Today is a day I’ve been waiting for a long, long time. The Big Sander has arrived, and the floors in my office and the front reception area are getting sanded. That also means that today’s the day we get to to our fun* arts and crafts project of putting pieces of broken glass in the holes in the floor to turn them into features.
Here you can see the glass before sorting.
I took some time on my lunch break to go through our can of glass pieces that used to be wine bottles and separate the really big pieces from the smaller ones. I also had to get rid of ones that still had the labels attached, since they didn’t get taken off before the smashing.
Lots of big shards of glass.
I was very careful not to get tiny shards in my fingers, but eventually I had nice piles of big chunks and smaller ones, which are what’s going in the floor. I’ll share how it comes out!
The smaller pieces of glass are in the container. Some may still be too big.
Meanwhile, Chris and Randy are wrangling with the Big and Little Sanders. Even after the first pass, the floors looked better.
Sanding in progress.
We think we will keep them the color they are, rather than staining them. It goes with our rustic theme, I think. Note that where you still see darker wood is where there are low spots in the floor. It is NOT even at all. After 115 years, it can be forgiven.
After the first pass.
I was so excited about the sanding that I took a movie. It’s probably not going to be a box-office hit, but it’s interesting to see how Chris does it.
Sanding Suna’s office.
Other renovation happenings are that Randy took the wallpaper down on the other upstairs room, the one that used to have giant hounds-tooth plaid in it. Lo and behold, that room also has plain shiplap walls. The other two had plaster, so I’d love to know why two bedrooms got plaster and two did not. I guess they were wallpapered all along.
Shiplap room, with view of future conference room, with plaster walls, through the door.
It’s a big day over here at the Hermits’ Rest, so you’ll be hearing more from me. I find it really handy to write all these happenings up, so I can refer to them later.
Looking toward the door to the balcony.
*Chris has let me know that my definition of fun is anything that I get to enjoy watching him do. So whenever I say, “This will be fun!” I mean, “This will be fun to me to watch you do!” His point is well taken.
Our friends the Lands had a crowded chicken pen and one too many roosters. So, this evening I headed over to their amazing Victorian house, which they are renovating one room at a time.
Clarence! The Big Man
I was sort of unprepared, because I thought our chicken transportation box was in the garage, but it had been taken to the dumpster. Sara suggested I take one of the feed buckets and cover it (by the way, Apache seemed a little better today).
Once I got there I realized the bucket was not going to work. Luckily, Kris had a moving box, so he set about to catching the rooster. There were a lot of chickens in the same size coop as our white one and they all hid in the back. So I stomped around and scared them to the front. In the box the Rhode Island Red went, and I drove him home.
Rooster box
We wanted to separate the rooster (Clarence) but our piece of fence had been used in the new pen. So, we tried putting him in with the young chickens.
Dude, who are you?
That did not work well. Bruce was not happy. The pullets kept getting jumped on. Not good.
Come over here, says Bertie Lee.
So Chris just picked Clarence up and put him in with the older chickens. That went way better. He ate some and said hi to the hens. Soon Ginger let him know that she is Boss Chicken.
I’m in charge here, bud.
All the big chickens then proceeded to chase Gracie. They did teamwork! A bonding moment.
See Clarence, we chase this.
By the time we left, Clarence had discovered he can fly, and was happily on the roost branch.
Some people say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and I am definitely an old[er]…person. I’ve always thought of myself as a realist, in that I see the beauty and good in the world, but I don’t deny the sadness, sorrow, injustice and pain that’s around me, either. Life is suffering, after all, says the Buddha.
Top that off with a healthy dose of empathy and sensitivity to the moods of others around me, and I end up not being the biggest little ray of sunshine in Central Texas. I have even railed about “toxic positivity” and “non-toxic positivity” right here in this blog, not that long ago.
For me, there’s room for each.
