Hmm. Our front “yard” suddenly has interesting sculptures or something. And it’s not rebar, it’s metal pipe.
Life-size hangman game?
They just erupted this evening. They weren’t there earlier today!
Another one.
They certainly look sturdy. Luckily I figured out where they were coming from, because I found a welding table over by the garage.
Aha. A fabrication area.
There’s actually a good reason for these structures. There will be a new fence going up, a bit sooner than originally planned. That will give the dogs the ability to run around in front of the house without the problems we’ve been having.
Who us? Cause problems?
Yeah. Goldie loves to go across the road to visit the neighbors. The very cute neighbor dogs like to come over here. We are all worried our dogs will get hit, like Brody did. and our dogs like to chase slow vehicles and people who are running or cycling. We don’t want that! They get over-excited and misbehave.
The dogs will have lots more space.
So the fence that was supposed to go up after the pool was done is going up now. There will be a temporary gate for pool vehicles. There’s plans for gates that will make it not too annoying for us.
I haven’t written much about the chickens in a while. They have been blessedly normal and fine for quite some time! The only thing that has been bugging me is how long it has taken for the new bunch of hens to start laying. All I can figure is the few weeks of really hot weather may have delayed them. The older chickens, on the other hand, have been moulting, so there sure are a lot of feathers all over the place.
Pretty little egg
On July 27, there was one egg laid with an unfamiliar pattern on it, but nothing since then. Today, however, there was another pullet egg, on the ground, with some interesting spots on it. So, someone has started up.
The makings of a feather bed
I’ve been getting four eggs a day lately, and I have a suspicion that Blondie, the Buff Orpington, may already be laying normal-size brown eggs and I just don’t realize it’s her. She has very red comb coloration now, and has for a while (that is a sign they are ready to lay). There should be some colored eggs at some point, since I have an Easter Egger and another breed that lays colored eggs, but those two haven’t started.
I’m a grown lady. By the way, Henley, who is behind her, hasn’t laid an egg in months. No idea why.
The other chicken news is rather predictable. Once again, Star, the world’s most persistent chicken mother wannabee, is broody. I thought about it today, and went ahead and stuck one of Butternut’s eggs and one from either Bertie Lee or Springsteen under her. We’ll not miss those three eggs, and if these hatch, well, Star is already setting in the cage where she can raise the chicks. We’ll see!
Leave me alone. I’m in my box.
In pool news, the guys seem to have finished the rebar today. The highlight is the shape for the fire feature. I will be interested to see what is next.
Ready for flames and lights.
Right now, I’m busy holding onto rocks for grounding, trying to look my best, and exuding positive vibes. It’s always a good thing!
This little rock has an S in crystals in it. Suna power!
That’s what I asked myself when I went out to check on the Pool of Dreams after work. It’s looking very sculptural.
The flat area is our “beach” section, where you can bask in shallow water, or if you’re a dog, slurp.
They’ve been working on the rebar framework for the pool for a couple of days now. The idea is they make a ten-inch grid on all the surfaces. That’s for the gunnite to stick to when they build the shell of the pool.
The hot tub looks really cool. The part you can see through will be the waterfall. Ahh.
I learned from the men in the family why the rebar sits on bricks. It can’t touch the dirt, or it will rust and degrade and cause problems. They thought it was gonna do that and got all worried. But, the pool boss guy assured them anything touching dirt would go away when the frame was done. Yep.
You can see the bricks from this angle. You can also see where they are making a seating ledge in the deep end, for sitting and drinking wine.
It’s been fun watching the shape of the pool come to life. I’m figuring out where the skimmers will be, where all the fancy lights will be, and stuff like that.
What it looked like yesterday.
I also found out that because our fire feature will be propane, not natural gas, we can’t put those fancy glass rocks in it. We have to use lava rock. Why? Because propane is heavier than LP gas, and it would get trapped under the small pieces of glass. It would go boom. Not good.
And there’s always the sky.
We enjoy sitting and watching the clouds and animals now that the evenings are cooling down. It sure helps with the anxiety, which is better today.
Carlton really wanted to get into the disabled machine (its track thing burst).
Tomorrow is a big day for me, so send me lots of positive energy if you have any to spare. As a reward, I’ll share some pictures of my animal buddies. It is so pleasant outside with clouds, a cool breeze, and normal September temperatures!
Been a busy work day, so here’s a quick update. Today a big pile of gravel showed up. They also covered all those water lines coming from the future pool controls.
Gravel in rear. Lee keeping an eye out.
Lee was nice enough to bring me samples of the material in the gravel. They look like they, too, could have once been ocean, especially the one on the right.
Yes, my guest towel is cute.
What they did with the gravel was fill in where the water lines are, I’m guessing to protect them.
Yay, woman workers today.
They used sandbags to hold the gravel. That’s good, since I think we will be getting some rain from Hurricane Nicholas.
The area at right is the “beach” entry.
