Happy Halloween!

The weather here has been oscillating between that wonderful Halloween-fall air filled with the smell of dried leaves and a stiff cool wind swirling through the trees, and being back to summer, stripping us down to t-shirts to lay around in the sunny grass. Life is tough on the island! So many wonderful ways to be.

The dust is settling and our health is perking up again, meaning Tim is getting back to work on his dad's boat and leaving me home to get finished with my Masters coursework while Tilly practices being a big girl and giving me a few hours of alone time.

I'm working on my Alaska studies course, which is drawing me back to all the things I love about Alaska - I wrote a paper about the stability imparted by the wisely invested Permanent fund of over $48 Billion, and now I'm orienting my second paper around the newly sprouted Farmers Markets of Juneau. The star of Juneau agriculture in my eyes is our one and only WWOOF farm run by my life-long friend, Rick. I found a three-year old article in the Capital City Weekly written about him and his awesome organic farm out on Shelter Island. A part of me says, "See? Look how awesome Juneau could have been for farming!" but the rest of my brain has stayed sane and laughs, looking out at my chicken coop ready for a couple dozen birds and our orchard resetting itself for another year of producing apples and cherries; this is a good spot to be. We're starting to get to know a few neighbors, including the previous owners of our house who saw me walking down the street yesterday and invited Tim and I over this morning to pick up a couch.

Launi gave us a tour of their new house around the corner from ours and blew me away when we stepped onto the back porch to look out over the garden. "When we moved in, there wasn't even grass." she said of the flourishing gardens and beautiful landscaping. "We didn't really plan it out before we started putting in beds, but there was just exactly the right amount of room left for our greenhouse over there." They have only been in their new house for five years and they have already transformed the landscape into something both picturesque and productive. As we lifted the couch out of the garage and into our truck, we stepped around buckets of freshly pulled garlic from her gardens. Hopefully in a couple years, our yard will also be producing a bounty of wonders. It's hard to be patient and take things one at a time, but for now, my coursework has to take priority over clearing branches into the chipper pile and finishing up the compost bin, and with an exhausting puppy, there's only so much productive time in the day. In the next few days, our new blades will come for the lawn tractor for better leaf-and-grass-sucking action and I will get out there and do my own yard work while Tim manages the tractor-beast and the puppy takes a long nap. Until then, it's time to focus!

Inspired

The weather here has been oscillating between that wonderful Halloween-fall air filled with the smell of dried leaves and a stiff cool wind swirling through the trees, and being back to summer, stripping us down to t-shirts to lay around in the sunny grass. Life is tough on the island! So many wonderful ways to be.

The dust is settling and our health is perking up again, meaning Tim is getting back to work on his dad's boat and leaving me home to get finished with my Masters coursework while Tilly practices being a big girl and giving me a few hours of alone time.

I'm working on my Alaska studies course, which is drawing me back to all the things I love about Alaska - I wrote a paper about the stability imparted by the wisely invested Permanent fund of over $48 Billion, and now I'm orienting my second paper around the newly sprouted Farmers Markets of Juneau. The star of Juneau agriculture in my eyes is our one and only WWOOF farm run by my life-long friend, Rick. I found a three-year old article in the Capital City Weekly written about him and his awesome organic farm out on Shelter Island. A part of me says, "See? Look how awesome Juneau could have been for farming!" but the rest of my brain has stayed sane and laughs, looking out at my chicken coop ready for a couple dozen birds and our orchard resetting itself for another year of producing apples and cherries; this is a good spot to be. We're starting to get to know a few neighbors, including the previous owners of our house who saw me walking down the street yesterday and invited Tim and I over this morning to pick up a couch.

Launi gave us a tour of their new house around the corner from ours and blew me away when we stepped onto the back porch to look out over the garden. "When we moved in, there wasn't even grass." she said of the flourishing gardens and beautiful landscaping. "We didn't really plan it out before we started putting in beds, but there was just exactly the right amount of room left for our greenhouse over there." They have only been in their new house for five years and they have already transformed the landscape into something both picturesque and productive. As we lifted the couch out of the garage and into our truck, we stepped around buckets of freshly pulled garlic from her gardens. Hopefully in a couple years, our yard will also be producing a bounty of wonders. It's hard to be patient and take things one at a time, but for now, my coursework has to take priority over clearing branches into the chipper pile and finishing up the compost bin, and with an exhausting puppy, there's only so much productive time in the day. In the next few days, our new blades will come for the lawn tractor for better leaf-and-grass-sucking action and I will get out there and do my own yard work while Tim manages the tractor-beast and the puppy takes a long nap. Until then, it's time to focus!