However, in the last few months, life has been conspiring to teach me new ways of walking through life, thanks to some people who just sorta showed up, or I just started paying closer attention to them. And it’s not just reading all those Buddhist articles that help you see that living in the moment is key.
You see, I used to avoid the relentlessly optimistic if at all possible. Always seeing the bright side of things, ugh. “Oh, no, I have the flu.” “That’s great! You can catch up on your reading!” I also got tired of the relentlessly negative, too. I know people who can suck the life out of any conversation by pointing out the negative consequences of anything: “It’s such a pretty day!” “Yeah, but you’ll get skin cancer if you stand in the sun.”
Depending on how you look at life, this may well be true.
I probably have mentioned before that I loathe being told to smile when I am, at the moment, not actually happy. Sure, I’ve read that forcing yourself to smile can make you happier, but sometimes there’s good reason to be unhappy, at least temporarily. Okay, fine.
Look at that happy face!
I’ve been watching the positive people in my life more closely, though. Here’s one you can watch yourself: go follow Emma G on Facebook. That is one positive woman. I happen to know that she’s faced some challenges in the year I’ve been reading her posts, but she never fails to find something good, some way a challenge has helped her grow, or a way something she’s learned can help others. I look forward to that smiling face every day, as she shares how she’s working on her musical career while minimizing danger from COVID-19.
Here, wine is helping us stay positive.
Living with Kathleen the past few months has also been a lesson at looking on the positive side of things. I have never seen anyone post so many cheerful memes in my entire life. Sometimes I’m like, geez, you have insomnia and are sick to your stomach, but you’re still posting “everything’s GREAT” all over Facebook. I see, though, that she’s trying to draw in the good stuff by sharing it (guessing it’s the power of attraction or something). Whatever it is, even when it irritates me a little, I can’t HELP but be reminded to look at what’s good in my own life, which is leading me toward a more positive outlook. She’s another person who’s had some real challenges to deal with in the past year but is finding ways to see the good. She’s never afraid to go talk to someone about our business and get some sort of positive outcome, too. Also, she’s one amazing idea generator. Now she wants me to have a donkey ranch.
This was taken just after Pam gave me a positive pep talk.
Another beacon of positivity is my friend Pam B. from the Breakfast Club here in Cameron. She’s another person who just radiates happiness and works hard to cultivate good in the world. Every time I talk to her, she says something about wanting to “elevate the good” or find joy or something to that effect. She is amazing at bringing people together for the betterment of this small but quite vital community (and is really fun to watch in community theater). Seeing how she works so hard to bring happiness to her friends, neighbors, and families is a real inspiration.
Here’s Eva with the sun behind her, making her even sunnier.
A final source of positive vibes is my coworker, Eva. I’ve known her since I started working at Planview, so I’ve had plenty of time to soak in her attitude. Especially in the past few years, she has provided a great example of how to take feedback that might upset someone or get them down, and turn it into an opportunity to learn more, find a new way to present information, or create a better product. She’s confident in the skills she has, and doesn’t take it personally when I mess with her grammar, because she knows perfectly well that the actual ideas are great. But it’s not just about work, but all aspects of her life that she brings along a sunny attitude and a lot of gratitude. It’s rubbing off, slowly but surely.
Here’s one of Kathleen’s memes.
People like this have been in my life before, some for many years, but I must be in a position to be more open to their input and to learning from them (thanks to those Enneagram books, I guess). I’ve been told that people come into your life for a reason, which is hard for someone like me, who has mostly been convinced that life is random. But, maybe there’s something to it, and something to the idea that if you surround yourself with positive people, you’ll be more positive, even if there’s a pandemic going on.
Another thoughtful meme that I have taken to heart. Some people may wish I hadn’t.
Do you know a relentlessly positive person? If you do, THANK them, and see if you can let a bit of that attitude rub off on you. Things in the world won’t change, but you may be better able to cope with it. I am, thanks to Emma, Kathleen, Pam, and Eva (and all you others I didn’t mention).
