My unwindowed wall

Before the sky split open and pissed all over my weekend plans, I pulled the vinyl window and framing out and worked to get the first section of old windows framed in.

Earl watched me for a while, then went to see what Annie was doing. He thinks she's right – there is some sort of furry varmint in the ground here.

Got the first three windows in. The areas with pink insulation are part of the inside wall. I'll trim them down after the windows are in. That dark red vertical at the right is a steel beam.

Went up on the roof and looked for obvious holes. Nothing up there. I patched a spot where a nail was poking through, and a side wall with a loose lap of sheeting. Called the local roof guy and left a message. This is a job for a pro.

The leaky roof has left me bummed. Didn't get much done.

Caught a gorgeous, healthy deer approaching the garden at dusk. She moved away slowly, and finally walked up the hill.

It's raining inside

Big storm out here. Lightning in the valley below, thunder, rumbling wind, pouring rain. Leaking roof. We put all the buckets out, then went to bowls and pans. It's leaking where it used to leak before we had the roof fixed. It's leaking where never leaked before. Good thing C. unblocked the drain in the girl's locker room or we'd be afloat by morning.

The storm pounds outside, the rain pitters on the roof and dings in the buckets. It's like a waterfall in a junk shop. Kewpie is hiding behind the big chair, her big round eyes even bigger and rounder. I run out and dump most of the pails, then wrap my down pillow over my ears and try to sleep. It's like trying to sleep through a rock concert – a long drum solo. I hate drum solos.

I do sleep, though, and in the morning we are still here.

Goodbye, Isabella

Em came up and took Izzy home. She had been here a week, and was fitting in pretty well. We'll miss her. OK, Annie won't miss her, but I will. Nice little dog.

We'll get her back if she can't behave at Em's place.

It was fun having two wiener dogs!

Pushing back the deer

We've had some deer damage in the garden so I've been beefing up the fencing. Yesterday C. found a whole bed of beans gnawed, and Plumb Bob's favorite giant broccoli taken down to stems. Time to get serious.

We had no deer damage last year. But the garden was fenced on all sides and the big animals were right next to the garden. This year I moved them back toward the barn and turned their pasture into "the orchard." I put quotes on there as it's not much of an orchard now that the deer have done major pruning on the baby apple trees. Lo.

Anyway, I researched deer deterrents on the web. There are all kinds of commercial and homemade contraptions, from 10-foot-tall fencing to motion detectors connected to sprinklers or to motors turning flappers hitting garbage-can lids, not to mention the Japanese shishi odoshi, the charming fountain that thumps periodically. But running power or water out there would take time and engineering. I found a guy on YouTube who swears by his tin-can alarm. His unfenced garden has no deer damage at all, thanks to the alarm. So I put one in on the unfenced north side, open to the orchard. It's fishing line strung low, with loops of tin cans propped up on buckets. When a deer (or a gardener) bumps the line, the cans fall and rattle.

The fenced sides got taller with sticks, string and plastic flags. 

No, it's not pretty, but if it works I'll prettify it. It's an emergency, dammit.

Conflicted

I hate these cheap ugly too-small vinyl windows, plus these were busted just before we moved in. They're in my studio. (You know, the room I use to store piles of my crap.) And I really want to create some order and get in there and make stuff.

I pulled out the four broken windows in this one. The cheap crappy things
seemed to be held together with chewing gum. Seriously.

The other unit has only three broken windows. Wahoo.

Peeling out the broken panes. Each one consists of an inner pane, an outer,
and a soft metal spacer. It's all held together with übersticky putty and double-stick tape.

I was going to rip 'em out of there, take out the white OSB, and fill the whole space with salvaged wood-frame windows, kinda like this: 

The Glass House from Houzz.com, and HalfCutTea.com

Yes, it's funky, but I like it. And it is reversible (ethical remodeler's rule: make only changes that can be undone. For instance, if you want to replace the lovely old original steel casement windows with cheesy vinyl, SAVE THE ORIGINAL WINDOWS. Not that I'm bitter).

I've got all kinds of miscellaneous windows, been collecting them for years. I know it'll take several weekends to rip out the ugly, then plan the layout and install everything… frame with wood, or get Tom to weld me a frame to hold it all together? So I don't know. I'm tempted to just pop glass into the broken holes and call it good. It'll still be ugly, but functional. It'd be a waste of new glass, though. And time. Might as well do it right, right? But it seems like self indulgence to spend so much time on my own art space. 

This is the reason I'm such a slow carpenter. The decisions kill me.

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One of the guineas (Tiny Wattles?) has decided to set. I got the eggs last night, and she pecked the crap out of me. C. has left her two eggs, marked with Xs, but everybody else lays in the same nest so you have to pull all the eggs out, look for the marks, and put hers back in – while she puts holes in the back of your hand. Guineas are generally terrible mothers, but she seems to be very competent. We don't especially want more noisy guineas but she sure does. We could deal with two more.

Annie and Izzy are kind of getting along. Annie only tried to kill her twice this weekend. Over food, of course. I like her. She's a goofball, and very sweet. I guess Em and Richard miss her and want her back, which is fine. She can come visit, though.

Izzy in the ox-eye daisies.

Annie has worn her toenails down to nubs digging after gophers in our rocky soil.

And the gophers have done some garden damage. C. found tunnels and dirt piles in the potatoes. She filled the tunnels back in, and tamped the ground down hard with the spud bar. All of her work was reversed the next day. She's getting pissed. Speaking of pissed, I left the chicken window unlocked and they had a great time digging up squash and asparagus plants. And something – a deer, we assume – has done some "pruning" in the lower garden. Half a dozen tomatoes, beans and sun chokes have been chomped pretty badly. 

Filling the tunnels up again.

Nibbled tomato plant.

But in good garden news, the maruba santoh green that C. planted is excellent. It grows quickly, and is delicious in a stir fry. We has some last night with cashews. Mmmm. And the non-heading broccoli is making huge leaves that the rabbits really like. C. picks them a giant bowl of greens twice a day. They get broccoli, spinach, chard, kale, maruba santoh, arugula, mustard, typhon, beet greens, leaf radishes and fun jen. And hay and alfalfa pellets. They are all silky and shiny.

A non-heading broccoli leaf. It's huge. C. watched Plumb Bob eat a whole one:
back and forth across the bottom, up and down the left side, the right side,
and finally, the stem all the way to the end. No, he didn't burp when he was done…
because rabbits can't burp. Or fart or vomit. Just a little bunny trivia for you.

Maruba santoh. The leafy bits are spinachy, and the stems are crispy.

I spend some time with the big animals, moving some fence to give them more grass, and scratching Savvy the sheep for a long time. 

I brought Azul a bouquet of alfalfa.

And he peed in his special pee spot. He and I share special moments.

The sun!

At last, the dreary rain is gone. The forecast is for 75 or higher for every day for the next week, a little too warm but I'm not going to complain. Yet.

Isabella, the other wiener dog, is visiting. It's really a test drive as Em hopes we'll decide to keep her. She isn't really housebroken. And she's spoiled. And manipulative. And as stubborn as any dachshund. Annie, our REAL dachshund, doesn't like her, and makes damn sure we maintain the petting/pecking order. So it seems unlikely we'll have seven dogs unless Izzy works hard at learning the rules (potty OUTSIDE, suck up to Annie). We'll see.

Rain, rain, rain

Another rainy day, very gray and wet. Nothing exciting to report. Overslept. Worked. Hauled a load of wet oak and maple prunings for the animals. Built a small fire in the stove to take the chill off. Baked potatoes in the oven and slathered them with cheddar and cottage cheese and butter: comfort food on a gray day.