We finally had "the wizard of ooze" (I know, cringe) come by to pump the septic system and do an inspection. He recommended having the pipes replaced--both the one connecting the house to the tank, and from the tank to the leach field.
We called the excavator he recommended, and a few days later the lawn was dug up, the pipes laid down and the trench was filled back in.
Just as we experienced our first hard frost, a few days later we were surprised by sunny, balmy weather, perfect for planting grass seed. Peter spent a lot of time raking the dirt out flat again, and pulling many, many small rocks that had come to the surface during the project.
Peter has a new evening ritual of giving the seeds a light watering just as the sun sets.
It feels so good to have the unglamorous but important nuts and bolts on the property well upgraded. The driveway, drainage, tree removal and septic are checked off the "to do" list and now we are on to contractors. We are in conversation with several and hope to have things decided on before the snow flies.
There are some very exciting things on the horizon for our family in 2015...
-Karen