Okay, let’s all be SUPER HAPPY! Be a ray of sunshine like Emma, Kathleen, Pam, and Eva!
Sometimes life sends you from one extreme to another so quickly that it takes your mind a while to catch up. Today was one of those days.
I was walking to the horses so I could feed them, accompanied by Vlassic, who was jumping around eating grasshoppers, chased a cow, and had a grand time. As I came past the bales of hay, I looked toward the cattle pen, to see how Apache was doing.
My heart stopped. He was lying motionless in the dirt. Fiona said hee-haw and he didn’t move. I quickly walked up and said, “Apache?” In what I’m sure was a stricken pet-owner voice.
I’m okay, mom. See? I’m trying to be funny and stepping in my dish.
He flipped his head up an whinnied. Whew. But, had he foundered? Could he stand up? Did I have to call the vet? He answered that question by hauling himself to his feet and shaking. He’d just been napping.
He’s up and eating!
By that time, I’d called poor Sara, who said, “You do know they lie down, right?” But she understood why I’d panicked.
Actually he is walking marginally better today. He’s still not great, though.
Fiona always stays close.
Meanwhile, Fiona kept nudging me. I turned to see what her problem was just in time to see a little black butt slipping into her water tub. Vlassic was apparently hot.
The tub, the water, the dog, all black.
Fiona was not amused to see him in HER water, but I went straight from my fear for Apache and his feet to laughing maniacally at the dog. That was great.
That was NOT funny. Also, this pen is too small.
We fed the other horses, who are on their best behavior, then went back to chicken world to get today’s eggs.
We’re over here, being good, eating our own food.
All the ladies and Bruce were fine, but there were no eggs. Then, on the ground, I saw this:
That is one small egg!
What the..? I went to the Googles and found that Ginger had laid what is called a fairy egg! They are tiny eggs, usually with no yolk. They are also usually lighter or darker than a hen’s usual egg.
They happen when something disturbs a hen’s reproduction process. Well, of course! Ginger and Bertie were quite disturbed by being cut off from their pen and all those new pullets showing up.
We will have to see if Bertie pops out a fairy egg tomorrow. Little do they know, but tomorrow they get a new boyfriend. Oooh. Don’t tell them.
We never know what we will find at the Pope house, which is probably true any time you renovate an old place like this. Examples include the arched opening between Lee and Kathleen’s offices and the window in my office that faces out into the hallway, which told us that was once an exterior wall.
The opening to the left of the ladder was hidden behind plaster and the scary staircase that used to be in the central hallway. Surprise!
Today we found another great surprise. Randy has been upstairs removing the wallpaper and other things from the walls in 3 of the 4 upstairs rooms. The room for Meghan’s office is fine as is. The one above Lee’s office has some trim to take down. We are making that the conference room, since it’s the biggest room. We’ll paint it the terracotta color we used on the back downstairs wall.
The future conference room. The carpet has been removed and most of this stuff is gone. The floor under the carpet is great. All we have to do is paint the walls.
The last room is the future storage room. It had wallpaper on every wall, all of which had water damage. Even the ceiling had wallpaper on it, which looked pretty darned awful. So, it had to go.
This shows the wallpaper on the ceiling. Ick.
I went upstairs to see what was going on, and saw that Randy had just gotten started. What? The walls weren’t plastered in that room; they are just shiplap! And wait a minute…the ceiling isn’t the brown beadboard that the other three rooms have. Whoa.
When I first saw the wall and a glimpse of the ceiling.
The minute I realized what the room would look like, I made sure Kathleen had seen it, too. Randy was sure to inform us that Lee said he would put drywall on the walls, so we’d better not contradict the boss. Ha ha, we laughed. We all have a say in this project!
Note that there was once a stove in the room. That hole goes to the chimney.
At lunch we showed these photos and explained how we’d love to keep it in its original shape. Of course, Lee and Chris were fine with it (duh, it will save money for Lee and time for Chris!).
