Nest building...

A bird, I don't know what kind, constructed a beautiful nest from grass clippings in our back pasture. She made a home for her eggs underneath the overhang of a truck bed liner, something that shouldn't have ended up leaning against the pasture fence.

Unfortunately for mama bird and her eggs, a series of events caused her to leave her nest and not return. I feel badly, but it happens. When Dave was mowing he accidentally bumped into the bed liner, and when I discovered this a few hours later I kept an eye on the nest, but she didn't come back.

It's not the first abandoned nest of this species of bird; I have collected a few nests over the years, just like this one. I love seeing how very clever they are when building a nest, but worry about these ground-nesting bird species, and how vulnerable they are.

Missing all these years...

DW mowed the front pasture a few days ago, and as he drove around and around (bored), he checked out progress on building repairs. Each time he climbed the hill and turned past the house, he'd take a close look. After about 5 circumnavigations of the pasture, he realized something. Each end of our 1923 farmhouse has 5 corbels, those decorative wood pieces that hold up the roof overhang. But the garage only has 3.

We're adding a belly band and decorative molding to the garage, then John will add shingles to match the pattern on the house. But it needs those missing corbels. Before he left at the end of the day, John rummaged through the used lumber in the barn, found what he needed, and built four corbels.



They went up today, and they make all the difference.

Junk...

We find it very hard to let go of stuff. DW especially; he thinks we should be able to sell just about anything to someone else. But that takes effort, placing an ad, and so on. If our best friends still lived nearby we'd just haul stuff to their annual garage sale, but that's not an option. So, things get boxed up and stored in attics and the garage, until one of us gets so sick of it, we throw up our hands and say, "Enough."

This weekend we took two old television sets to Goodwill, one of them our last pre-flat panel monster that strained both our backs just getting it into the back of the truck. The empty space in the garage seemed massive, and we'll finally be able to set up a pair of workbenches that have been in a box for a few years.

On a roll, today we gathered up all the odds and ends of metal scrap, including a long I-beam that was part of the foundation for a lean-to that was built against one end of the barn, and a big file cabinet that belonged to my father-in-law. We found a metal recycler in Enumclaw who took everything, and was very grateful for the donation. And we had the added bonus of having breakfast at a favorite diner nearby.

Dirt...

Most of the day, I sat in it. Dirt, that is.

There used to be a wide flower bed around two sides of the chicken coop; the other two sides were on the other side of the pasture fence, and the horses kept the weeds and grass cropped short. And kept dirt from stacking up against the foundation.



But this side, with orchard trees and mowed grass, the side we see from the house and the driveway... this side needed to be spruced up. So I dug out a border along the two sides, made a dam of bricks to keep dirt from sliding down under the building, and planted my favorite Campanula bluebells and Veronica spicata and lots of alyssum and lobelia.

But eventually I got busy with other things like mountain biking and a Miata club. The grass took over and DW started mowing the plants along with the grass,, but the flowers still bloomed.

Clearing out around the coop was on my list for getting ready for painting. DW took down the fence and mowed a wide path, and I started pulling out bricks and rocks and sod (and also found the skeletons of an adult and a baby opossum, which was very sad). The bluebells have formed a dense carpet, so I dug them up in clumps and transplanted them all around the house and patio.



John replaced rotten trim boards and door sill, wrapped the corners, and added battens and belly bands to make it look like the other buildings. In a couple of weeks, everything will be painted and I'll post another set of photographs. I can hardly wait!

Miniature...

One of the best features of our little acreage is the pump house, which shelters the original hand-dug well for the farm. There's a bright red hand pump to move water into pipes that run somewhere; we've never been able to trace them. The water level is just 6 feet below the surface, and it's cold.

I like to think that it was the owner (a carpenter) who built the pump house, which matches the house. I've always loved the little building, surrounded by apple trees, and backed by tall cedars.

When we bought the house and land, we locked up the pump house: what a kid magnet this building would be! The opening to the well was covered with big timbers and looked pretty safe, but one of the windows was missing. We nailed up plywood and hung plexiglas over the remaining window, and put a padlock on the door.

Such care was taken with this building, with a lathe ceiling and plaster on all four walls. But the ceiling has started to collapse, and the cover over the well was rotten. So we replaced it with ground-contact 4x6 boards, and found the missing window in the barn. Both windows got new glazing, and John replaced broken siding. I dug out the steps, swept out the hazelnut and walnut shells (remnants of a squirrel's winter stash), and edged out the corner flowerbed, ready for a lavender bush.



With all the other buildings, it was easy to choose the paint colors. But this little gem of a building was harder. Should it match the other farm buildings? Or because it's a miniature of the farmhouse, should it match the farmhouse?

Moving day...

Day three of our carpentry project, leading up to painting. And things are going really well. We love the work being done so far, and can hardly wait for color to start going up on the walls.