Oh my head.

How can our heads hurt so much?! How can we still be sick!? All the dust really can't be helping. But in a few more days, we should be moving into a nice, clean, sealed, painted, dust free, mold free, pollen free, dirt free, rodent free, spider free... space. The crew came today - about four guys, who got busy cleaning all the floors down there, covering the walls, and sealing the concrete. By early afternoon they were packing up and heading home. They'll come back on Thrusday and check on things. If all looks good, they'll put in the micro-topping (to make it all pretty) then, and we should be moving in to our new home soon! I hate to say it, because things tend to be delayed, but right now it looks like we will have plenty of time to spare (like a whole week!) before Grandpa arrives. Between naps for us sick ones and walks for that little dog of ours, we started replacing the furnature back into the rooms where they belong today. Yesterday, I got down on hands and knees with a sponge and scrubbed the tape residue from the edges of the floors in the bedrooms and hallways and vacuumed those spaces repeatedly. Today was some mattress moving and things like night stands, lamps, and artwork. In a couple weeks, we'll have this place looking even better than when Mom, Dad, Grandpa, and the uncles left.

In other news, we stopped by the pet store to grab a new, extra large yak cheese dog chew for our ever-growing puppy. These are great treats as they seem even harder than the smoked hoof or deer antler we have for her, they don't smell nearly as bad as the hoof, and she loves them. Unfortunately, the ones we got for her a month ago when she was but a wee thing, now are so small they get lost in her mouth and are no fun to chew. The girl at the counter heard my woes and said they key is to put the small pieces in the microwave for about 45 seconds and they puff up into something new and delicious. Skeptically, we tried this, and sure enough, something wonderful was born. Tilly threw the thing into the air and chased it about for quite a while before they had to be separated for puppy nap time and so I could eat my dinner in peace.

Speaking of puppy nap time, I think it's Ariel nap time with this terrible headache. Tim seems to have perked up from his sickliness earlier today, so his turn with the puppy for the rest of the night. I would say the chance of pictures in the next couple days is not looking great. I got some homework done, but most of our cleaning is going to wait a few more days for the floors to be finished and The Great Move-In. If I find that cord, I will remotovate myself to take pictures. There will definitely be pictures of the new floor, one way or another! Oh, I know why I don't have a cord anymore! A certain puppy chewed straight through it when we were not watching closely enough and mistakenly assumed she was being good and chewing her toys. Woops! I guess it will be a replacement then.

Tilly Tilly Tilly... oh, and the house I suppose.

I think I was extra tired last night, not that I am not also very tired tonight, but I said very little last night. A little more on yesterday; I took Tilly to Greenbank farm where we came across a collection of corgis with not-so-chatty-towards-us owners, though the heard of hounds were pretty laid back, so we superstitiously scooted closer and worked on "sit", "down", scoot, scoot, scoot, "sit", "down", scoot, scoot scoot. Tilly did shockingly well at this activity and even got to the level of subtly sniffing noses with the nearest cool and collected corgi. We then upped the game by following a pair of havanese and a standard poodle into an art gallery. I figured dogs who go to galleries must be well cared for and well mannered, with the exception of us of course. Again, Tilly seemed shocked by the other dogs and did pretty well staying manageable as we moved from gallery to gallery with the pack. This was a daring maneuver, but we started with a gallery who's owner we had visited with before and been warmly greeted by who also has a dog. His wife was their in lieu and dogless, but we were welcomed regardless. The owners of this mix of dogs and the gallery ladies were all kind and friendly, which was precisely what we hoped to find by venturing forth to the Greenbank Farm.

Later in the evening, we ran into our good friends and neighbors again with their tolerant elderly dog. Our neighbors make a point of waiving at every car that passes and picking up litter as they walk. They like Star Trek, moved here about a year ago, and have a live-in son turning 24 this week whom Tim is particularly eager to meet.

