All Buttoned Up

Johnny has been a busy little bee in the past few weeks, and I-- the trusty lackey-- assisted in a project or two. Major tasks completed:

House Wrap: I helped him install it and it is NOT as easy as wrapping a present. No matter what we did it seemed to drip and drop and we kept ending up with wrinkles. Thank goodness it lives under the siding.

Windows! Beautiful new Marvin windows. Marvin is a fantastic family-run company in Minnesota that not only makes a superb quality product, but does so with a no-layoff, no-healthcare-cuts policy even during difficult economic times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/business/economy/housing-slump-forces-cuts-at-a-small-town-company.html). We respect a company that puts people before profits... and I'm in love with my windows!

A beautiful view from our workshop

Window and Doors installed

Garage Door: Due to budget constraints we couldn't go with the contemporary-look glass panel door I was hoping for, so we opted for a clean-looking flat panel. I don't know what I was thinking when I ordered obscure glass -- all the other glass is clear, clear, clear so I'm not actually going to be able to keep the paparazzi out. Foiled again!

ROOF!  I hefted approximately sixty 16-foot roof panels over my head up to John on the roof (though they are not heavy we had gusty wind so they were occasionally a bit unwieldy -- there was a time or two when I was spinning like a horizontal windmill!). In five short hours we were fully topped off. John spent the next couple of days doing all the detail work, and now we think it looks quite grand. It's a metal roof that is supposed to last something like 50 years so we should be able to make it through our golden years without attempting a similar project.

This guy dropped by to help for a day. I hope he was praying for us!!!!

Praying Mantis

Lone Oak No More!

Thanks to the incredible generosity of our friends Windsor and Sal, the Lone Oak now has a baby brother. May we introduce Sycamore Sam! Sal tended to Sam for many years in their San Francisco yard, but he just grew too big for the pot and they kindly thought of us when it came time for adoption.

He is going to be a big boy -- he could be well over 80 feet tall -- and with such a wide eventually root spread even on our 2+ acres it took a bit of time to find the best location for him (the septic mound kept getting in the way of several of our initial choices since you can't have roots any where near it). He found his forever home in the southwest quadrant, and will shade what we hope will someday be our guesthouse. We'll be able to see him from the main rooms of both the little house and the not-so-big house when they are built as well.

Right now it looks like he's living in maximum security -- his roots are surrounded by a gopher cage,  his trunk wrapped by a wire fence to protect him from the deer, and four strong poles with stretchy chords to keep him upright in the wind --  but in a year or two he should be standing all on his own. Long live Sam!