Private Balloon Festival

The Thursday before the local balloon festival we had our own private preview. From what we could see, the balloon took off and landed in the field below our house. A balloon ride is still on my bucket list.

Memorial Day 2011

Just a few pictures of Mia-the-photogenic-cat and one of birds attacking each other over the pond.

Skunk kits

These are our new neighbors. I have yet to see the mom, but there are 4 or 5 kits.

Arbor & Gate Part II

 One arbor/gate down... one to go. But first, I need to move that rock wall out of the way.

 Andrew's Christmas gift, a pickax, on her maiden voyage.

 As an Industrial Engineer, I should have know probability was going to catch up with us at some point. It was the eighth out of eight posts that we hit a rock.

 Trouble smashed the crocuses on her way to the catnip.

 Sorry for the detour, but I had to capture the last one still standing.

 Finally, someone took a picture of me! I look like such a professional in my mechanics' gloves.

 This is as far as we got on Saturday.

 I took the wall apart while Andrew rebuilt it.

 We made one trip to the  town highway department to get some compost to fill in the newly expanded garden. We'll have to make another trip to fill in the rest.

 Here's the mostly finished product. In addition to another load of compost, we need six more boards for the sides of the front arbor.

Time to plant some morning glories and clematis.

Arbor & Gate Part I

 I wanted to capture the "before" images before we got too far.

 Can you find the cat in this picture?

 Andrew used many of his power tools. What a great project!

 I don't know where we'd be without our 6' level.

 Can you find the cat in this picture?

 The inspiration for this project came form This Old House magazine. We skipped the bench and added our own gate design instead.

 This was as far as we made it on Sunday.

  Preview of what it will look like. (The gate is just resting on the arbor.)

 During the week we finished the final touches.

Frosted

It sounded like the world was ending the night before, but I guess we'll let it slide based on the view the next day. What the pictures don't capture is the sound of the billions of miniature icicles clicking against each other.