Today, our branching out into the world of dog socialization continued as we came across the 12-year-old Airedale and other-terrier-dog we hadn't seen since the first day Tilly was home. They live precisely two doors down from Nancy and Butch's new house and Tilly LOVED playing with the other Airedale, who tolerated the tyrant puppy astonishingly. Yes, for the first time in her little puppy life with us, I dropped the leash and let my little girl run in circles around another dog and its understanding owner on a deserted street at the back side of the lake. I think she was ready to explode if she didn't get to play one of these days - having to live with boring humans all the time. Soon she will have puppy class to delight in, and after that she will be finished with the shot series and a tough enough for one of the many glorious dog parks on the island.

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I know all you really want to hear about is our terribly adorable and terribly toothy puppy, but I figure I should give a little update on the rest of our life, namely Tim's pursuit of a career and the ever-constructing house project. 

On the Tim front, he got all snazzed up this morning and stopped by Nichols Bros. He met a few other electrical workers who seemed to be out on break, and talked to a lady in the office who said the are waiting on the start of a new project and it will probably be a few weeks before they start making calls for new-hires.  

It was a good plan to stop by the perspective employers early in the day as the rest of the day was filled with demolition in the shop. The painters stopped by briefly in the morning, then were kicked out as the floor-finishing crew made their appearance. A guy from eastern Washington made the long drive here with his 12-diamond floor grinder and got busy leveling out our concrete. Tim and I relocated a 16-foot workbench made of 2x12 boards to outside through a deceptively narrow doorway and smashed a set of shop shelves to get them out of the way for sanding. The guy managed to finish the whole downstairs today, so tomorrow they will be ready to start the sealing process with something we were told was used on the gaits of the Panama Canal to help hold the water back. 

I must confess, through a combination of not charging my phone last night, only taking a couple pictures and nothing too impressive, and not having the connecting cable in my obvious and immediate vicinity, I'm skipping out on pictures again today, but I did write considerably more tonight than last night, so if a picture is worth 783 words, I think we're good for tonight. 

Sick and clean

Despite our duling colds, Tim and I managed to clear out the downstairs of all doors, dust, driers, and other random "bonus items" found down in the shop. We are all ready for floors to start tomorrow and excited to see the final transformation!

The price is right

Only one Tilly picture today! But I couldn't resist. I remember a few weeks ago when she was so tiny and pouncing on that giant apple as if it were a ferocious beast. Now she is huge and having the same sort of fun chasing after a mischievous ice cube that we had stuffed in her kong. We stopped by the recycling center today where she found more people to adore her, and I saw they were using a giant scale to weigh what was leaving for pricing. I seized the opportunity and stuck the little dog on there - 18lbs! Oy, my arm! I must stop picking her up and carrying her about very soon, which means she must stop eating weird things and trying to get at everything that moves. I will say, I let her walk through Ace Hardware today (where she was of course met with all her adoring fans who commented on how big she's gotten and how mama is finally letting her walk), and she did amazingly well staying out of trouble and even sat when I told her to. She's still cute, even if she's turning huge. And things that don't bite are even cuter than sharp puppy-toothed monsters.

 So we finally got to the Holmes Harbor Rod and Gun Club to pick up our membership and it was AWESOME. There are action-shooting quick draw pits, a rifle range with a wood stove, a whole ton of skeet shooting ranges, and normal pistol ranges. We'll go to orientation in a few weeks and get all squared away. Also, the clubhouse takes a membership key card to get in, then has an awesome restaurant/bar with a slew of events scheduled and an ever-changing menu. I must say, we saw no one shooting on a fine Saturday afternoon in fall, but a few tables full of members in there at the bar.

We found an estate sale just down the street from our house. We expected by mid-afternoon on a Saturday, everything good would be gone, but we were delightfully wrong and made off like bandits. From the estate sale, we could see our lovely beach in the fall sun and a pay full of boats. The two trips to haul all our treasures only took a few minutes, even driving as slow as possible to balance all our lamps. I think our house will be beautifully furnished by the time the floors are done.

- Six lamps (four floor, two table)
- Two tables (for the small lamps, plus one of the floor lamps has a built in table)
- Five wood folding chairs
- Two armchairs
- Two futons (one couch-size, one chair-size)
- One footstool

All for $360, and right on our street! I think we set a new record in our career as "professional garagesalers" for the most lamps in one trip, best deal, and closest to home.

Working hard!

