Summer 2014

This blog is sure getting boring, doncha think?  For some reason I've been having trouble writing in it...I've been busy I guess, just not really doing much that's "post-worthy."  But perhaps a quick synopsis so I can remember what the hell happened during the summer of 2014. 

First of all, I never thought I'd get so caught up in "house duties" when finally owning a home.  If only my younger self could see me now!  For chores, our folks used to tell us, "Just look around!"  As a kid, you don't SEE what needs to be done.  I noticed things to do around the places I was renting, but it wasn’t mine so I couldn’t exactly just go ahead and DO what I wanted.  Now, oh boy, I can see what needs to be done, what I want done, what should be done…and I don’t have to ask anyone if I should, shouldn’t, or can.  What that means is an endless list of self-imposed chores.  It’s slowly starting to drive me AND Sarah nuts…no, not the list….my seeming incapacity to just SETTLE DOWN.  RELAX.

Well, at one point someone was trying to get me to calm down and relax.  Obviously that didn’t “take” so I was forced in a sense.  See I was thinning some trees, limbing them, then hand-yarding the logs to a pile (not just rounds, logs.)  One bigger, particularly heavy, green, Douglas-fir was getting the better of me so when I got it to near where it needed to go I dropped it.  Right on my foot.  Imagine the weight of a green tree trunk at the far end of a lever smashing into the top of your foot…it was neat.  So after uttering (yelling) a few choice expletives I did just what you’d imagine…I finished what I was doing.  My foot didn’t bruise, turn color, swell or anything but it sure did hurt.  And it kept hurting and kept me limping for a number of weeks.  It slowly got better to the point where I could walk up and down hills, sidehill, stand on my toes, stand for an extended period of time.  But I still get some pain in it now and then, so I’m not pushing it.  Nothing a doctor could say at this point but what you’d expect, “rest, ice, elevation, etc.”  What this did was prevent me from exploring my new territory like I’d like, which is really frustrating to NOT be able to hike around and check things out.  That was about two months ago....and it didn’t have the intended effect…

It kept me closer to home where I continued to notice what needed done.

So let me think what I’ve been up to.  I’ve almost got all the trim work done, just one more (small) bedroom and then four closets.  Really, it’s something that could be done in half a day, but I haven’t got there yet.  I put together a cheap-ass compost pile from pallets, that’s been useful.  I finished caulking the gutters so the water from the roof didn’t drip down behind them.  (Doesn’t sound like much, but I didn’t have a tall enough ladder to do it all.  Consequently that little project drug on until I found a cheap ladder on Craigslist.)  We’ve had continual work on the garden...

You know what, this is still dull.  All the "chores" I've been doing have been smallish but continual, so writing them down makes it sound really lame.

Photos are fun though.

We had a late start on the garden

From the deck

Garden box on deck

This was July



From the deck



August



It's trying to escape!  That huge mass in the middle is all tomatoes.  Uh oh.  We've eaten more greens lately than I think I ever have...looks like once we're sick of those, we'll be sick of tomatoes. Time to learn to can! And the zucchini has blossom end rot and I just put calcium on....hopefully we'll get some of those now.

 

We got aphids in our garden box, so a lot of it was composted.  Aphids don't like what's left.


How about some camping on the Pack River?  We'd never been up there before and the road kept climbing further and further away from the creek and the road kept getting nastier and nastier, so we decided to turn around.  All the typical dispersed sites were taken, so, like we normally do...we found a sandbar and humped our stuff out to it.  Nice rainy-ish afternoon.

Darth Vader tent

Not a bad spot though.  Took a while to clean up all the trash and most of the broken glass though...some people are effing slobs.

What more do you need?

Lucca, STILL begging.

See?  She thinks I'm an idiot



I don't know why...



Up "river"

And down

So yea, overall, somewhat injured and busy in a new house and a new job.  It's amazingly stressful for me and I've let it build on me to the point where I've been all out of sorts.  I keep threatening to take off for a week and just get away, but have yet to do it.  I'd like it to be on the Selway, but the Johnson Bar fire is getting in the way of picking blackberries, fishing, and camping.  Gonna be a good spot next spring though!!

Now, to coordinate getting a new water heater and a relatively inexpensive "licensed plumber" to install it so the warranty isn't void.  It's a racket I tells ya...