Tomorrow John will pressure wash the patio and driveway, and all the buildings. So today, I move everything off the patio: furniture, firepit, and all those containers.

Frantically working...

Lots to do before our contractor starts work tomorrow... digging sod and weeding and pulling nails and moving lumber and clearing space in the garage for tools. Hard and tiring work, but so very satisfying.



Today I spend much of the day digging out around our antique chicken coop. This little building once stood in a pasture of a big farm next door. DW remembers coming with his mom to buy eggs, and the pastures were dotted with these little coops. We were thrilled when we came to look at our little farm for the first time, and seeing one of the coops there.

We raised chickens for years, then the coop became home to my cans of horse grain and grooming supplies. Today we store a dozen old windows and a few antique doors in the coop.



There used to be wide flower beds around this little building, but I let them go years ago. But once I got the foundation dug out, I'm thinking I may just plant flowers here again.

The coop will get a facelift next week... battens and a new door and a belly band on both ends, and fresh paint: barn red with white trim, to make it pop against the green pasture grass.

Found objects...

We're approaching a big milestone... 1096 straight days of finding at least one geocache a day. That's three years, with one of those days being a Leap Year. Three years is a long time, even when we love geocaching. Three years of going out in all kinds of weather. Three years of dashing out to get a cache, even when it means dropping whatever we are doing, like paying bills or vacuuming the house or working on a quilt.



Most caches are ordinary, but sometimes we find something fun and unusual, like today. This is not what you usually find hanging from a tree in a neighborhood park.

Paint...

Breakfast at Testy Chef this morning, then our for a geocache, then picked up sample quarts of paint to do a test paint on our house and barn. And I browsed one of my favorite antique stores, and bought wooden bobbins and an old shuttle. I don't need a new hobby, but my niece is into weaving, and I'm intrigued. Plus the antique bobbins and shuttle will make great decor for my quilt studio.



Coming home from my quilt guild meeting tonight, I did a U-turn by the park when I saw the outline of the Issaquah Alps and the Cascades, lit up by the setting sun. The sky was clear and bright, so beautiful... I couldn't resist stopping for a few photographs.

Porches...

Next week, our contractor/painter starts work on our nearly 100-year-old farmhouse. I am beyond excited!

The house should have been painted a decade ago, I will freely admit. But as excited as I am about painting our house and farm buildings, I am just as excited about the carpentry work that John will do: replacing broken siding, adding battens to the barn and chicken coop, and tearing cedar siding off the garage in the gable ends, and replacing it with cedar shingles. Once that's done, John will start painting.

Dave and I spent a whole day running around the Enumclaw Plateau, home to barns and farmhouses and historic home neighborhoods, armed with paint chips. We were most worried about finding the perfect barn red, but we nailed that one quickly. The barn, pump house, and chicken coop will all be painted red, as farm buildings should be. The three greys for the house and garage were a bit more difficult to nail down, but I think we found just what we were looking for.

Along the path to paint colors, we decided to replace doors. The back door (formerly the front door; long story) definitely needs to be replaced; it's delaminating and can't be fixed. And it also needs a porch to be usable, unless you're really tall and don't need steps to reach a door that's 6 feet off the ground. Another long story, which I guess I should tell one of these days!



I made a second trip through Enumclaw today... and I found the perfect porch and porch roof for a country Craftsman farmhouse. The porch isn't on the work list for this project, but maybe this winter, John will build it for us. (I also love the picket fence and the foundation shrubs.)

Isn't this one cool? I love the chandelier!

Weeds...

I sneaked in a few hours in the sewing room this morning, then had to get back to work outside.

I spent the afternoon in the garden, and made a lot of progress, working in from the orchard side along the perennial border. This big "wild" area that was once home to the big fir tree, has built itself into a lush garden. It is full of huge mounds of foxglove and rose campion, plus big patches of bluebells. I cut back the blackberries and wisteria as I weeded, watched the hummingbirds, thought about what new plants to add come fall.

Quilting with cats...

I've run out of room on the design wall, so brought a new bunch of quilt blocks upstairs to lay out on our king-size bed. Which worked pretty well, until Madison came in to see what I was doing. Then claimed her spot on the bed, and on the quilt.



She gave me an almost "I dare you to make me move" look.

But I did.

Blue...

Most of the flowers in my garden are blue and purple, but every other year or so, white foxgloves bloom there. I love how they mix with the brilliant blue of the Bachelor's Buttons, the deep rose of the peonies, and the bright orange of the poppies.



The last few days I've walked through the yard, looking at the flowers in bloom, the buds waiting to open, and oh, that lush green. The perennials I chose to plant years ago are thriving, but they are mostly spring bloomers. The garden will be taking a break after the peonies bloom, until mid-summer. But that's OK. I love the green of a Northwest spring. I can never get enough of green.