Intruding on Insects

All the busy days and excitements I nearly forgot about writing. Let's see... what all happened today? I am sore on every part of my body from raking up another three wheel barrows of mulchy-grass and it was only a five-foot strip in the far corner of the lawn. When I laugh I feel all my sore newly-forming muscles stretch and groan. I tried to avoid killing too many moths and slugs and spiders; the house has been empty for so long, I feel like we are the intruders. That our small family is displacing hundreds of little critters that have been calling this place home for generations. I feel I should at least give them the opportunity to relocate by easing into their space. Tim found a tiny egg in a nest this morning while looking through the barn. The egg had a little hole in it and when we brought it inside, a little worm crawled out.

Mom and I headed to the garden supply store this morning to get a hose and sprayer so I could water the seeds Tim and I planted in the chicken run yesterday. We came home with two hoses, sprayers, hose boxes, a metal glider bench with chickens on it, curtain rods... I don't even know what all else. All this shopping to get the house set up before company comes and Mom and Dad go back to Juneau. The roofers were busy working by eight. I think other than the trip down the street this morning, we've all stayed at the house today, sanding the porches, assembling the beds, cleaning the kitchen, and organizing wedding photos. Our neighbor came and visited for a while, and Joe came back for one more night before his room gets taken over by uncles.

Divided we conquer; together we conquer.

Oy! What a big day! and some how, today was also the most down-time I've taken all week. Tim and I didn't leave the property until after 4pm, though we also didn't get home until 10:30. Bed very soon. This morning I had early company as Joe wakes up almost as early as I do, though he didn't come out to help scrape cob webs out of the hen house with me. I think the spiders were much less appreciative of my work today, though leaving the door open and a light on did lure in quite a few moths. I am quite proud of myself for concurring my arachnophobia in the name of farming and perfecting my broom-cleaning method as the spider webs would become too thick for the broom to work after a few feet of walls.

At 7:30 the parents woke up and started getting ready for a long drive to retrieve more beds and such, and the roofers appeared soon after, scrambling straight up to the roof and instantly becoming very busy thumping around like Santa's elves on a ride-along.

Tim came out to the yard and interrupted my never-ending grass raking project to utilize the roto-tiller in the chicken coop to eliminate any remaining thistles and nettles.

Then he broke out the garden tines and started sifting through the dirt to sift out the remaining nettle roots which filled the entire wheelbarrow! Did I mention my husband is amazing? As a final nettle-suppression system, we seeded the yard with a mix of ground cover for the chickens to eat in a few months.

After a visit from our Juneau friend and Tim's boat-building mentor, Fritz, Mom and Dad came back with their bounty of white bedroom furniture and picked Tim and I up to set off again to the mainland for a second load in one day. For some reason, Tim and I were lulled into thinking we were just running over to Costco, a few streets away from the ferry terminal on the other side. Eventually we got to Costco, which was out of comfortable female bikes and the HDMI cord Tim was looking for, so after a mad shopping frenzy including a 17ft ladder, we headed south to pick up even more furniture. Our first stop was a beautiful secluded country mansion to pick up a second twin bed frame and night stand. The lovely gentleman who answered the door was so impressed by our speed and efficiency, he thought we must be a team of professional garage salers. We assured him we were only newlyweds and new home owners and asked if he had any plans for that large area rug rolled up by the door, so he let us throw that in the back of the truck as well. I think the fast size of this place throws off the perspective for the picture, but know that truck is tall enough I can barely see over the walls into the bed. Know the door is twice as tall as a normal front door. Crazy huge mansion, beautiful inside with double stairs and carefully trimmed hedges outside.

But after loading only a twin bedroom set and Costco run into the truck, there was hardly enough to hold the load together, and surely not enough to put us in the over-sized line for the ferry, so we headed on to another stop - "just to look". Somehow we managed to throw a 5ft round table and 6 arm chairs into the back of the truck as well in a matter of minutes. Fortunately, when we got home at nearly 11pm, Joe had two hot pizzas waiting for us.

Before the earth has colors

I love waking up at first light, when the world is still in its own shadow and all the colors have been muted to shades of gray. The air is cool and damp as mist hangs above dewy grass and everything is quiet. I slipped out and opened up the chicken house and barn doors to air out the building and evaluate the scene. I discovered lights and outlets that probably work, and made friends with the spiders. The rake on our property had gone and I had no tools, so as soon as 7:30 came around, I fed Tim waffles fried in butter until he woke up and drove with me to the hardware store for a wheel barrow, shovels, rakes, and an assortment of other gardening goodies. Finally I was ready to start getting serious about raking up all the cut grass that's been mulching our lawn for the last month or so and shoveling out the chicken coop that has been unoccupied aside from a few feathers and bedding for the last three years. Mid cleaning, our fencer came out to give us an estimate on deer-proofing the lower yard for a garden and keeping some furry critters.

