Pergola in Action!

To finish a great Labor Day/Hawkeye football weekend we had Laurel's birthday dinner outside under the pergola. Both sets of grandparents and Aunt Lori and Uncle Matt were there. We seated a table of six under the pergola, and another table of four in the patio between the pergola and the pond:



On Saturday the Hawkeye footbal team played my undergrad alma mater, the University of Northern Iowa.

My Panthers gave Iowa all they wanted and then some. Setting an NCAA record, Iowa won the game by blocking TWO field goal attempts on consecutive plays, to win 17-16.

We had guests for the game from Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and St. Louis as well as our usual visitors and friends. Here is one pic from before the game:


And one with three of my best childhood friends after the game:


And even though it wasn't from this past weekend, here is a special shot of the "Corn on the Cob" cupcakes that Rowan made after she took her cake decorating class, a great way to finish the "end of summer" post here on Foxcroft:


The "kernals" are jelly beans, the "butter" are starburst candies.

You Know it's a Home Football Game Weekend When...

...The Port-O-Potty guys drop off the bathroom for the neighbor's driveway:


Yep, I was just out shooting my last walnut-in-the-driveway picture, and couldn't resist getting this one.

The good news is that this season they deliver every Friday before a game and pick it up on the Monday after. Last season it sat there from the end of the August to the end of November. The only people in favor of that were the neighborhood kids, who found it tremendously convenient.

Maybe I'll get a shot tomorrow of the neighbor's yard piled with cars and people tailgaing. I think he's managed to squeeze in even more than last year.

Go Hawkeyes, beat Michigan State's Sparty tomorrow!

The lay of the land...

Here is a map of our neighborhood. Our lot, is the irregularly shaped gold part in the middle. Our street basically is a dead end, the curve to the left onto Glencrest is really a path to the driveways of the two houses on the street, 7 and 11. The black area is not a road. but is a steep heavily wooded ravine.

As I said our lot is irregular. Here is what the lot was like in 1928 when Bess built. The yellow shaded area is now a part of 26 Prospect. Our house was the first completed on the street, 305 next door was finished shortly after. None of the homes on Prospect were built until approx. 1948. Originally this was wide open land. The yellow leg faces south and was Bess' garden. It was sold in about 1960.

Here's our latest dilemma: The house at 30 Prospect has just gone on the market and it's yard is a giant "T." I was contacted by their realtor about possibly buying the top of the "T" to add to our yard. The total area is roughly 50' by 120'. Their asking price is $100K. Since we would most likely use it as garden space, it would be very expensive vegetables. The owners of 11 Glencrest are interested too, as they would get an even more gigantic yard, plan to knock down the small rental that is on the site and build their huge retirement ranch home.

So as if we didn't have enough to think about with finishing upstairs, a new roof, extensive restoration, we now can obsess about spending a pile we don't have on getting a bigger yard. Hopefully we could buy a small portion of the "T" and take out the scrub trees on it that would allow for sun to come into the area.

The kicker in all of this is that due to our proximity to the University of Iowa football stadium, the current owners of the "T" were able to park about 25 cars back there for home games at, I believe, $20 a car for 7 home games, hence the high price of the lot. The realtor also mentioned that if someone bought 30 Prospect and the entire lot they could run a driveway along the east edge of 30 to allow someone else to build back in there.