Jaci Dawn

Don talked me into purchasing new rain gutters for the house this autumn. We really needed new ones: the old ones were cheap, angled wrong, leaked, and didn’t cover all of the eaves.

Of course buying something like rain gutters involves sales men (because you didn’t really think Don was going to install gutters, did you?) and sales men always involve sales pitches. I pretty much tossed this back at Don and told him to deal with the salesmen and the sales pitch because I really didn’t want to. For one thing, this whole year has left me stressed out and tired. And for another, I just don’t like pushy salesmen.

And, of course, I came home one night after a miserable commute after and intense day at work and there are salesmen in my house looking all chipper and relaxed and I just wanted to eat dinner and go to bed. I don’t think I was very nice. They left their sales pitch and said they’d call back in a couple weeks.

Well, we decided to buy the rain gutters from LeafGuard. Don promised me they could work around my existing rain barrel. He said something about they were going to throw in a second rain barrel but he never could find the piece of paper that was written on. So when the laborers came to install our new gutters, a second rain barrel wasn’t on my radar.

The young men who came to install the gutters were very nice men and I actually liked them. This is good because Don vacated the premises on the day of installation and left the final inspection to me. (In his defense, he already had plans.)

The installers took pains to set up my rain barrel so that I can retire it for the winter and reinstall it in the summer. If that sounds counter-intuitive, it really isn’t. Yes, it rains nearly all winter here but it also can freeze. The last thing I want is to have water in my rain barrel and have that water freeze. I paid $45 for that barrel from Systern Rain Barrels. The manual says it should be out under the down spout from March-October and in storage October-March.

I inspected the gutters and the installers left. Then it rained and we discovered they’d installed one downspout incorrectly. Don (bless his heart because he just hates to make phone calls and I was absolutely overwhelmed with work and life) followed through and got them back out here. The young man who headed up the crew apologized and fixed the problem (said he had a trainee on the job but it was his fault for not noticing). I may not have liked the salesmen (probably no fault of theirs; its just they’re in hard-sell mode) but I certainly liked the laborers.

Don was disappointed that a second rain barrel did not come with the install, but he still couldn’t find the slip of paper with that quote on it and I was quite happy with the gutters.

Until tonight.

You saw that coming, right?

I came home from work and started to open the front door when I noticed something black at the end of the house, under the big rhododendron. I peered closer and thought that’s a rain barrel!

I asked Don if he knew we had a second rain barrel. He didn’t believe me and had to go out and look for himself.

Yes, LeafGuard came out sometime today when we were at work and installed their rain barrel as verbally promised when Don originally spoke with the salesmen! Didn’t say a word to us, just set it up and left it.

It’s really cool. Better than the other barrel in that this new one has a valve built into the downspout that you can turn so that all the rain water goes down the spout or it goes into the barrel. You don’t have to disconnect it during the winter – you just turn the valve! And they set it up so that it is not currently collecting rain water. (The blocks were already in place because I was in the process of moving my original barrel to the other side of the house – so glad I left them in place!!)

I’m pretty jazzed: I now have two rain barrels! And I can sing my mom’s favorite rainy day song to go with the barrels. (I miss my mom now!)