It’s a fascinating collection of colors, but pretty coll on the ceiling.
This happy news made up for the fact that we don’t get the Big Sander until tomorrow, which delays the floor starting. Our trusty team will just have to work on the weekend, meaning I’ll get to help, too.
Here are some more photos of the room, freshly devoid of wallpaper. It should clean up nicely.
Three colors of ceiling.
This is the closet door. To the right is a door that leads to Meghan’s office. Convenient.
All the upstairs rooms have nice transoms.
Remnant of one of the previous wallpapers that were on the walls. I guess they never had plaster.
Looking out of the room
These windows were once exterior windows and are original. Now they look out on the stairwell.
I do love a good surprise. I wonder what new surprises the Ross house will hold? We close on Thursday!
The big day is coming: the Big Sander is getting rented tomorrow and the rest of the downstairs floors are getting finished.
Reception room clean. Doorway is sealed from dust leakage.
But, yes, it takes a lot of prepping to get rooms ready to sand. Both the reception area and my office are now empty and the floors clean as we can get them.
Looking toward the front.
Chris had to carefully check for nails and other metal stuff, because we sure don’t want to break a rental sander.
Ladders are in my office to reach the air conditioner and seal it off tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Lee is slowly getting his office ready. He brought over his pretty gray rug that we’d been storing in the Hermit Haus conference room. He even put some of his things in his bookshelf. It’s good to see him excited.
Lee’s rug.
Tomorrow should be interesting!
Lee’s bookcase with actual stuff on it. We are doing something special with all these cracks. My office window is most attractively sealed off.
Let’s just have a little nature story, shall we? Why not?
The past month or so we’ve had a family of mockingbirds working on raising a family. Every time we went in or out of the Hermit Haus office, an angry bird or two would fly by and make that mockingbird screech of warning. I never found the nest, but I know it was really nearby and that they spent a LOT of time in the lantana bed.
I can fly! Just not very far, so please bring me a bug.
I also got to watch one of the adult birds using the pipe where the air conditioning condensation comes out as a water dispenser. I wish I’d gotten a picture! I should put a bird bath under there or something.
Last week the little ones fledged, and they certainly are not afraid of us humans who they’ve grown up with. I had the best time last week watching one of them on its first day out, still with a little topknot of baby feathers.
I love these flowers.
Today I came in to work for the first time in a few days, and heard all sorts of peeping, even from inside the building. A while later I had to take a phone call in the driveway. When I went out, there, peeping continued. I watched an adolescent bird flail away and make it on top of one of the air conditioner units. Then it gathered ALL its courage and jumped to the OTHER one! It seemed proud.
I can see farther thanks to these convenient steps.
After a little flapping it calmed down and opened its mouth. In flew one of the parents, who stuffed some kind of bug down its little gullet. When I looked over by the lantana bed, I saw the rest of the family had gathered. There were both parents and three babies, who are just about the same size as the parents, but still have little streaks on their chests.
The parents are on the left, and the babies are on the right.
I sure enjoyed their antics as they munched on berries and flopped around. I’m hoping that the house finches who have built another nest in the carport area manage to get babies this time. Between these guys and the swallows at the Pope house, I have had a great baby bird year.
Getting ready to chow down on lantana.
Tell you what, watching birds raise their young is a wonderful way to remember that you are part of a much larger world of nature that doesn’t give a darn about what country they are in or what diseases are afflicting humans.
Next week, the refinishing of the floor in my new office will start. That means I’ll need a desk. Chris really wanted to make one, as I e mentioned before. We both wanted to re-use old materials for it. We found doors we wanted to use as the desk top and sides among ones we had to remove in the renovation.
The future desk doors
But, we didn’t find suitable framing stuff, even when we looked at various antique shops. Then, one day, Chris was at our friend Mike’s woodworking shop, borrowing a saw. He noticed some old pipe, and asked Mike what it was. It turns out it was the old gas lines that got removed when we were working on the Hermit Haus.
