Settling In–Projects At The Cabin

I can’t believe that we have been home 3 weeks! It seems like both forever and no time at all! Time is different ‘on the road’ where every few days you are discovering a new place. Over the course of a week, we might have traveled 500 miles or so and seen so many new places and things. It makes a week seems so significant. Here at home, we move to a different pace.

Our days have a rhythm that shapes the week. We are early risers and often sit on the porch swing and sip our coffee while watching the day begin.

It is a ‘magic’ time where you might see any number of creatures……

It is also the time that, inevitably, our minds wander over each of the kids…..How they are, what they are doing, how blessed we are to have each of them (and now our sons and daughter-in-law) enriching our lives. Our ‘coffee time’ is a ritual that we try never to skip!

7 AM sees us heading to the gym Mon – Fri. Home about 9 AM, breakfast, then on to the days activities.

Fred’s first job had been to cut up the oak tree which had fallen over. This is in the area just past the fire ring.

So much good firewood!

Which brings us to Fred’s next project….a wood rack. Stacking the wood on the ground leads to rot and waste of the bottom row. This wood rack, built down the hill at the edge of the woods, will keep the logs off the ground and will have a roof over it to keep the rain out. It is great to have a 4 wheel drive truck which will make it up and down the hill. Fred just loaded the lumber and drove it down, then loaded up his tools (generator and all) and used the truck for a work station. Nifty!

I stayed busy with planting projects…..Pansies in pots…..

Azaleas in the front flower bed to replace those that had not survived the Summer, And ‘Cast Iron’ plants along the back of the cabin. These are shade tolerant and draught resistant…….tough as cast iron. I’ll see if they can survive me….

Fred took it on himself to weed out the garden - it needed it! He planted several rows of cool weather greens – lettuce, spinach, etc. Here, we can grow cool whether crops almost all winter. We REALLY missed having a garden…..

We also decided to move forward on a project that we had been thinking about for several years…..adding a carport along the west side of the cabin. We measured and laid out the ‘outline’, then moved the cars into position to better visualize this addition.

This project would first start with putting in a retaining wall and bringing in quite a bit of fill dirt to create a parking pad. This is the part of the project where we would both get ‘stuck’, but we found someone to come out and work up an estimate for us. We’ll see how it goes….

And, not to forget the Airstream…..

We finished unloading everything, and cleaned out the ENTIRE inside. I wiped out cabinets and drawers and wiped down the walls. Dust had gotten EVERYWHERE from driving on those gravel roads. Fred washed the whole outside….roof and all…..now it sparkles. We have a few repairs to tend to, and new tires to get before we take it back out on the road. For now, though, it is content to just sit and settle in…..