Gardenland

So, my parents are gadding about in Pennsylvania for a week and left me in charge of the back 40.  Or, however big their enormous garden is.

So, I have been dutifully watering and picking and picking and picking and picking and picking....

I call this:  "Anne in Pea-land"

This was hour THREE of pale girl in the sun

Sugar Snap Peas

Raspberries

Fun fact: before this summer, my parents' raspberry plants never produced more than a cup.  Now, they yield like 4 quarts per week!  

You! Shall not! PASS!!

So, I may have been in the sun a little long.  It seemed funny at the time.  Heh.  Who am I kidding?  I still think it's funny.  

In any case, I have had yummy zucchini and yellow squash and sugar snap peas and shelled peas and snow peas and yellow beans and strawberries and raspberries and 5 blueberries and one cherry tomato, so I guess I can't complain.  Well, shouldn't.  Let's be honest:  I'm a-gonna.

Basement rooms!

Do you see what I see??

Just a little studly...

The Hubs teaching The Girl how to screw the wall stud in place

Very studly.

The wall pictured above will be between the utility area and The Boy's bedroom.  Miiiight have to move the saw and lumber at some point.

Sweet Sweet Syrup Season!

It's about that time!  Y'all ready for this?

*cue Jock Jams*

What?  I'm a 90s music kinda gal.

ANYWAY, I really just dropped by to say:

IT'S MAPLE TIME, BABY!

The Boy checks a sap bucket 

The Hubs inspects sap levels before church on Sunday

Yeah, that's about all the snow left, even in the sugar bush!

With such a weird-weather winter, we weren't sure we'd get a syrup season at all this year, but Bob et al tapped on Saturday and it ran a bunch right away.  We might have a sweet spring after all.


Although, there's plenty of sweetness around here anyway:

Oh! The cuteness!!   

My father's sheep cupcakes for his 71st birthday this week.  

Back steps

So last winter, after we moved into The Log House in December, the Hubs had to use the rickety temporary construction steps out the back door to feed the boiler.   In advance of the heating season this year, the menfolk decided to build a nice new sturdy set of steps.  I was expecting just simple little stairs, but I returned from work to this:

A wee little deck!   I *may* have squealed a little with joy.  

Over the following week, Bob - and an assortment of friends and family - completed the decking and the steps.  

No, the cat didn't help much.

Now I can grill on the deck like a real 'Merican and not in the woodshed.   And the Hubs won't fall to his death in a snowbank this winter.

Which would put a real damper in my plans for a new back door.  Heh.

Summer 2015

It's a hot, hazy mid-summer day in Northern New York!  We don't get too many, comparatively speaking, and so we love to hate these days.  The Hubs has been picking away at this and that on The Log House, completing little tasks, but his father is intent on finishing that arctic entry! 

He has started to put the hand-milled boards up on the walls:

 

It's hard to get a good angle for a picture

 

The FIL is itching to get the flooring down in there and for me to decide what I want to do with that end wall and whether to continue the boards all the way around.   Advice?  You know I'm not going to take it, what with being so contrary and all, but I do like to *hear* others' opinions.  Heh.

Since it's summer, and that means hosting many friends and family, not much work on The House gets done, but it's an embarrassment of riches of a kind, so we aren't upset!  We do, however, get the largess of my father's garden.  Which is getting largess-ter each year. 

The Girl wandering the garden looking for something to munch on in early July

Our little spinach thief

With the great blessing of living in the woods all hermit-style comes the trial of limited internet access.   *sigh*   SUCH a first-world problem, eh?   So, that has made my blogging even more haphazard.  And we all know it was straight-up iffy at the best of times.  

So, see you in...  what?  November?    

Heh.   You know I'm only half joking. 

It's May Already?

May?  It's approaching the middle of MAY?  Seems like just yesterday we moved into The Log House, but it's been 4 1/2 months already.   And yet, I'm still as goofy happy about it as ever. 

The progress on the house is now just a bunch of little finish work.  Well, I say "little", but every new door knob sends me into a squealing squealer of squealingness.  We have doors on the downstairs bathroom and the kids' room/spare 'oom and the artic entry is in process of having its walls and ceiling finished.... see?

 

That brown is just the primer, but it's a lovely chocolate color in person, and I don't mind lookin' at it while waiting for the boards to be applied!

 

 

What else have we been up to this last wee while?   Well, a little of this:

 

 

Bob and Jim enveloped in a cloud of sweet steam from the evaporator, boiling down sap into maple syrup.

 

 

 and a little of that....

 



The menfolk splitting wood for next winter.  Already.

and cuteness....

 

  KITTENS!!!  Yes, we have two sweet kittens now -- who love to climb The Boy like he's there just for that reason.  And he loves it.