The other main thing they did was get all the holes covered, so that’s why the machine is going. If I said that already, we’ll, it’s been a long day! I even crammed in a writing workshop at lunch!
Yes. My spouse was right. It is true. We doubted him, but he was right. What about?
A lot of PVC
Lee saw a guy starting to fill in the hole with all the pipes leading to the pool and stopped him, saying they need to do a pressure test before filling it in. So they stopped.
The hot tub. Mmm. Jets.
As you can see, today the workers finished all the water lines. There was a lot of use of the bending torch deal! There are so many curves.
Bending the water line.
Eventually they got it all completed. So, they did the test. We were just sure it would al be fine.
Do we see water?
Darn it, Lee was right. There was a cracked pipe.
Proof.
The good news is that it was easy to fix, and the second test went fine. The pool is looking really cool. Cool pool.
They had to bend all those.
You can see the layers.
The gray pipe going into the hole is gas, for the fire pit.
Enjoy it now. It will all get covered up.
Today they finished early, I guess so everything can dry. Knowing they are coming back gives me something to look forward to tomorrow. I also have a writing workshop if it works out!
Think of my relatives in the path of the latest hurricane. Hope it’s less awful than the others so far this year.
I guess the whole swimming pool thing will happen after all. I’ll spare you the drama of the past couple of days, and instead share progress and learnings as the excavation phase took place.
The work so far.
It’s pretty cool that this morning there was just a painted outline on the ground and now you can see where our little pool is going to be! And yes, it’s not Olympic sized. I just want to bop around.
This morning it looked like this.
It was lots of fun watching them building the very complex setup that will recirculate the water. Geez, there are a lot of pipes in there.
The one in front is a sewer pipe they wanted to be sure not to hit
They had lots of PVC.
Snakes
Very artistic
They had to bend some of the pipes, and had a big propane flame that softened the plastic.
Sorta looked dangerous, but I guess it wasn’t.
I was really interested in the hole they dug. You could see that the top layer was a lot of sand and fill that Lee and the builders put around the house. Next came very dark soil from when it was a pasture here. Some was very clayey.
Hot tub area, where you can see the top two layers.
The guy running the mini-excavator was really good. He was expert at digging circles and curves. As the actual pool part got deeper, I had another surprise. There’s a layer of very light soil about 4 feet down. I wonder what that is? Was the area a lake for a while?
Se the light dirt? And look at that machine in the air.
No, I didn’t crawl down there and get some. But I’ll get some from the dirt pile later.
The mystery stuff.
I can’t wait to find out what’s up with the soil! But, watching how quickly and efficiently the guys worked on the project. They also used these flexible boards to form the edges of the pool and hot tub. And they had an interesting measuring poke that beeped, I guess to get the dimensions perfect. Hmm.
Looking from the deep end.
I must say we all enjoyed watching the process. Vlassic just kept jumping from lap to lap all morning. It’s great that they started on a Saturday so we could all watch for a while.
This morning, loud noises started. Now, we are used to the sounds of airplanes flying fairly low, because a neighbor has his own runway, and he has just gotten a new plane, so it’s been going around and around, taking off and landing, over and over for the past couple of weeks.
However, today it was real loud. The first couple of times it happened, Goldie and Alfred were barking away, since they are the two who hate deep sounds the most (they also hate what we call “growly trucks”). We humans knew what it was, since we’ve lived here a long time: the crop-dusting plane was here to spray the defoliator on the cotton.
I was worried
What? You city folks may wonder what that’s about. Well, when the cotton has made pretty white cotton bolls, the current practice is to kill all the foliage (leaves). This makes it way easier to harvest. So, one week there will be happy green fields and the next week there will be sad brown fields with little white snowballs in it. So, there you go. Here, that is done by a plane, especially on small fields.
Also, I have a lump that needs to be looked at tomorrow by the vet.
Once we took Goldie and Alfred outside and they could see the plane, they lost interest.
Zoom.
The newer horses, on the other hand, were not thrilled at all. Kathleen ended up putting all her horses in the pens, so they could settle down. Drew huddled up with them, but he sure was on the alert for that dang loud thing.
I don’t like that thing.
Apache has been there and done that, since he’s lived here most of his life, and Fiona seemed to figure it was better than Goldie chasing her all over the pasture (which happened yesterday).
We are not pleased.
I’ll watch to see how long it takes for the cotton plants to die. They contributed, though. That’s good, I guess. But now you know why cotton isn’t the greenest of crops. It requires a lot of chemicals when raised in the modern way.
I’m better now.
Good News BONUS
I heard from the swimming pool dude, and we don’t have to wait until September 20 for them to start…they start tomorrow! We’ll have all the fencing under control by then, so no problem from our end. The family teased me that now I will have endless blog material. I promise to talk about other topics. No one but me (and Kathleen) is THAT interested in giant holes being dug, and I realize that.
This is going well.
