As it turns out, it’s $2180.00. It’s a nice fence (at that price, it had better be – but that, I’ll have you know, was the LOW bid)! Now we are moving on to Phase Two – or maybe jumping to Phase Three. I’m not sure about the numbering of the phases. At any rate, a guy is coming out on Monday to give us an estimate on a wrought iron fence that will close off the side yard (it has to be wrought iron so The Little Princess (aka Mia) can look outside). Once that’s done then the great digging out of the backyard will commence. We reached a momentous decision today; we decided to have the rubber tree cut down. That monster has beeen forcing our hand as regards our backyard landscaping decisions for too long. Too bad we disn’t reach this conclusion BEFORE we paid the tree trimmers $200 to trim it last month… Oh well, once it’s gone Chuck can pursue his pond dreams, which now include goldfish (having learned that Koi need at least three hundred gallons of water PER KOI we have ruled them out as three hundred gallons worth of pond would pretty much take up our entire backyard. Plus at $100 a fish, we’d feel just terrible flushing them down the toilet when they inevitably go belly up. Just not worth the pain and misery). Glorious pics are here.

Coming soon: The Crater That Was the Rubber Tree!