The house is looking great! Our two favorite guys did a few last minute touch-ups on the paint and hung all the sheetrock in the shop before George the boss came through for a look. 

Tim did his part and scraped up the last of the flooring while I cleaned the kitchen.

Then Tim moved on to the bathroom and got the toilet back into the tub where it belongs.

And finally made his way to the bedroom to rip up the last of the tack strips. My super awesome husband!

I was too enamored with our puppy to be much use. Look how big she is!!

And doesn't that look like such a good scratch?

She's just too adorable. And there are soo many more pictures I'm skipping. Be thankful.

Tim vanished after the work was done, so I brushed up on my Spanish and discovered he was no where to be seen. Down on our personal playa, I saw a flash of green and heard some POPs and BANGs.

Tim is enjoying his "days of greatness" post-birthday, and putting all his birthday treasures to good use.

Tilly seems to be not at all gun-shy as she has far too many important important sticks and rocks and clumps of seaweed to attend to. Even sitting on my lap watching, she seemed pretty content and not too surprised by all our mischief.

It's hard to compete with a good stick.

By the time we had retrieved the Tim from the beach, there was a crew of about five guys in our shop. One had a long stick that seemed apply tape and mud all in one go, while a second guy trotted behind on stilts smoothing everything out. Looks good to me! And most importantly, it's done! Friday night at 5pm, not leaving much time to spare.

Now we have the house to ourselves again for the weekend before flooring starts Monday! So excited and delighted and relieved!

Currently, as I write, Tim and Tilly are fighting over the couch behind me. I think Tilly is doing a great job trying to find a spot when Someone is being a couch hog. Look! She makes a great pillow or blanket. Need an ear-warmer? She's on it!

(We have early bedtimes in this family these days)

Oh, I also wanted to include this article my friend Acacia shared on facebook. Mother Earth News put out the article "Living Fences: How-to, advantages, and tips" which talks about planting specific trees and training them into super awesome hedges to keep critters on the right side of the line. Unfortunately, it takes a few years to establish. I'll have to think about a spot to try it out.

Paint and Plaster

Woohoo! I had given up on the sheetrock in the shop ever getting done, I had given up on waiting with baited breath for the house to be done, but yet again, it's just one more week! The guys have moved a big pile of very special sheetrock into the shop and are busy screwing it to the ceiling. They say they will be done tomorrow, which they better as the flooring guy comes to get started Monday. Over the weekend, Tim and I will pull up the remaining tack-strips (I am even more grateful now to my uncles who already did so much of the work) and scrape up the last bit of flooring, then by Halloween, things should be looking pretty good down there!

The bad news of the day is that there will be no chicks until at least March. This does mean that as long as we take Tilly, we are more free to leave the house for a few days. Also, our little farm animals won't have such a chilly beginning to life. I am disappointing I won't be having roasted chicken for Christmas dinner, but when they do come we will be that much more ready for them.

Country music and fireworks

This year, we headed out for a driving birthday for Tim. I cooked Tim some epic breakfast burritos for breakfast which kept us stuffed all day. Dad got Tim a year membership at the Holmes Harbor Rod and Gun Club which we set out to pick up but turned the wrong way on the highway and found ourselves heading towards Grizzly in Bellingham.

Alice had a rotary tilting table for Tim's metal lathe and mill set aside at Grizzly. Rather than shipping the gift down to our house, letting Tim go to his adult version of Toys-R-Us for his birthday sounded like a pretty good plan. We managed to make it out of there with only a bench grinder and a few connecting pieces to go with the tilt-table. Next stop was another Bellingham tool store: Harbor Freight, where we were in awe of how poor the quality was on some items, and the strikingly low prices on others. After seeing one-too-many squares that were visibly off from 90-degrees and falling over ban-saws, we decided it might not be the best place to invest in a table saw, or any other tool.

In the parking lot, however, we found this excellent drag-racing car for sale. There is a bar off the back to keep it from doing wheelies, that's a parachute for slowing down attached to the rear, the inside is a full roll-cage, the windows are all non-opening Plexiglas, and the wheels in the back nearly touch in the middle they are so wide. We thought we'd follow it a ways to see how it did on the highway, but we were in our Escort with 50-horsepower instead of the truck with 200, so we put-put-putted along and watched it get farther ahead between cars.

