Another Sunny Day

I'm pretty much worn out at this point. I hurt in more places than I care to list. Some of you may recall our wind chime collection. Well, it's once again in place. The house is surrounded by happy, mystical sound. Angel & I have had some of these chimes for a long time, so this time around I've had to re-string and do other repairs on many of the pieces. The end result is good. As I type this I can hear some of the nearest chimes.

It is interesting (to me, anyway). The chimes sound pretty loud close up, but the sound drops off very quickly with distance. That's probably a good thing. Keeps the nabes from getting irritable.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Ray got the gates up. Now, when the gates are closed, no large (or even medium-sized) animal can pillage the garden without scaling or leaping over some kind of fence or gate. We had a few antique (circa 1900) hinges left, so I put a clear coat on six of them and asked Ray to hang the gates w/ those hinges. Today I pulled all the pins out, cleaned them, and greased the hinges. Then I drilled a hole in the deck so that the gate pin can anchor properly.

The gates need a coat of oil sealant, but that will have to come later... perhaps next weekend.

I also built a cool trellis-type-thing for the pole beans in the main garden. It is at the east end of the garden facing west. It's one of the first things I've built here using my shop. I used scrap wood. It would have looked a bit better if I'd had somewhat stouter uprights, but this has a bit of coolness as it is.

Speaking of the shop, I put in a couple of hours cleaning it a bit more. It's now quite usable. The next order of business is to begin sorting through boxes of fasteners and small parts and get those organized and usable.

Angel and I also put up a bird house today. It's visible outside the kitchen window. All we need are some finches or other small avian-type creatures to take up residence. It's too small for crows or ravens.

As we finished erecting the bird house, Angel noticed a large number of raptors catching a thermal just northeast of us. She counted 16 hawks all soaring, gaining altitude, with nary a flap. Again, the weather forecast said 61°F, but the outside temperature measured 68. I guess that was enough for an updraft to form.

While I did the above chores, Angel focused her attention on relocating the small scrap wood pile. The scraps are small; the pile is big, by-the-way. Rats had been living underneath the pile. They're gone now, but the mess they left behind was still there. Anyway, the pile is now mostly down the hill east of my office with the rest of the main firewood supply. Once the remaining scraps are relocated, we'll be able to landscape that area. It's one of the more visually appealing spots on our property. It's north of our porch, but it gets good sun from April through September.

Dinner was Cape Cleare salmon (that's a wild fishery) steaks. Some of the fishermen quick freeze their catch and bring it down to the local farmers' market. Angel got some yesterday. I poached the salmon in white wine with a few herbs. It doesn't need much. I brought it to a gentle boil, covered, in a stainless steel skillet. Then I basted the steaks a few times and turned them. Another three minutes and they were done. I served the salmon w/ brown rice and fresh cauliflower steamed w/ olive oil and garlic. For a wine, we had "Seven Deadly Zins," one of our favorites. Actually, I like this wine so much that I only took a couple of sips during dinner. I've been savoring my glass as I typed this entry...

As I type this, Angel reads a novel in the big chair by the window. In a few minutes we're going to watch the second half of Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai".

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

On evenings like this, it seems like it cannot really be the Wrong Rock.

Was that a Corner We Just Turned?

Angel, Isabelle, and I moved into our new home just about a year and a month ago. Of course the home was just barely inhabitable at that point. It was about seven more months before the house was done enough to call for a final inspection. What with the mess of construction and the partially organized chaos of moving, it almost seemed as if the components of our life had been dumped into a gigantic container and shaken. And shaken some more. And then divided into blobs and distributed around the property.

Big, well-labeled things were organized quickly. So were basic need-type things: cooking utensils and clothes, for instance.

The garage? Oh, don't go in there.

The basement? Piles of boxes of books waiting for the bookshelves to go in. Other piles of boxes that probably should have been placed in the garage.

The yard? Piles of construction wood scrap. Much of it useful. At least useful as firewood. But so much of it. And just everywhere.

Little-by-little, mostly on weekends, we've been nibbling away at this chaos. That's Angel and I doing the nibbling. Isabelle yawns on her blanket by the window and covers her head with a paw as if to say, "Can you guys be quiet? I'm trying to take a nap here."

Boxes in the basement are reopened for the 12th time, but now inspected carefully. Oh that's where the yoga mats went! Piles of stuff -- really just stuff -- finally sorted through in the garage to uncover... a GIANT container of some kind of caulk. A five gallon can that had originally contained paint but now holds a paint roller hopelessly stuck to a grate and about 3" of dried paint sludge. Empty paint cans that the painter or the contractor should have removed. A carpenter's much-abused sawhorses, left behind for someone else to deal with. I may cut them up for firewood too, by golly. Other things are found. Sorted. Discarded. An end to mysterious boxes. Or at least a decline in them.

The last couple of weekends seem to have brought us past a corner, however. The yard, while still far from completely landscaped, looks like something's being done with it. The garage mess finally sorted through sufficiently to clear a space in the shop area where one can walk and work on things without stepping over & around ladders, paint cans, garden tools, boxes, boxes, (did I say boxes?)... the list goes on. But now most garage stuff is stacked neatly on shelves or hanging on the wall or in racks. One can visualize a kind of ordered state. Or perhaps a state of markedly reduced disorder.

In short, we have passed some nebulous point and are entering a region where the chaos seems to be declining. We are entering a place where one may imagine doing things without constantly wondering where the right tool or fastener might be hiding. We identify where we'd like that hoe, rake, shovel, mattocks could reasonably reside when not in use.

It is good. It is very good. And about time.

Oh, and lest I forget to mention, the weather was nothing short of gorgeous.