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.