Ooops!

We have lived in our present location for about fifteen years. We have an unfinished basement that, because we live on a hill, will flood after heavy rain. If rainfall has been particularly heavy, it may take overnight for the water to drain out. Last month, the town replaced the culvert for a ravine that goes under the road. In this strange winter that should have been depositing snow, we had a huge amount of rain. Our basement filled up about five inches ... and stayed that way for two weeks. Clearly, it must have been because the work on the culvert; presumably the drain had somehow gotten blocked. We called the town highway super's office, and asked if they could check to see if something they had done had caused it. We were not irritated, these things happen. But wow, I'm so grateful we were not! The superintendent himself came over with another gentleman, and actually located the drain pipe as further down the the property than the culvert. They sent a snake up through, discovered that something had gotten lodged up in the drain and were able to dislodge it. How embarrassing! While our assumption may have been logical, we should have searched harder for that outtake! But it was really neat to see what a genuine public servant the highway superintendent is!

It seemed appropriate to use a local map for a thank you. The only thing we had was a simple full county map, in really bad shape. So I decided to scan it, and crop it down to focus on our town of Wellsville. I deepened the color a little, sharpened the image, and mounted it onto a red panel. For the thank you background, I cropped the picture down even further, and significantly "faded" the image. I had planned to add some embellishments after attaching the thank you to the card, but suddenly felt really subconscious about that, and left it unadorned.