Parts of the pipe he didn’t use.
Mike hadn’t wanted them to go to waste, so he took them home. He was happy to give them to Chris for the desk project!
So, today was welding day. I’ve never watched anyone build with metal before, so I hung around and watched Chris as he worked. Numerous dogs helped until sparks started flying.
Everyone was happy while he was just selecting pipe to use.
We did the work under the shady roof over our shipping container (future tack room and stalls for horses). Alfred dug himself a nice hole to sit in.
Happy Alfred
First, Chris cut all the pieces from the old pipe. It was really exact. He marked the cuts with a soapstone marker. Interesting!
Firing up the welder
Heating up pipe
That’s hot
Fire!
Welding time!
I kept watching the little fires that came up, ready to throw my cup of water on them. But it was fine.
After that, Chris put on his helmet and put everything together. It didn’t take long at all! It was like magic! I enjoyed seeing how he leveled the legs and attached all the parts securely.
Finishing the main frame
It’s a rectangle!
Support bar in
Adding more bars
Building the legs
Getting things square
Complete desk frame.
Building the desk
The highlight was when he put the old door on the rustic frame. Wow. So cool. It will look amazing with the big piece of glass on top.
The door fits!
I even got to practice sitting at my desk. What a fun thing to do on a Sunday!
It seems to work!
Thanks to Chris for his willingness to make this one-of-a-kind example of using what you have!
Ranch life. It’s always something. We get the chicken situation under control, and the horse situation goes bad, or worse. Here’s how the week with Apache went.
He was out in the pasture with the other horses Sunday and Monday. Tuesday I thought I’d try riding him. It was to be a big day! Nope. He just stood there. Crap. He’d had too much rich grass and was starting to founder. Panic time.
Pretty sparrow egg. Just something to distract you.
I got him moved over to the “dry” pasture where he spends most of his time. Next day, he was worse. Mandi came over and we decided to give him bute, the powerful horse painkiller. We gave a small dose, and he seemed more comfortable.
Since then, he got one more dose, but that’s it. Last night Chris suggested I move him to the cattle pen, where there isn’t much grass at all, and the ground is soft.
We’re fine now.
So this morning, after determining the keats’ water dispenser sucks and had soaked their shavings, I headed over to move him.
As always, Fiona was right by his side. He had trouble walking at first, but eventually made it to the pen. He was very sweet about it, and I let him take his time.
I also like this hay dispenser.
Once he got in, he found his hay dispenser and noshed a bit. I’d emptied out Fiona’s water tub, because it had mosquito larvae in it. He checked that nice clean water out and enjoyed the cool dirt.
Then he came over and loved on me. That’s when I called Sara to see if I was doing the right things. She remembered we have some natural anti-inflammatory stuff in the tack room, Bute-less. Aha!
This is good water. And thanks for the shade.
Apache likes that stuff just fine and ate it up. Let’s hope that helps and isn’t dangerous like the big drugs. It takes a village!
The vet comes Thursday but if he’s worse, I may have to call sooner.
It’s a rooster, of course. Since we are down 3 hens (we lost our injured Jewel last week) I wanted more. Bird and Bee Farm keeps running out of chickens, so I despaired of getting more any time soon. But yesterday we got a call from Cindy Rek, who said our turn had come, because they finally have baby guinea fowl (called keats), which Kathleen has been wanting.
Precious guinea Keats
We hadn’t expected them so soon, so we’ve been scrambling to get stuff set up for them ever since. With a plan in our minds, Chris and I set out for the farm so we could arrive by 8 am. That is dedication. But that way we were the first to get there.
Bird and Bee Farm Wildscape
The Wildscape my Master Naturalist friend, Catherine Johnson, works so hard on is really coming into its own. So many flowers and creative touches. She’s started a southwestern garden and a moon garden with all white flowers.
