7.31.2023

 This was a picture of the "after" - the rocks all cleaned up.  Sure looks nice!

We had friends from Ohio visit today!  There were on the way back from a wedding in Maine, and this was a good halfway stopping point.  We rarely get visitors here so we spent lots of time showing them the house and talking.  It was a lovely visit!

Of course, that meant that not much else got done today!  Jim is starting to work on cutting some steel pieces to make brackets that he is going to use to mount the brake in the pole barn.  You can see his drawing on the steel table...

It was just a gorgeous day - as I write this, we are turning off the AC and opening the windows.  It's actually supposed to get down in the upper 40s tonight - love that for the beginning of August!

High 79.9/Low 52.4 - beautiful!

7.30.2023

Jim worked in the shop this morning, prepping more wood for the lean to barn door...

In the afternoon, we headed outside.  With the new bit, he was able to start drilling the holes for the pegs that will attach the mortise and tenon connections.  

The pegs will go completely through the beam, so Jim has to drill precisely through both sides.  Here he's just broken through...

Continuing to drill holes...

If you look closely through this hole, you can see Jim's eye staring through the hole from the other side!

The view without his eye!

Continuing to drill holes...

Jim had to find a good position for each hole so that he was drilling straight through - he used wood blocks, the ladder, the scaffolding, depending on the height.  Here he had to work in the trees!

He got all 20 holes drilled so that was a big accomplishment.  

After that, we decided to clean up the yard a bit - along the side of the upper driveway, erosion has made rocks be exposed and they interfere with the mower, so we were picking them up and digging them out...

We ended up with a bucketful...

After that, we did some weeding of our rock wall at the side of the pole barn lean to.  I definitely should have taken a before and after picture but trust me - it looks much better now!  Then Jim did a little more grass cutting.

High 72.8/Low 52.2 - beautiful!

7.29.2023

 In the morning, Jim worked on getting wood glued up for the barn door on the pole barn lean to.  Always so many projects in the queue!

In the afternoon, he started prepping for more tile work - taking the light fixture down...

Doing some measurements for the next row...

Putting on the adhesive...

You can see Jim put up a temporary light fixture here and got the first row started...

Putting more tile up...

Making sure each tile is in the perfect spot...

Because this section is up high, Jim is up and down the ladder constantly, plus he has to work over the sink!  Cutting more tiles...

Next section up...

End-of-the-day picture...

Time to get ready for church!

High 79/Low 66.7 - rain in PM

7.28.2023

While we were under a heat alert, it's hardly worth mentioning here.  Isn't 86° just summer weather?  We were outside all afternoon and there was a slight breeze and the woods felt positively air conditioned.  With all the high temps and storms around the country, we feel so lucky to be here.

Jim continued to dig out some big rocks... 

And these...

Filling in some holes...

The view from the woods looking out onto the property - Jim has this path area looking good...

How big will this rock be?  These stick up and make driving over them with the Bobcat difficult.

It was medium sized for this property!

Now that he dug up all the rocks, time to pick them up and get them out of the woods...

A full bucket of big rocks!

Stashing them in our pile for now...

A few more to pick up...

Grading the path area smoother... 

Picking up a bucketful of old roots...

After putting away all the equipment, Jim cut grass to finish out the day.

High 86.6/Low 64.7

7.27.2023

Mom had another follow-up at the podiatrist this morning; everything is looking good and she'll get her stitches out next week - all good news!

Jim worked outside this afternoon - some of these rocks stick out of the ground and make mowing more difficult.  He started digging this one up and it's huge...

He was able to get it out of the ground with the thumb on the excavator...

Then he was able to push the rock into the bucket of the Bobcat...

We're going to use this rock as the beginning of the rock wall on this side of the driveway.  There is an original wall here that we want to restore and build back up.

Of course, that huge rock left a huge hole, so Jim got it filled back in...

He also pulled out some smaller stumps and trees at the edge of the woods...

The path next to the shed that leads back into the woods has quite a few stumps and roots that make it rough traveling, so Jim wanted to clean some of that up...

Pulling out the roots...

He's amassing quite the root graveyard...

Pulling out more roots...

Another view  of the work...

Loading up the roots to take back into the deep woods...

Plenty of room back here to let them go back to nature...

Doing some clean-up work...

He did some more grading/clean up after I went in but it looks so much better!

High 84.1/Low 67.6