Our home has been a near constant buzz of activity for the past month or so, what with the basement bathroom tiling, the lawn and garden tending, the tree drama, the knitting of pirate hats for my sister’s bachelorette party and, most recently, the repainting of most of the first floor. Since work has also been extra busy during this period, I just haven’t had it in me to sit down and write about my day when all I wanted to do was sleep.

Things are not settling down anytime soon, either. The sister’s wedding is coming up at the end of this month and, though I’ll be out there for a week, I have about 750 miles to cover and a lot of people to see while I’m there. Also, I may be going to London for a week in the fall. That is, if I can get my passport paperwork filed in time. I’ve been carrying it around with me all week just waiting for a few spare minutes to turn it in.

Sadly, the tree drama continues. After my email was ignored, we received a second letter from the president of the company who sent the first letter. It was properly spelled, grammatically correct, personally signed, and proof that we weren’t the only ones complaining about the lack of communication. Of course, the damage was already done but, in the end, there was nothing to do but send them the first of four installments and try not to be too bitter about it.

Not long after, we received a third letter on the subject, this time from the very clever landscape architect at the company that had been hired to provide and plant the trees. In this letter, he took the time to clarify his involvement in the project (i.e. distance himself from the fiasco), detail the proper care of the new plantings (which the other guys never bothered to do) and pointedly make himself available for questions. Incidentally, this guy also designed our neighbor’s beautiful new landscaping along the back of our property line.

After that, we were feeling pretty good about the situation until we came home from work one day and found one of the new trees now standing 8 feet to the left of where it had once been. There is now a nearly dead circle of grass and dirt where they plugged up the old hole. I think someone is going to get a phone call in the next couple of days.

Oh, and the 10 free Arbor Day trees? Three of them (a crabapple, a hawthorne, and a redbud) are leafing happily in the lee of the house. I gave another crabapple and a goldenraintree to good homes. Although I keep watering them just in case, I’m pretty sure I killed the rest by reseating them too late. Though, to be fair, I think the dogwoods were DOA.