♫ Raindrops are fallin' on my house ♪

All this rain we're getting in Texas is probably making most people miserable. It's hard to have outdoor parties and plan events, all the amusement and water parks are probably losing revenue because of low attendance, and in general has probably made traffic a lot worse than it usually is when it's simply dry summer heat. I didn't really think about it last year when we bought our house, but all this rain has really been a blessing for us and the house. 

The sprinkler system at our house is broken. We knew that from the get go. After buying the house, we spent a few months trying to fix it ourselves and find the root of the problem. At first, we realized that there was no power cord for the system controller. Seriously?! So I went out and bought a $15 power cord. I really was hoping that was the extent of the problem, but of course, it wasn't. After that, Jonathan and I spent some weekend afternoons (with some help) digging along the course of the system. We found a broken wire that had been cut somewhere along the line and attempted to find the other side. We were pretty much digging aimlessly and called it quits after too many hours spent with no luck found. 

We I spent the rest of August to October watering twice a week after work by hand and by setting up an outdoor sprayer. After October, we mainly just watered the flower beds and around the foundation to keep everything settled properly. 

This spring, the rain has continued, and is still coming down as I write. Jonathan and I recently changed up our landscaping in order to fix a drainage problem our front yard used to have as seen in Exhibit A, displaying my amazing skills via Paint. The inner side of the "U" used to fill completely and rise all the way up to the edge of the paver stone. That's almost kiddie pool status, guys.

Exhibit A: A before (left) and after (right) of the front landscaping in our house. The green represents paver stones to delineate flowerbeds. Please excuse the tree on the right. It started slipping down. 

After changing up the pavers and shrinking the flowerbed, we needed to re-sod and re-level the part of our lawn that was altered. We definitely underestimated the amount of sod we needed. Twice. 

Exhibit B displays what we currently have. 

Exhibit B: Pavers moved, sod placed down, and the tiny little spot that we failed to level correctly and/or put sod there because we ran out and we're amateurs. But look at that wonderful green grass!

Our neighbor who's lived next door to this house for 20 years, paid us the biggest compliment we could ever expect to receive having been through what we have with our house. "This yard has looked the best it ever has right now." But really, we can't take most of the credit. We mow almost every weekend and try to pull some of the larger weeds when we can, but most of the credit has to go to the rain and what a blessing it's been.