Pretty soon we found ourselves headed for Lummi Nation, the Indian reservation north of Bellingham, and a kind man named Smoky (or at least the sign out front said "Smoky's Fireworks") set us straight on how birthdays should be celebrated before we headed south. After missing the exit for Whidbey somehow, we thought this might be just the opportunity to use up some of our gift cards before anything expired. $400 at Fred Meyers later, we were down three gift cards and had a car stuffed full of food saver vacuum sealing supplies, a fry-daddy... and I can't imagine what else.

Mind you, I had been terribly flu-y and sick all day, but doing my best to keep up with Tim, so I was quite relieved to finally curl up at a table in the Cellar. Everything was amazing! I was delighted in the soft bench of my side of the table, no-one else in our section to see me blowing my nose, dimmed lighting, and a dark, warm color scheme that let my eyes and head recover. I was grateful for the never-ending supply of hot tea, lemons, and ice water delivered directly to my hands without having to move. Tim's appreciation went beyond these comforts that came just short of a pillow and hot water bottle.. maybe a blanket would be nice too... - he got us some excellent sushi that came in a little boat with something suspiciously like fresh pickled cucumbers. The bread and garlic and Parmesan was wonderful, and both of us took our time on our amazing dinners until our plates were clean.

Of course, no birthday is complete without cake, so even after being stuffed with so many good foods, Tim consented to a slice of raspberry cheesecake and our waitress brought it out complete with a candle and helped me sing to the birthday boy.

After the very long drive home, which I managed to stay awake for most of, we found the best present of the day - floors! The painters had been busy and managed to get all the upstairs painting at least sprayed and rolled up all their plastic. Finally we can walk around the house again, use the kitchen, get to the bathroom, play with Tilly! I feel a bit like the man who brought all the animals into his tiny house only to let them back out again so the house would feel bigger - we've let the painters back out of the house and it is huge again!

Ib saway, we aw cod cowds id seems.

Tilly did great at the vet today, not even noticing the shot, and delighted about all the attention and new things to see. The vet told us she might be a little sleepy for the rest of the day as her immune system adjusted to the new information. We crossed our fingers and hoped it would be a mellow day as we seem to have a family cold. Either that, or the dust from the construction is really bothering us in surprising ways. Hopefully we will all be feeling great tomorrow for Tim's birthday. Tilly and I walked the grounds again today, this time with a mission: I want those T-posts! And I tried, and I tried... and they are a lot harder to pull up than I originally gave them credit for. I found about five in the barn, and another five around the property, firmly embedded in the ground. I will try again and see if I can get one up in 20 minutes. If not, buying more might be well worth it.

Pop quiz for the arb and more work on boats and such

It is almost Tim's birthday! This seemed like such a far away date - that for sure we would be well settled in our apartment by now. Instead, the plastic over the door to the bathroom is covered in wet paint, and after a weekend of rolling up the plastic to get to the kitchen, it's back to being firmly taped in place and covered in wet or flaky paint. The rush to move in is dwindling as we adjust to this strange system of living. One advantage of our little plastic world is that all these extra walls help keep the heat in, or out, of each section of house.

This morning, Tilly and I went on an extra-thorough tour of the estate, dropping off compost and watering plants as we go. The chicken run is flourishing with things other than thistles and nettles, proving my theory that the best way to get rid of one plant is to plant another. This red barked beauty above is probably my favorite tree on the property. Although a lot of the trees currently planted are more decorative than productive, this one makes me itch to take off my shoes and climb into it's arms. Any ideas on what kind of tree it is?

This one, at least, I am pretty familiar with - a ginkgo. I always think of them as dinosaur trees, as my instructors on the urban farm told me they are a very old species. My instructors said they absorb pollutants exceptionally well, making them ideal for planting along the sidewalks places like downtown New York City. They take 16 years or so to mature, then they reveal themselves to be male or female by the females beginning to drop stinky seed pods which some Asian women cook up into good foods.

Any ideas on this tree's identity?

When we moved in, this tree was enormous but had cracked and broken off, leaving a mess of dangerously dangling limbs. I assume Dad was the one to add all those branches to the woodpile. We'll see if the tree manages to grow back from it's roots and trunk, or if we will be finding something interesting to do with a tall stump.

Another beautiful tree I'd love to identify. It's leaves are almost iridescent.

