Face-off under the apple tree.

Saturday afternoon I noticed this gopher (I think he's a gopher) under the apple tree, munching on some fallen apples so I ran in to grab the camera. I realize they're big pests, but I thought he was pretty cute sitting there eating an apple like a little man.

Anyway, our dog Gertie finally noticed him... here's a pic. Every hair on her back was on end!

Some sad news, our little cat Lucky got hit by a car last week. He will be missed, he was Gertie's buddy.

It's Getting There

We've spent the last two Sundays painting. Last week we did the screen & side porch floors, and the new siding on the south side of the house. It's pretty much done on that side except for moving plants around and stuff. Here's a before picture from when we first looked at the house and one from yesterday:

The big window that we put in is also pretty much done, finally. It's been about a 3 month project, reglazing the windows and then painting. There were a few broken windows that I replaced, too. Here's a photo, I think it came out pretty good.

Yesterday we painted the studio porch, the back stairs and started on the fence. Here's a before and after of the studio porch:

Firing #2

Just unloaded the kiln, and I'm pretty happy with the results. There are a couple of things to work out, I'm having issues with my turquoise glaze blistering in the front third of the kiln. I can't figure out if it's getting too hot up there or if there's too much soda or what. I'll probably just put pots with that glaze on them in the back from now on.

Here are a couple of pics.

Do cows cry?

Thursday evening the outer bands of Earl gave us a little magic here in Hurdle Mills.

This was the weekend of mourning.  Yesterday, the man that rents the 10-ish acres of pasture land to our west came and took his three adolescent bulls away.  Their mothers were torn up for the remainder of the day yesterday and all of today.  Apparently, cows will loudly bellow for their young when they’ve been lost, and wander the entire pasture in search of their babies.  The cry that went up from time to time was a constant reminder of their misery.  While we worked this weekend, we sat vigil with the cowsies. Here's a picture of them from when we first got here.

So I finished mulching the new bed in the garden this morning and brought the fruit bed back up to standard.  The fruit bed had gotten completely out of hand with the overgrown grass, the weeds, and the ever pointless, purple basil.  So I installed a new aluminum siding edge, then weeded, and finally covered it with mulch.  Finally, the mulch pile is gone!  I had to readjust the garden gate.  It was swinging too low and catching the grass.  Evelyn said it was a little annoying so I raised it up a little bit.

Following that bit of bread labor (and a bit of a nap,) it was off to the chicken coop for a little cleaning and improvement.  There was a metal chest of eight chicken boxes hanging on one of the walls and two of our chicken regularly perched on its slanted roof in the evening - not quite as comfortable as you might think.  Since we have way more nesting boxes than our small flock requires, I ripped the metal cabinet off the wall and installed some proper perches for the girls.

While I was attending to such mundane and inexpensive chores, Evelyn was loading the kiln as we get  ready to fire it up tomorrow.

This is Lonely, our last surviving guinea.