Deck progress and goose family update

The new deck is coming right along. We spent our weekend digging holes for footings, setting our footings/deck blocks and then pouring cement for the piers that will support the deck. This is a picture of our progress to date.
On the goose front, things seem to be going well too. Woody and Hovander continue to be stellar, over-protective parents. (I pity any creature that decides to mess with their family...) They got out of their pasture yesterday and I managed to get close enough to take a family portrait. (Hovander's on the left; Woody's on the right; goslings are wedged between mom and dad.)

woody, hovander and the kids...

On Wednesday we were surprised to find that Hovander, a goose that we've had for almost 15 years, hatched out a couple of goslings. She had been sitting on eggs for a number of weeks. She does this every year. If it's not eggs, its anything remotely roundish that she can find to sit on. Last year we found a gander and put them in a pen together. It certainly wasn't love at first sight - as a matter of fact, it seemed like they hated each other with passions that only geese can evoke... but apparently they got along better than we realized...

Hovander had made her nest in a corner of the barn. There was a pile of straw and some feathers but no food source of any kind. We didn't really know what to do about getting those little ones some food especially since Hovander would hiss like a demon and charge at us with outstretched wings if we came within 10 feet of her goslings.

This morning I went to the barn and she was by the sliding door with her babies. I left the door open and she wandered out. She attacked our overly amorous drake and hissed like mad at Norman but once everyone learned to stay away from the little flock it was OK. Eventually she stood in front of Woody's pen (he's the father) and called to him. He came and stood by the gate and once the coast was somewhat clear, Sara opened the gate, ran for her life and this is what we witnessed....



Woody had never seen his offspring before and we didn't know what to expect. Initially it looks like Woody is just happy to be out of his pasture and is thinking of going out with the boys. But Hovander calls him back and seems to tell him that it's his turn to watch the kids for a while. He watched them as closely as Hovander did and she had a few minutes to go for a swim in the big puddle on the driveway. It was pretty amazing to watch the instinctual parenting skills of those two birds - people could learn a lot from a couple of geese...

Why we took the deck off (needlessly...)

One of the main reasons we decided it was time to do something about our back deck was because we discovered that we had a leak in our main water supply line to the house. The line ran right under the deck and we figured it would be a lot easier to dig it up if the deck weren't in the way. Well, as you know, last week we tore the deck off and so all that remained to be done in terms of preparation for rebuilding the deck was replacing the water line. Jesse had done some major preliminary digging last weekend and yesterday I got down to business.

Right off the bat I made a major discovery. After digging just a little bit more I found out that our problem was not the line itself but a coupling in the line. I figured that it would be a simple matter of splicing a chunk of 3/4 inch water line on to the existing line. Then I found out that the splice I needed to replace was directly under the 4 inch black ABS line that whisked sewage from the suite to wherever that stuff ends up. I went to the hardware store, got the parts I needed and got to work. I had to dig it out a little more in order to get the room I needed to finagle everything in. After digging, I found out that I didn't need the parts that I had picked up. It turns out I needed a "T" since whoever installed the sewage line figured that they would save time and labor by running the supply line to the suite directly under the 4 inch transport line. Back to the hardware store... Then the old "T" broke off in the pipe.... Grrr! Did I mention that I had to do a lot of this in the rain? I did. It took me all day but I got it done.

So in the end, it was pretty much unnecessary for us to tear off the back deck.... Now, of course, we have to do something back there. At least the water feature in the backyard is gone. Our ducks don't like that but we do.

This is how I spent my Friday.

This is what I looked like when I was done.

(You can tell everything worked because I'm smiling...)