When the rest of the family woke up, we headed out for our laid back, island only shopping day. We found the Habitat for Humanity thrift store in Oak Harbor and set about pulling tags off lamps, coffee tables, beds, and paintings and loading them all into our truck as four pairs of hands could carry before strapping everything down and taking our barely-stuffed-still-room-to-spare truck to Home Depot for the final touch of cleaning supplies, lumber, and who knows what else. We grabbed some fro-yo and made it home before dark to have a late dinner with Joe who is spending the night in our newly furnished guest room while paint in his boat dries.

If I committed to plans for tomorrow, they'd never work out quite that way anyways.

Our parent's first full day in town since the house was made officially ours and the most laid back day Tim and I have had since moving here! I got some thank you card and picture sorting done this morning while everyone else slept in until the late hour of 9am. We had some lazy time strolling the grounds, making to-do lists, admiring our work and everyone else's since last time Mom and Dad saw the place, and had some lunch while we waited for sheetrock guy #3 to come by and make an appraisal. This afternoon, we caught the 3pm ferry over to the mainland and drove to Tacoma to pick up beds and bed frames for the whole house - tonight everyone is sleeping in luxury on real beds! So far we are up to 2 bedroom sets with a third ready for pick-up in the morning and a fourth still in the hunting phase.

Coming home, we stopped in to a Vietnamese Pho restaurant to the delight of all, then headed home under a yellow sliver of the setting moon for a 10pm ferry. These crazy parents keeping us up all night and waking up in the middle of the day! 

Family and Furnature

We now have seating for 31 people! This morning we squeezed a large table with two leaves, 12 chairs, and 2 bar stools into the back of our truck shortly after the new muffler exploded, then met Mom and Dad on the main land at Uncle Loren's house to pick up an even bigger truck (with an intact muffler) and demonstrate the expediency four people can spend money and fill vehicles.

Joe stopped by just in time to unload some electric recliner couches and other prized purchases and squeeze everything through the door and into the house.

Honeymoon Bay is becoming homier by the day. We've given up any hope of having the downstairs finished by the open house / reception on the 15th, but are settling in and enjoying the deluxe upstairs. 

8:55pm = 2am

Such long full busy days! In less than a week and before we have any furniture or a finished apartment to move in to, Honeymoon Bay and Whidbey are feeling like home. We've been getting up at first light every day and staying busy until well after dark with so much to do and so much fun doing it! This morning's task was an especially welcome one. We left just after 6am to drive to Bellingham and retrieve our Escort full of belongings from the Alaska ferry thanks to a collaborative effort from Dad, Brother Daniel, our friend Sarah, and her boyfriend Ben. While up in Bellingham, Joe took us to his friends storage unit to fill the back of the truck with our first furniture which we just finished assembling. We are now the proud owners of two chairs, a table, and a hand full of coffee tables in an assortment of sizes. Coming back from Bellingham, we dropped our truck off in Oak Harbor to have a very friendly man completely redo our exhaust system for an incredibly low price in about an hour. Finally, we loaded up our remaining things off of Joe's boat - including my spinning wheel, helped him move to a new slip, then finally made it home in time to unpack both cars, do some work on the truck, assemble all the furniture, clean... and go to sleep exhausted and delighted in our beautiful new home that is filling up more and more. Oh my!

Lightning and rainbows and life without furnature

Even the 'bad weather' on the island is wonderful so far. When it rains, it seems like it doesn't mean it. It seems like it is apologetic as it briefly waters your garden for you before returning to sunny weather as soon as possible. Even as one part of the sky rains, the sun still comes through from other places. It's not the same as the rain that comes in Juneau and looks like it has taken up permanent residency - which it has; or more like it may have had a brief laps but is now ready to make up for any lost time.

This morning we woke up and made our first order of fall seeds from the Seed Savers catalog before heading up to Oak Harbor for some errands and time with Tim's dad, Joe. We now are proud owners of a brand new microwave, we have our freezer back from Joe's boat, Tim fixed the squealing fuel pump on the truck, we saw a man about our muffler, and I started staking out and hauling driftwood for my compost bins.

I am constructing a three-bin composting system which means I will have 3 bins, each 3-foot cubes, in a row. The first month I add "browns" and "greens" to the first bin until it's full. By then, the compost should be getting hot and breaking down and be ready to rotate so I will move all the compost from the first bin into the middle bin which stirs the stuff as well as moving it down the line towards ready soil so I can continue filling the first bin with new food scraps, weeds and leaves. After two months, it will again be time to stir all the compost by moving the contents of bin #2 to bin #3, then bin #1 to bin #2... after three months of composing and shuffling down the line, everything should be broken down enough to fertilize the garden. Also, fully composted fertilizing goodness takes up much less space than freshly chopped green and brown matter; thus if I don't use up all the finished compost right away, there will probably be enough room in the system to store soil a little longer. Gardening is a seasonal thing and not every month creates the same amount of compost or uses the same amount of fertilizer.

Anyways, when my beautiful driftwood and rebar structure is finished and filled with what comes out of the chicken coop, I will include some pictures. Until then, we are still loving our new life and delighted to be farmers.