No doubt I’ll have many things to rant about or long-ass horse stories. It’s a wonder I get any blog hits at all!
Getting started already? Where’s the concrete mixer? No, before the pool people get started, the Hermits’ Rest team has to prepare for their arrival. The first step for that is to reconfigure our fencing so a) the equipment can get into the back yard, and b) the dogs are kept out of the construction zone.
The dog part is made difficult, since we have to block off part of the back porch, but lucky for us, there’s a gate waiting to be used for something.
That will work, yep.
Then we had to figure out where to put a temporary fence. It was important to Lee to have as much space as possible for the six dogs to poop, and I certainly saw his point! The first place we selected was deemed too close to where pool workers will have to be.
This was deemed too close to the future pool.
Eventually we figured something out, and vowed to get more fencing up in front, which is already in the plans anyway, so the dogs won’t feel confined. The poor dears. After that, it was a quick matter of putting in the t-posts.
There was much dog supervision.
Only one post got all bent up by a rock or something, so that was pretty good. I got to fetch more posts, and had the challenge of getting them out of their packaging with nothing to break the strap that held them together. Ranchhand Suna managed just fine!
There we go.
The posts aren’t in all the way, so it will be easier to get them out when the project is over. Next up is adding the actual fencing material. The plan is to re-use some old shorter lengths of fencing rather than use any of the new rolls, which we will want for permanent fencing that is going up soon.
After that, the fence between the house and the garage will have to be removed so that bulldozers, bobcats, cement trucks, and equipment delivery vehicles can get in. One good thing about having absolutely NOTHING behind the house other than one pitiful tree is they won’t harm anything as long as they stay away from the propane tank and septic area (which will be marked!).
Hope your weekend was productive or restful, whichever YOU prefer!
Baby Suna and her mom were really happy the day Suna climbed up onto the dresser to look at herself in the mirror. Suna was around 9 months old, a bit young for climbing. But, mirrors have always enticed her.
My favorite baby photo. My parents loved to tell the story of this.
Adult Suna is also happy after climbing up high today. It was “clean out the office closet” day, which required much upping and downing.
World’s greatest portable ladder, and my friend. It’s lightweight but sturdy.
Since we moved in I haven’t been able to organize that closet very well, and as of last week, people had piled boxes for me to unpack and multiple air beds plus huge rolls of memory foam in there. I could barely open the door. There is no photo of that.
I got Lee to move the foam, made air beds with leaks disappear, and unpacked the random boxes. They turned out to be full of baskets, so I embarked on a long-planned basket display on top of my bookshelves. More baskets will appear when the Bobcat House stuff arrives.
A few baskets. Glad I have that ladder.
Most of the day today was spent taking all sorts of stuff out and putting it elsewhere…or taking it straight to the stock trailer, which we are filling with garbage from there and the garage (a separate project). Once I got things that didn’t belong in there removed, I remembered it was a big closet.
Harvey thought I was making him his own room.
I’m going to get shelves put in there for my knitting books and yarn, so I arranged everything in bags or boxes for easy removal. It was good to have access to my looms (one simple Cricket loom and one Navajo tapestry loom ready to start a project on) and their accessories again.
Looms at right. Bags and boxes have needlepoint, sewing, and knitting supplies.
So far it’s a little goofy, but I know where everything is, so that’s good. We are yet to find out how much of my stuff will fit in and how much will have to find new homes.
Bags and boxes.
I am happy as Baby Suna to have this all cleaned out, ready to prepare for the onslaught of things from my other house.
I think I visited my grandparents on my first Christmas or Thanksgiving. Glad I found these photos during my cleaning frenzy.
It was a good day. All this cleaning also led to sharing family stories, hanging out on the porch, and bonding with Apache and Fiona until sunset. Heck, even the work stuff I did today was fun!
Hope you had a day of productive fun, or get to have one soon. I’d missed them, so that made today even better. (I didn’t forget friends dealing with floods, illnesses, and worries that I now live in the fictional country of Gilead…I’m just dealing with the present.)
Fiona and Drew knew something was up this morning when the round pen suddenly turned horseshoe shaped.
The grass is nice and crispy here.
Then a big rolling thing came right up to where Drew was attempting to eat. How rude!
What’s THAT?
The thing turned around, stopped, and made some loud noises. But it wasn’t TOO scary. It looked tasty.
Tastes salty.
Then it made more loud noises, and that scared Fiona and Drew off for a bit. But soon, Drew had to check out the back of the big red thing.
Fascinating.
So, that thing is our other shipping container, which had been living over at Mandi’s house back when we were trying to renovate it. It’s the second part of the shelter for the horse pens. Now that it’s there, once it’s finally in place, we can empty out the other one and turn it into our tack room and hay storage.
Temporary home.
It was fun watching the unloading, so here are some pictures of how that happened. I also enjoyed talking to the wrecker guy, who knows everyone in town, of course. A fun time for all!
The Hermits' Rest 