The View from Above and the Sound Down Below

Lessons from the Garden ~ Back Yard Remodel

As I'm sitting here typing it sounds like thunder on my roof.  If I ever doubted its strength, I doubt no more.  A crew of six men ~ six good-size, strong men ~ have been up there all afternoon pounding and tearing and sawing and just generally beating the heck out of the roof.

I didn't mean for them to treat it so harshly. After all, despite a few small leakage problems, that roof has served us well.  The leaks aren't really the roof's fault anyway.  After all, anyone knows roofs are meant to be peaked, not flat.  I mean who puts a flat roof in neighborhoods that have weather (read "rain" or worse yet, "snow")?  The Eichlers and Frank Lloyd Wright's of the world may put them on trendy modern houses but they still leak.  Flat-roofed adobes may have been built by the Indians in the desert, but I guarantee given enough torrential rainstorms, they'd leak, too.

So now my roof is suffering the indignity of being torn apart and ripped off the very house it has served so well.  In its place will be a nice, new roof with a thick foam covering that is energy efficient, leak resistant (I would never say a flat roof can be leak "proof") and highly durable despite the onslaught of wind, rain and sun.

So as I watch my old roof drive down the street, tossed unceremoniously in a big truck, I bid it adieu.  "Rest comfortably in the dump heap, my friend, for a job well done."