I can't get a very good angle of the arctic entry to show you the work as it goes on, but I'll squish myself into a corner and try to get some good shots as the board walls go up and the floor goes down.

*Sigh* At Long Last

I have been a blissfully contented woman this week.  Because?  I have come home to a crackling, flickering, toe-warming fire in the fireplace each day!   It is soul-soothingly lovely.


We waited until both sets of parents could be present for the first fire, since they have been such a big part of the building of this house.  So, since Bob's folks FINALLY returned home from that wicked parent-stealing Florida last week, we all gathered 'round on Easter Sunday to ceremonially light the lights, so to speak.

 

If you'll recall, we have not yet faced the chimney... or laid a properly pretty hearth... or purchased an adequately-sized screen.  But, who needs 'em?!

  
*Sigh*  A thing of beauty.  

Aaaaaand..... we're in!!



Hey, you guys!!  I've been absent from the blog for a month for the BEST of reasons...  okay, also because I'm lazy and have been without an internet connection...   but the main reason is that we MOVED INTO THE LOG HOUSE!!!  

I KNOW!   EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!! 

Thanks to a little push and help from our friends Bert and Lisa and my mother, we moved the big stuff out to the new house the weekend before Christmas.  Despite our herculean effort, though, we left quite a bit of detritus littered about the old house which we are *ahem* still boxing up in drips and drabs.  Yes, I know.  UGH. 

But, I digress.  Once we had that major load of schtuff moved out to the new house, The Hubs and I sort of looked at each other and said, "What the heck? Let's just ...  sleep here." 

And we did.  And there was much rejoicing.

My Pennsylvanian sister Ells arrived a few days before Christmas and helped us decorate.  The new house.  For CHRISTMAS.  It. was. wonderful.  You have not seen a happier girl than this girl right here.    On Christmas day, we hosted my whole family for gifting and eating and more happiness.  The only thing that could have made our full hearts even closer to bursting is if Bob's parents hadn't abandoned us and the cold northern winter for the alligator-infested warmth of Florida --  er, I mean, if Bob's family had also been present.  We can't wait for them to return and for all the cousins to experience the joy of log-a-riffic living this summer. 

 To illustrate said happiness, I submit this photographic evidence:

Cooking for the first time in the new house.  With cheese, appropriately.

Hey, I didn't say it was a full, fancy meal.  What's wrong with grilled cheese?

The dining room... with furniture sort of temporarily scattered about.  But - look - a table cloth!

The Boy and The Girl on Christmas morning.  In the log house.  For Christmas. 

EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!   Sorry.  It's still just so awesome.

The stockings were hung by the (unfaced) chimney with care... by an 8 year old whose decorating ideas consist of hanging sparkly clumps of garland on those metal tab things like birds' nests.

Just a gratuitous shot of the interior of the house. 

(This is standing in the dining room, looking through the living room toward the arctic entry/front door.)

Bob and I, finally at home in logs.

First the floor, next: the world!

I feel a bit like I'm Kate Winslet on the bow of the Titanic with the wind in my hair!   Except... not just before a disaster and a frozen iceberg death.  Just the happy exhilaration part.  Yeah, that.   Maybe I need to rethink my simile here..

Here's the takeaway:   Squeeeeeeeee!!!!!   The floor is done!  Time to move in!

Bob, FIL Jim and friend Dave install the last few rows of flooring in the dining room

The Boy and his Grandpa, working on the edge of the floor in the living room today.

I vacuumed up years' worth of accumulated sawdust from window sills, walls and ceilings today.  And I'm not even close to being done.  Whose idea were those exposed log joists anyway?  Too many dusty surfaces!

  

That strip of bare floor is where the half-wall will be built, separating the living room and dining room.  Squint your eyes and turn your head *like this* and imagine the wall for now.  

The Hubs at the end of the work day today, pondering the great mysteries of our age.  

And noticing how dirty the windows are.... in our dining room with a new floor!!   Wooo!!  

Sorry.

Just for some perspective, here's a picture from June 2012 side-by-side with one from Saturday:

Time to get packing in earnest!

More! Floor!

Look at all the floor that has gone in the last few days!

That full-length poster of Chris Hemsworth to cover up that door is on order...

Thanks to a generous helping of... help by FIL Jim and friend Dave, Bob has been able to lay down a ton of flooring yesterday and today.  I'm so grateful, I had to clap a hand over my mouth to stop from gushing so effusively as to send Dave running for the door.  

But, I may have squealed very loudly at one point accidentally.  

Their poor knees took a beating as they measured and cut and laid floor boards all day today.  

note the snowy trees outside the window...   

My role today was twofold:  clean the construction materials out of the first floor (and vacuum up the piles of sawdust and dead bugs and cobwebs) and be a dead weight.  

I'm really good at holding the floor down. 

We're making progress!!