A Beautiful Weekend

Well the weekend is almost over and no more cougar sightings thank the Lord.  We had a very productive weekend.  Ross was able to can a batch of his homemade tomato soup and made a terrific Mexican dinner for us Saturday night.  He made everything from scratch including the nacho chips for the cheese dip.  Mmm, mmm tasty.  They were even better today as a snack!

On Saturday, we finally got the roof completed on the chicken run.  I had placed wire mesh over the top to keep our little cluckers in but it was not secured.  This weekend we connected each of the posts with 2x4s and nailed the chicken wire in place.  We started to weave each of the sections together with galvanized wire, but still have some weaving left to do.  I'll leave that to Ross to finish this week.  I am feeling much better about the safety of my little girls.

Ross noticed that one of the hens was limping as she walked.  We checked her foot and all seems in order.  We are hoping that she just strained it and that in time it will get better.  We'll keep an eye on that.

Today I finished up a job that I have put off for two summers now.  When we first bought the property the woods came right up to the house.  The house sits on a hill (hence Looking Glass Hill) with the area that the house sits on leveled out.  On one side of the house the property slopes upward and on the other the property slopes downward.  Several months after we closed the septic system was replaced.  To do this the contractor had to cut down a lot of trees to place the tank and leaching field as well as to gain access to those sites.  He created a quasi road on our property and opened up a lot of what is now green space for us to enjoy.  That summer I placed some stone steps on the downward sloping side of the house that led to the quasi road.  I always intended to build a hand rail as the grade is somewhat steep but have put it off until this weekend.  As fate would have it Ross and I came across discounted, end of season hostas and decided to place these in this small swatch of land right next to the stairs.  The area was overrun with weeds and was the last remaining section of the area between the driveway and the quasi road that we still had left to reclaim from the woods; probably half of Ross' poison ivy outbreaks have come from reclaiming this area of our property.  I decided before planting the hostas that I should place the handrail  so that I wouldn't have to disturb the plants later.  So as Ross cooked brunch, and a tasty bread pudding that we had for dessert tonight, I went out and started digging the post holes.  Thankfully there were no major rock obstacles so hole digging went quickly.  For the posts I used a maple tree trunk from a tree we cut down earlier this summer.  The handrail is a maple sapling that I cut down today.  I had the posts in place and the sapling cut all before Ross called me to the table.  After a quick trip to the local hardware store for some quick drying cement to hold the poles in place, I was close to being done.  I'm really happy with the railing and was done so quickly that I was able to get all the hostas planted too.  Progress makes me happy.  What makes me really happy is crossing a two year old project off my to do list!