially considering maybe $200 each for the gravel) and expressed our concern.
"Not to worry!", exclaimed A + K; they were paying for the whole thing!!!
My goodness! Such good neighbors! I hate to consider what it cost... but they had wanted to (gasp) pave the driveway when they moved in, and I'm sure that was prohibitive. So this was a happy conclusion and they said how appreciative they'd been when Bob snow-blowed and weed-whacked the entire length of the driveway many times. Wow! There are nice people out there!

So one day, enormous equipment got dropped off. I don't know about you but I'm so super excited and thrilled by big equipment. (Like when we went to the gravel pit that time: see blog post from several years back when we made the terrace.) Oh boy! Early morning progress!

Lots of beep-beep-beep back up noises and huge dump trucks and piles and piles of gravel...

Nothing for scale, but these were BIG piles- heaps! Several men with shovels began dancing with a bulldozer type appliance and they spread it all out and then pounded the hell out of it. This took hours. I was in my studio- which is right off the driveway- and it felt like the house might cave in. That would have been an interesting side effect of getting that perfect driveway.

I think this is the thing that made the house shake. It was all very amazing. I couldn't help but wonder where our neighbor's two kids were, though. As a kid I would have been out there watching... better than t.v.! But maybe modern children are different.

Maybe this isn't the most dramatic picture, but it's lovely! Beautiful! No bone-jarring, frame-bending catastrophe to negotiate...  It's a pleasure to sail up and down the driveway now. If only we had somewhere to go; seeing as how the pandemic still rages and we're being stay-at-home conservative.

Our 31st Non-Anniversary!

And how better to celebrate our 31st non-anniversary than with me contracting a cold and a phone call from our driveway-sharing neighbors to say that there is yet another (!!!!) tree down, blocking passage? We've lost track of how many times the driveway has been impassable...
I was contemplating returning to bed as my throat was scratchy and my nose was stuffy and I just felt generally tired and run down when Bob provided the above intelligence. The tree decided to fall down late; we were in New Haven and didn't arrive home until a bit past 11:00. Our neighbor got home at around 1:00 to discover that she couldn't drive up the driveway. We were lucky!

(This shot is from the other side, by our neighbor's stranded car.) I rallied energy to assure Bob that I'd help drag limbs away, after he'd chainsawed the downed tree into draggable pieces. Fortunately, we have great neighbors and everyone pitched in. Bob sawed the side branches and when enough weight had been removed, we all formed a line and grabbed a rope that had been affixed to the biggest limb and we pulled. The third of the tree that was damaged gave way and no one got hurt and we quickly piled the truck high with debris to cart off into the woods.

You can barely see the truck for all the tree! It took an hour and a half or so but I think everyone secretly enjoyed the helping out and the cleaning up in the mildly chilly morning.
Which, of course, leads back to Bob and I celebrating our 31st anniversary! Yes, the basil was struck dead and blackened and tonight we're having a small occasion. (We'll wait until I feel 100% before we really congratulate each other on attaining a bit over three decades of unmarried bliss.) But I actually feel pretty okay after a low key day of laying around in the sun and getting picture books from the library. Sorry to see the garden go, but I guess it means less work!