stuff that happens in between the doom and gloom posts

I haven't done any art work this whole year besides the little watercolor class and the two colored pencil drawings. Well, there was a bathroom remodel that took two months and then the fence clearing that took the better part of a month and now getting an interior room built in the shop which is progressing in fits and starts. The electrical part got done and now we have discovered that there is a leak in the roofline that runs down the inside of the building. Rocky got up there and found two places and he's going to repair them but had to wait for it to dry out after 5 1/2” of rain with high wind and hail last week. In the meantime he started a roofing job that he finally finished yesterday so I guess work will commence again today. And then there is the taking care of everything that needs to be done to get the manufactured home on the property and set up for living in by the end of November, our target date.

Last Thursday we had a still day, the first one certainly since I started clearing the fence, but for longer than that, so I burned all 7 of those brush piles. 

I ran out of charcoal starter halfway through so my absent neighbor who has been in residence the last several months gave me some diesel fuel from the tanker he's got sitting on his property. The next day I consolidated everything from the edges of the burned spots that didn't get completely burned into one pile plus the last of the dewberry brambles from around the bottom of the tallow. Then I examined the fence line and stuff was already starting to sprout back out including the naked tree trunks which still haven't been cut down. So there is nothing for it but to poison it.

If you know me at all you know this is not something I do. I don't use poison, hate to poison the earth. But I also try to be realistic. Everybody kept telling me that was the only way to control it and now I have accepted that it must be done. And in fact did it on Saturday. My neighbor of the diesel fuel filled his sprayer on wheels, we added a good amount of stump/brush killer (this will kill whatever it touches he said so be careful you only spray what you want to kill, but it won't kill you he added but be sure and shower after), he pumped it up with compressed air and off I went. Two days later nothing looked like it was dying yet.

I finally got all but six of the periwinkles in. I apologized profusely to the still straggly but still putting up a few flowers pansies as I yanked them out of the ground.

And I finished the little levee I was building under the eave and along the side of the slab on the driveway side of the house where the water just pours off the roof in a hard rain gutters be damned. On that side is a low spot where water stands and doesn't drain off so I'm hoping that this will keep it away from the slab. I've taken this picture over and over from different angles trying to show my work but a pile of dirt next to dirt just looks like dirt but that long mound is at least 8” high.

I've seen more butterflies and bees this year already than I did all last year it seems, a few monarchs, swallowtail or two, a crescent, and this question mark.

Other things seen around here:

frogs

   

purple coneflowers

easter lilies (taken before the rain)

lichen on a fallen dead branch

Not even mid-May yet and summer is here. Already hot and sultry out there.