Admiring the New Gutters

An as yet unmentioned bonus of our move to the West was the acquisition of a Gazebo in our now rather extensive back yard. I show it here complete with its iron goose which, striving so very hard to fly even further to the west-north-west, has bent the pole to which it is, alas, attached—like those folks in Plato’s cave (here). With time now beginning to free up here and there, and yesterday having been a rather glorious late August day, Brigitte and I were sitting about in the new Gazebo when Michelle, who had been busy painting our upstairs bathroom, came out to see what we were all about.

Brigitte sat in what was a rather meditative pose, looking up and toward the house. Michelle asked: “What are you looking at?” “I’m admiring the new gutters,” Brigitte said—and there was, you might say, just the hint of a catch in her throat. We all laughed—fully grasping the feeling.

Admiring the Gutters from the Gazebo. The full story herewith. Some things you do not experience until you’ve lived in a house for a while. In our case it was the fact that when it rained water accumulated on the long, long drive from one end of the house to the garage—and stayed there forming what we’d come to call Lake Wolverine II, a very irritating if tiny cousin of the much more majestic Lake Wolverine nearby. One simply couldn’t go to the garage without wearing the equivalent of rubber boots—and our little lake would hang around hours after the sun had already come out again. Why this phenomenon? This house, like many others hereabouts, didn’t have gutters. Therefore, in the process of adaptation, and making our new house really ours, we’ve had new gutters installed earlier this week. Needless to say, it hasn’t rained a drop since; we’ve been joking that it might never—what with the North Central Region’s most severe historic drought having just begun the moment our gutter folks departed. Well, it looks now like it might rain after all, come Saturday or Sunday. And the longed-for test of the new gutters is approaching. We hope that they will have put an end to Lake Wolverine II. If not, more expenses are ahead to straighten out the concrete’s unfortunate slope. And maybe not. Hope never dies.