Softball

Yes, it’s true. I signed up for the co-ed team that our church sponsors in the local town co-ed league. A friend called it the “Advil league”. Made me smile – how did she know that’s precisely what I did after the first practice? Well, our first game was tonight. I got to play for 2 innings in short field and had one at bat. And of course, Roger had to have the camera out with the giant lens on it to catch all the action. Here are the token pictures to prove that I played (yep, that’s me in my nifty new sport glasses!) and actually made contact with the ball. You astute ball players will be able to tell that I was out at first but not because I didn’t run hard. The bugs were controllable with bug spray and the outfielders were very nice to tell me where to stand even though I never got to touch the ball. We lost 14 – 9 but it was fun.

The next game is Tuesday. Stay tuned…

Progress 7

We have siding! While part of the crew was working to finish the roof trim, Chris and Rick started to put up siding. The siding is pre-primed a pale grey and will eventually be painted the same color as the house. The plumber has been busy too. There are more holes drilled and cut in just the right places. And the plumber’s assistant started stapling the tubing for our radiant heat up between the floor joists. It seems like miles and miles of tubing and a gajillion holes, but we’re looking forward to the warm floors over the minimally heated garage.

Adventures in felting

I’ve been interested in the idea of making felt from wool roving. The plan was to needle felt the roving into a water soluble stabilizer, wash the stabilizer away while felting the roving and be left with wonderful hand made felt fabric. I was looking for a specific product – Easyfelt paper – but I was unable to track any down for my experiment. Instead I used Aqua Magic which worked quite well for the needle felting part but washed away quickly in water. So I hand felted carefully with hot water in a pie pan to get my small pieces. I intended for them to look like sunsets so I could use them in the small work like I’ve been doing lately. Time will tell how that works out, but for now, I think they came out fairly well.

Progress 6

The changes aren’t so dramatic now that the basic structure is up, but the builders have been busy putting up the roof and window trim. This is a time consuming job that requires precision to do it well. This all has to be done before the roofing shingles go on or the siding is put up.

The electrician has spent several days running wires and putting up switch and outlet boxes. The alarm folks were here today to install wiring for smoke, CO, cold temp and security alarms.

The pictures show the front and side that we usually show, but we’ve also included one of the side facing into the woods this time. I’m looking forward to the wildlife we’ll see from those beautiful windows.

Visitor

What a surprise to find this little orange fellow in the garden recently! Actually I saw three of them in the yard on the same day. I think the recent rain brought them out. Red efts are the land form of the red-spotted newt that lives in water and is quite prevalent in the Eastern US.

Seeing them reminded me of a story my mom used to tell about me as a little girl. We were camping and my brother and I were out and about, amusing ourselves. We found lots of these red efts in the woods, picked them up, put them in our pockets and brought them back to show mom and dad. Mom loved to tell that story. And I’ve loved finding red efts ever since. They make me smile.

Cora

We will have a new family member soon. Her name is Cora. Our son James and his girlfriend Ellie are getting a new black lab puppy. She’ll come to live at Ellie’s house on May 21st. She’s already beginning to recognize her name and she follows the breeder around everywhere. They tell us she’s sweet and we’re looking forward to meeting her. Cute, huh?

Progress 5

Since we’ve decided to include a bathroom in our new barn, we get to replace our septic system. Currently we have a dry well – certainly not code anymore. If we upgrade, we need to put in an above ground system since the soil has such poor drainage. In an effort to make it as invisible as possible, the engineer suggested we put it at the edge of the woods, along the fence row that we are gradually removing. Yesterday, our builder Kevin brought his cool John Deere tractor up to dig the test holes and the engineer used a little book of colors to determine the types of soil layers in the holes. Of course Roger couldn’t resist the chance to sit on someone else’s bigger toys. Sure looks like fun to me.

And we have windows and doors! There’s one more door to install but they’ll wait on that one until the shower/tub unit arrives – hopefully tomorrow. It’ll be less of a challenge to get it up the stairs that way. Oh yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that we have stairs too. And walls upstairs. The electrician has been busy stringing wires and setting outlets and switches. There are lots of exciting things going on.

Graduation

Our son-in-law graduated from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary this past weekend. The picture is of Doug and his fellow student Andrew who is from Kenya. Turns out that Andrew is married to Stephanie who was in our oldest son’s sixth grade class. How crazy is that? She recognized me from my days as a volunteer in their elementary school. It’s a very small world sometimes, isn’t it? The funny thing is that James remembers her too. I need to see if I can find those old school photos.

After the ceremony there was a “meet and greet” on the lawn. The weather was spectacular and some of the fashions were interesting. We took photos of two things that caught my eye. Check out the polka dot shoes. They matched the dress perfectly and the red toe nails added a spot of color. The string – y jacket boasted of great texture and looked wonderful with this lady’s outfit. What fun!

Progress 4

The workmen have been busy and the weather this week couldn’t have been more spectacular. It’s been sunny and breezy with the temperatures heading toward summer. They’ve made excellent progress getting the ends of our barn closed in. The two large windows will be in my studio end. The three smaller windows will be in Roger’s office end.

In between we’ve planned a “living room” and a bathroom. It is exciting to stand in the space up there and imagine using it. The ceiling joists have been installed and these really give shape to the rooms.

The next step is getting the interior walls up (they made progress on this front today but I wasn’t home in time to get photos), the roof on (roofing materials were delivered yesterday and roofers supposed to be coming tomorrow – but rain is predicted), and the windows in (supposed to be delivered any day now). There’s lots to look forward to next week.

Here’s a photo of our crew, including the boss. He’s the one without any tools. Donettes qualify as building tools, don’t they? They seem to be a staple around here.

More Shoots

I took a nature walk out into the yard with the camera to document Spring yesterday. Along the road I found clumps of bright yellow flowers. They are almost the first thing that blooms in the Spring but I have never taken the time to identify them. They come up through all the roadside debris – simply flower stalks and no leaves. Leaves come later, wonderfully web-foot shaped with tiny black dots around the edge. All last summer, as I walked our road I marveled at these leaves and didn’t know what they were. Now I do: Coltsfoot. While I was out there looking for more evidence, I found some very exciting things just on the verge of actual bloom. I took a long look at the forsythia in our garden. It is in bloom elsewhere but in our yard it is still wrapped up tight. It is looking very yellow, however, and I imagine another warm day or two will pop it open. In the woods I found Red Trillium still closed but ready to open to show the three incredible blood red petals that give it its name. I found Bloodroot which I had transplanted into the garden last Fall – a delicate little white flower that pops out of the ground on a stem looking for all the world like a shy little maiden wrapped in an exquisite green cloak. This one is not open yet but when it does it will look daisy-like. The plant gets its name from the fact that the root oozes a red liquid when broken. The leaves, when they do unfurl after the bloom fades are deeply lobed and distinctive. And it’s poisonous.

I’ve posted two other photos, the bright green poke-y points of the Day Lily coming up that I mentioned in the last post and the Ladies Mantle, another transplant into the garden last year. I’m very excited that it made it through the winter. I love the delicate sprays of tiny green flowers that will appear later, and the way the dew collects on the pointed edges of the leaves.

You can see that Spring is clearly getting ready to spring in its slow and subtle way. God is so faithful as He brings the seasons one upon another.