August 23, 2011



House with new shop and deck!



Thistle and tipi



No more tarps! We have everything in the shop and the big, hand-made shelving unit taken apart. JB has a wood floor in front of his work bench. His electric saws all have their place, and there is spot in the southwest corner for the wood stove that is in storage. We plan to get everything out of the small unit we have before the end of the month. Ooops! That means within nine days. What happened to August?


We have another pile of dimensional wood that I had forgotten about, and all the wood that I had taken to the shop and helped JB put on that last shelving unit had to be take down. We had to move the shelf a couple feet closer to his work table as MAX couldn't get in the door without grazing it. Now there is plenty of room but we have all that wood to put back up. And there is even more wood with the shelves we took apart today. Lots of wood with which JB can use for lots of projects.

I did stay up yesterday morning after I posted my blog and was outside working at 6:30. I moved a large pile of small branches to the chipper and cleaned out some of the sticks from the grove.  While I was at it I found a tall thistle that is in the process of blooming.  I have so many pictures of thistles, but they are so pretty that I just can't keep from photographing them every time I see one.

My BFF, Sandy, took exception to my posting of August 18 where I stated that she had never been camping. Seems she did go once, shortly after she was first married, and that experience is the reason she has never been since. Here is her story in her own words:

   "My husband, John, dragged me out to the Wisconsin woods with a tent,
   a roll of toilet paper and a frying pan.

   For starters, Mr. Outdoorsman couldn't get the tent erected. Took him
   about an hour and ½. Have pictures. Don't even remember what he
   fried in that pan, but I do remember peeing in foot-high grass behind a
   tree with God-knows-what crawling around. Hope toilet paper was
   biodegradable because I felt bad about leaving that behind.

   Later, we crawled into one sleeping bag. When we awoke in the morning,
   John said, "Don't move," and he proceeded to remove a tick from near
   my eyebrow. That was the first of three. The other two were lodged in
   my inner UPPER thigh. I wondered for months how far they had crawled
   up!

   If anybody thinks for one split second I would EVER endure that kind of
   abuse again, they would need their head examined. In my mind,
   roughing it is poor room service in a nice, big hotel, or maybe the pool
   water is a little too warm, or the TV doesn't work."

She says she occasionally takes out those pictures just for a good laugh and an OMG! If I can ever talk her into seeing those photos, I may just have to "borrow" some and post them.

It was supposed to be hot again yesterday, but Up Here we had a refreshing, cool breeze all day and our highest temperature was 74. It clouded up in the afternoon and even looked like it might sprinkle a bit, but never did. We had all the windows open to let in that cool air.

There are some yummy sounding recipes in the August/September issue of "Country Woman" that I want to try, especially an egg salad with curry and olives. We have a lot of eggs to use thanks to Larry and Elsie. Tomorrow night we are going to have our favorite breakfast for dinner, German Oven Pancakes. We usually plan our weekly menu during Sunday dinner. I don't mind cooking, it's the planning what to cook that I don't like, so it was JB's suggestion that we just plan once a week. Last night I made scalloped potatoes and ham with fresh potatoes from Elsie's garden. It was one of my Mom's staple meals when I was growing up and it is still one of my favorites. It's one of those meals that I can make a little differently each time, but I always use canned milk.  That way it is so creamy. It was one of the many meals I learned to make when I was in junior high . My parents divorced then and my Mom found herself as a single mother with a "tweenie" girl and a baby boy. She went back to college for two years to complete her teaching degree, and I did a lot of cooking and babysitting. Money was tight and I learned from her the thrill of a good bargain.

Hmmm. That was an interesting paragraph. Started out with new recipes and ended with part of my life's story. My mind does tend to associate certain new situations with old ones and jump from here to there and back again. Kind of like I do my housework. I take something from one room to another with a specific errand in mind, see something else that needs to be done and do it. Then I find another job to do and while I am doing that I may finally get to the original errand. Or not.  I do end up getting everything done, but it drives JB nuts.

Dogs in their spa.