Big Changes

July 8, 2008 - So it's been forever and I apologize. My time is limited lately and my computer time is even more limited, as we are officially out of my mother's house. But here's what we've been up to lately -

Let's start with the bad news. Our rooster may be dead. We can't really be sure, as we have not actually seen a body anywhere, but here's what was left in our neighbors yard the other day - it's a bag of feathers. White ones.

Combine that with no sightings of a rooster in days and it doesn't take much detective work to come to a conclusion. It's pretty sad actually. And I have to say that I'm disappointed that because we were too 'chicken' to eat our own chicken, some other creature in the woods got to enjoy the bird that we spent our time and money growing to good chow size. Ah well. Live and learn. Fortunately, his female companion was just fine (it would have been a true tragedy if anything had happened to her, since she never did anything wrong), so we brought her back to the house and put her back with all her other female friends.

Our gardens are just exploding with vegetables. We harvested all the first broccoli heads and ate them in the hopes that more side shoots will come out now.

And we are already almost drowning in zucchini. I cooked these two for dinner last night

Currently we are harvesting lettuces, beets, collard greens, peas, zucchini, broccoli, many herbs including basil, and we had our first cucumber today as well. It's so satisfying to grocery shop in the backyard.

The biggest change around here is that Elizabeth, Lorelai, and Axel have arrived for the summer. They moved into mom's house last Tuesday and Joe and I moved out. We have been housesitting for several days, but as of tomorrow we start camping. It's been quite a transition for everybody, but so far things are going well. Last week we celebrated Lorelai's first birthday (her 4th birthday party). She enjoyed her cake, her presents, and of course, the tissue paper.

Things have been happening over at our property too. The rest of the house was disassembled. I have to admit that three days in a row of demolition last weekend did not sit well with me. The ridiculous humidity that makes you want to quit before you begin, the insulation flying and sticking to your skin causing all of your exposed body parts to break out in an itchy disgusting rash five minutes into starting, and the occasional wish that you could just be a normal couple going to the movies on a Sunday afternoon, can sometimes make things seem a little bit bleak. But Joe finished up the project early last week, bless the mans heart, so that I did not have to go back for a fourth day. And then a few days later the dumpster was taken away. Here's what's left of the house at the moment, and the deck will soon be gone as well.

I spent a lot of time this past weekend stacking all our wood off to the side. Here's what we managed to save from the house.

And then the rest of our time this week was spent getting our camping site ready. First, Joe had to get the water hooked back up. This entailed wiring it up to our temporary electric pole, and replumbing it so that it didn't go under the house anymore. We now have water.

Next we worked on shelter. We are going to have two tents set up, but Joe wanted to set up something a little more permanent to serve as a kitchen and house our refrigerator. He got it started and then I got to finish the roof. It kind of makes me feel like we're living on a desert island. :)

Finally, we have to set up the electricity to our campsite (today's task). Our site is on the other side of our private road than the electric box, so Joe's plan is to run the wire through some black plastic pipe under the road, and then up the hill to our site. He's already attached a small box in our 'kitchen' which has two plugs. This way we can also hook up other things we might need.

While he's working on that, I will be working on moving us into the woods. Elizabeth will help me put up our tent, set up our air mattress, and bring all of our camping equipment over. Our port-a-potty was delivered yesterday, so we should be all set by tomorrow evening to begin our camping adventure. Keep your fingers crossed for a sunny weekend with little to no precipitation. It will be nice to not have torrential downpours for our first week. :)

K, time to get to work...