More Wildscape with cosmos in back
After petting the Rek’s new collie puppy, Dixie, we went in for chickens and guineas. Very quickly, Chris came over with a box of ten little darlings. Five are lavender and five some other fancy color. They’re just a few weeks old and like to Peep. So I want to name them all Peep, so we can later chill with our Peeps.
There are ten keats in here, actually in half the box.
I had more trouble, since I wanted older pullets. Well, they are selling them so fast that the oldest they had were 3.5 months old. I realized we’d have to separate the current hens from the new ones. Time for Plan B!
Hedy, Hedley, and Spring or Steen
I ended up with two very black Jersey Giants (supposed to be very nice) that I had to name Spring and Steen. Jersey girls. We also got a gorgeous Silver Wyandotte. Her feathers are gorgeous, black with white tips. Her name is Patti. Mrs Springsteen.
Pretty Patti
They begged me to take a rooster, so I picked a flashy Easter Egger, in the hopes that maybe Fancy Pants can raise us some babies with olive eggs. Guess what I named him? Bruce. He has some hilarious whiskers around his face. We are probably getting another rooster from a friend. I guess he will be either Clarence or Little Steven.
Bruce. He should be quite flashy as he matures.
There is another pair. They are Ancona, a pretty breed that apparently has red eyes. They are mostly black but have random white tips. Ours have a few white feathers, too. I read that they get more white with each moult. I ran out of E Street Band enthusiasm and named them Hedy and Hedley.
All six blackish chickens in a confused clump.
Now that we had chickens, we had to get another dog pen to put the teen chickens in, and a place for the guinea fowl to grow in. And feeders and waterers. Each group eats different food, of course. It only took two different Tractor Supply stores, thanks to the nice clerk in Rockdale who found us one in College Station. That was a nice store. It did get tiresome wearing my mask, but I looked like a cowgirl.
The gay pride frame helps.
Our other errand was to pick up some stuff from the John Deere store. Only it wasn’t outside the store like they said it would be. It’s okay, we enjoyed driving around looking at farms.
Back at the Hermits’ Rest we went into bird housing overdrive. Chris got the guinea chicks in the big dog pen we got for them, only to watch them squeezing out. Oops. Luckily we’d bought chicken wire in case we needed it. While Lee and I chased the last escapee, the wire went up. Whew.
Before the chicken wire. They could escape!
They loved their water and food dishes and soon were falling all over each other eating and drinking. After that, the babies napped a lot.
No escape now. They are napping anyway.
Meanwhile, much to the annoyance of Ginger, Bertie Lee, and Fancy Pants, Chris temporarily confined them the a small part of their coop. Then he let the black chickens out. Everyone had food and water, but the Springsteen family hid in their box for a long time.
Even Fancy Pants made an appearance to voice her dislike of the cramped quarters.
Lee and Chris quickly built the new addition, which is bigger than the original because of how he arranged the dog pen panels.
Excuse us, interlopers, but you are in our space! Bertie Lee and Ginger are not amused.
Next, we took some of the tin left over from the Pope house project and made some shade panels for the original section, in the west, and a bit of rain cover for the new addition. They needed more shade.
Penney inspects the pointy end of the new chicken run area.
After putting in some roosting branches/boards the new group was released there and the old ones got their house back. No doubt they are jealous of the grass the new chickens have. Don’t worry, I gave them some.
Tin roof (needs work) in the new section, and more tin in the old part, making it lots shadier.
The black chickens had never seen grass or treats before, but they figured it out fast. By the time I went inside, they were happily eating, drinking and pecking.
This is the life!
We found some wood to make a couple more nest boxes and a second little coop for when the new guys start laying. They will be okay with their cardboard box temporarily.
Their beloved transport box and a roosting perch are at right. They also have a branch to roost on, outside the photo.
I can’t believe Chris got as much done today as he did! Instant chicken quarters! I’m very grateful for his creativity and willingness to do this, since it was NOT on the original weekend plan.
The Hermits' Rest 