rain

In the past two days, we have had more than eight inches of rainfall. There have been interludes of drizzle, mizzle, and mist, but for the most part it's been hours of relentless rain, all day and all night.

Beech. There isn't a moment when I don't find it beautiful.

A large materials delivery was scheduled to arrive this morning, so I found my raincoat and went out to move my vehicle to clear the way. Just in that few minutes, I got soaked to the skin.

While the driver was making trips back and forth from his big truck to the top of my driveway in a nifty three-wheeled forklift, I held an umbrella over my camera and took a few snaps.

It was in weather like this - waiting for the rain to stop and rushing out to do a bit of gardening whenever possible - that I planted the saved candy roaster squash seeds in the Very Raised Bed. They had a late start - I think it was early July! But the plants did their best, and have been providing late-season food for bees and perfuming the October air with blossoms. I think the 2016 plants cross-pollinated, as these seeds have produced interesting and varied results!

I must harvest soon.

VRB, winding down.

And, when the rain stops and the muddy ground dries,

work can continue on Very Raised Bed II.

It won't be as high as the first,

and my goal is to have this bed ready for Autumn planting.

My Occasional Helper is ready to pitch in.

I am hopeful it can happen.

Weather permitting!

VRB2. A good start.

Tomorrow - Friday - the forecast is Not Raining. The builders will be back, and it's going to be a very busy day. I believe my job will be staying out of their way.

The Saturday forecast is also clear, and I'm hoping to take Piper for a long ramble by the pond that day, before the rain returns on Sunday and Monday.

And that will be my week, over in the blink of an eye!

How about you?

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wordless wednesday

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sunday snapshots

Sock in the works:

Sock in the works

on a tiny air mattress:

Sock in the works

on a tiny air mattress

in a huge stock tank.

With knitter.

With knitter

with hobbit feet!

A totally gorgeous day.

Since I could barely move this morning, I filled the stock tank with hot water while I tottered around doing the morning feeding. Then spent hours soaking, listening to Hugh Fraser narrate an Agatha Christie book, and knitting. Feeding Piper treats. Watching Moxie and Della pop up from the ferns than plunge back in with a suddenness that did not bode well for chipmunks or mice.

I'm still in pretty rough shape, but will probably be able to get to sleep tonight, thank goodness. And it certainly was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

Hope your weekend was wonderful :)

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ginger beer for supper

Tsuga enjoying a black birch sapling, delivered fresh to the paddock.

Thursday and Friday were perfect days for outdoor work. And it's great to have a builder who is happy to add little bits and pieces to his work plan as time permits. Thursday, for example, when my Occasional Helper was here removing fenceposts for relocation, Builder Matt didn't mind taking a few minutes to use his front end loader to lift out a couple of posts that wouldn't budge.

Yesterday, when the tractor was going to be idle for a while, I asked if Matt would park it by a pile of wood and stone that has been a thorn in my side for a few years. It's one of the most frustrating kinds of mess: the ones created and left by previous hired workers. Part of this one was my fault, because I had covered some firewood with what I thought was a tarp but which turned out to be a "pool cover" that disintegrated, shedding fragments of plastic which rendered the wood unburnable. But while I was figuring out what to do with that pile, a barn-builder with a skidder pushed thousands of pounds of old foundation stones into it.

What. A. Jumbled. Mess.

Since the new fenceline will run right through the center of that mess, yesterday I took a deep cleansing breath and began dismantling it. I pulled out individual pieces of wood, tried to brush off every bit of plastic into a rubbish container (on the left in the picture below), then added the wood to the tractor bucket (on the right, below). Whenever I came to a rock buried in the pile, I pulled it loose, picked it up and carried it to a corner of the fence.

Then, when Matt had a free moment, he drove his tractor  about 30 feet to unload the wood. I had outlined a space with sections of a white birch that had been too decayed for stovewood when the tree was taken down two years ago. It was a big tree, and even decayed sections were heavy. But it was worth the effort, because just like that (imagine finger-snapping there) I've got the base of my second Very Raised Bed. VRB2 was very much a backburnered project, due to the intensity of labor required. Having a tractor available to make one part of the process much easier was an opportunity not to be squandered.

I carried quite a few rocks, and filled the bucket with wood twice, but Matt eventually needed his tractor for the main job. I'm probably only halfway through the pile but it's a good start. I have to admit that after a couple of hours, it was really clear to me why I don't attempt this kind of thing anymore. Between the wood and the stones and later wrestling alone with rolled sections of 6-foot fence to temporarily block off a 50-foot opening so the cats can go outside this weekend...

I feel a lot like this squash leaf, but with less color:

It's been a productive week, and lots of good work has been done by the builders, with lots more to come. This is really a three-part project - not counting the little things that come up along the way, or the planned "20 minute" task that took nearly four hours and all hands on deck. I've got more research and decision-making ahead this weekend, but today I made my usual Saturday morning trip to the dump and the library, and that may be IT. I am exhausted, and all I want to do this afternoon is sip cold ginger beer and watch the cats climb through piles of roofing detritus while the autumn sun shines gently through the trees.

I hope your weekend is off to a great start!
Is anyone going to Rhinebeck? Usually right about now I'd be feeling a twinge of wish-I-could-be-there, but right now if I was magically transported to Rhinebeck I would probably be flat out on the ground, moving only enough to eat fried artichokes while watching sheepdog demonstrations.

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morning on the upper west side

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