Tim and I headed up to Oak Harbor again to pick up the truck and do more work on the boat. In need of supplies, we went on a little adventure looking for our missing piece. First stop was Home Depot, which didn't have what we were looking for but which does have excellent lighting options.

I thought I'd take home pictures of the choices for wall-mounted lights to ponder and compare options for either side of the bed in the upstairs master bedroom and for the hall-side wall in the "twin room". We'll have to poke around downstairs at the lighting situation, but for now, those seem like the most in-need and ready-for-light rooms.

Which lighting do you like? Tim saw that swirly cast iron bowl in the middle of that bottom picture and thought it was pretty cool. We also liked the four little lights in the bottom of the top picture.

Though Tilly loves the possibility of attention and treats that come with stores, I'm not sure she likes our new idea on carrying her.

With Home Depot letting us down, we headed North to Anacortes. We had the idea of going to West Marine to look for the part, but missed the turn and ended up in Tim's new favorite store - an antique marine and hardware store. We drove past not believing such a thing could really be, but once we went in and were surrounded by the glory, Tim started wondering what it would be like to live in Anacortes.

After successfully finding what we needed at West Marine, we headed back to the boat. Tim got busy tucking into his wiring project and I doodled plans for a fence. We've been combing over materials options, and I think I've settled on a good option. Home Depot sells "U" or "T" posts for about $5 each, which are easy to stick into the ground, strong, and last forever. After finding them in the store, we went home and found them all over our property! Hopefully there are 28 between the yards and the barn, but if not, at least we can cut down on the number we need to buy. While driving around the island, we've been scrutinizing other people's fences and have decided "T" or "U" post fences are very popular on working pieces of land. We've also seen that people often use wood posts for gateways and corners. I think we have a pretty good plan for fencing our lower yard and I will be able to get to work tomorrow relocating "T" posts and outlining our 100ft x 70ft x 100ft fence. The gaits will probably wait until we move into our shop (assuming that's soon) and then eventually we can string up the metal fencing between the posts. Really, we don't need a fenced yard until spring at least, but it would be so nice to clear deer poop from one area and let Tilly run around. Also, I'll have the largest piece in place to plant my gardens around.

Oh right, while I was daydreaming, Tim was doing what he does best, and by the time we left for the day, the electrical circuits were stronger than ever.

Boat work

Well, it is undeniably fall here. Our neighbors trees are flaming red, and our entire arboretum has turned to an enormous leaf pile. Tilly seems to be enjoying that. While we were out on our morning walk, we (Tilly and I) ran into our neighbors who moved here a year ago. We joined them in their walk and talked about all the important things; Star Trek and Island life. It's great to be meeting people and starting to feel connected. 

On that note, I also headed over to Mary's Found Fiber Farm to give her a hand with shearing. One thing I learned in Eugene is that shearing can mean very different things to different people. Mary's style took after my friend Tracy's on McTavish Farm with her Shetland sheep. I was glad I turned up for shearing day! Tracy and Mary both shear their animals themselves, tacking a few on a day by putting them on a stand one at a time and getting out the electric clippers. No one else was at Mary's farm to help her, and she was taking on the male pygora goats! I helped keep them on the stand and scoop up the clipped fiber as well as standing by in case there was any trouble while Mary trimmed hair and hoof. Some visitors came by to buy fiber products while we were working on the most skiddish boy, so it was extra lucky I was there to keep him safe on the stand while she went to man the shop and tend the customers. When I have my sheep, I'll probably have a shearing system a lot like Mary and Tracy's. In contrast, my friend Rolly in Eugene had the most impressive shearing system I have yet to see. While many women have years worth of fleeces piled high in their garages and attics, Rolly was selling the fleeces as they came off the animals to a steady stream of customers all day on shearing day. She had hired a professional shearer to take on her large heard of Romney sheep, and by the end of the day was able to pay the man in cash from what she'd sold with money and fleece to spare. To me, Rolly is queen of the fiber farming world.

After my work was done, I took off up to Oak Harbor to help act as a human clamp and lend a hand in any way I could on Joe's boat while Tim worked on rewiring everything. There is great sea life in the harbor, including a seagull with a cross-species friendship and a jellyfish well over a foot across. I wish I had something in the photo for perspective, but I wasn't about to let Tilly go for a swim.