Our weather began to change yesterday with a light cool breeze even as the sun shone quite brightly. Today the high is to be 62 and I've had to close all the hoppers in the house. What's a hopper? That's the little top window (see the one in the photo) that we keep opened, at least a bit, most of the time to get fresh air in the house. The new windows also have vents at the top as well. When the vents are in the open position, even with all the windows closed we get some fresh air.
We were quite lucky to have the cool breeze yesterday as we built the herringbone brick barrier/edging for our front flower bed. I say "we" but I only started the operation; Don finished it. It took a long time to do but it looks really good, don't you think? Not bad for non-masons. Now all we have to do is spread the mulch (in the blue and white bags near the trellises). Unfortunately, it has begun to rain a bit so it may not get spread for a wee while yet as rain is in the forecast until Tuesday.
The title of today's blog refers to the never-ending saga of trying to get pathway lights. The cable has been run out into the garden, a trench has been dug to bury it in, but we still have no lights to attach to it. You may remember that our electrician, Gordon, came out over 3 weeks ago to install the lights we had bought for this purpose, but they were low-voltage ones and needed a transformer to operate through. The box Gordon said we needed--on top of the ground--to put the transformer into would have been too obtrusive for our taste, so we began our search for pathway lights that would operate off the mains (regular electricity supplied by the already run cable). Three weeks ago today we found just what we were looking for on a Website and ordered 3 lights. They were to be shipped in 2 or 3 days. We had diligent follow-up from a sales rep to inform us there was a slight delay but we should receive them in the next two weeks. Then yesterday afternoon the rep informed us that the particular lights we ordered have been discontinued by the distributor.
Meanwhile we've had an open trench in our front garden (on the other side of the pathway from the front bed) with cable sprawled around near it. That's not all, a sensor has already been mounted over the right-most window of the exterior wall (you can see that in the photo) that is designed to turn on the non-existent pathway lights as well as the front door light.
Don and I surfed the Web again yesterday trying to find another set of lights that we liked that would operate off the mains. We thought we had found one but had to double check that they didn't require a transformer to run. By the time we phoned the company, it had closed for the day. Someone just phoned back to say yes they require a transformer. Further, he said, about 90% of all outdoor lights these days do as well. The styles of most of the non-transformer lights are bollards--tall, industrial-looking poles with the lights in the top. They have no style or flair to them at all; they are strictly utilitarian. Not what we had in mind for sitting right out in our front garden. But we did manage to find one other set that seems to be electrical that are sort of a combination of the ones we keep trying to find (pagoda style) and the bollard. If that doesn't pan out, we'll just take out the cable, close up the trench, and get 3 more solar lights like the ones we've been using up to now. (Of course it stays light so late these days that we have no idea how well solar lights will light up the path in the dead of winter.)
It's time for me to walk to the shops for my haircut, to pick up a prescription refill at the chemist's, and to get some celery from he greengrocer so Don can make some of his delicious chicken salad for our lunch with the leftovers from Wednesday night's wonderful roasted chicken dinner. He's on the golf course just now playing with his Saturday regulars.
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