High Country Gardens was to have shipped my plants the week of the 4th. I thought that meant Monday the 4th, so when they hadn't shown up by Thursday I was nervous. They arrived Friday, but so did a freezing rain; Saturday it snowed; Sunday, despite melting snow, clumping soil, and my impending absence, they had to go in. And so they did.
Vinca major for the easement, not enough to fill it in but a start, and I have to remulch it and make some sort of gravel border along the street. The plants right now are far enough away from anyone exiting a car--instead they're on the dogs peeing, sidewalk side--but the hope is they'll spread. A couple of salvia, a couple of penstemon, an agastache, and a catmint for the north side, not nearly enough to fill it in. I was modest buying plants, but there is also the neighbor's lamb's-ear sometime soon, and though it might be too hot (according to books, not to actual life) to divide last year's catmint, they are top-heavy and middle-thin and look like they might want to take over the world. Also a Spanish broom against the porch on one side and a decorative sage on the other. Now they just have to survive a week without watering and the season in soil I might have scarred by working while saturated: it's clay enough to have clumped.
The planting was interspersed with dashing downstairs to stem the tide, by towel and vacuum, of the flood in the northwest corner of the basement. RDC says this didn't start happening until the summer of 2001, and theorizes the foundation might have cracked (more) during the extremely dry years of 2000-2002. I didn't remember exactly when it started, but I know we didn't bother buying a rug to cover the tile in the front of the den until we had the television set up, which wasn't until late in the summer, and that the first we knew of the leakage was my wondering aloud why the rug was wet after a torrential rain (Denver's preferred form).
We shoveled all the snow away from that side of the house (in shorts and Tevas); we increased the length of the gutters on the ground to move the flood further from the house, and placed buckets under, ahem, leaks in the gutters. I don't know what we're going to do, but it's a serious problem.
One of my first tasks when we get back is to dig a drainage ditch. PVC pipes, gravel, grading, surveying. Oi. Or something.