Jack - Update

Our future Jack-O Lantern is now about 8 inches in diameter and is looking like a real pumpkin now. The vine still looks healthy, so I expect him to keep getting bigger.

Floor Project

Thirty or forty years ago someone put oak strip flooring in most of the rooms at the Tower House, over the original floorboards. The floors were finished, but then some time in the past they were stripped and left unfinished - I have no idea why. Now the wood is discolored and has paint splotches from the last awful interior paint job the house received, as the first photo of the upstairs back hall shows.

I am taking up the oak in the downstairs rooms but we decided to leave it upstairs. A couple of weeks ago I sanded the bedroom floors. Now I have stained and shellacked the front bedroom floor - second photo. This work is tedious but I sure like the result.

Dig This!

Things were humming at the Tower House on Wednesday. I had two skilled crews doing work that day that was beyond my humble skills (and horsepower). I like to do almost all the house renovating work myself, but sometimes it makes sense to call in experts.

One crew took out a tree that had plugged up the septic tank discharge, and will be back in a few weeks to lay in a new drainfield. The other replaced our well pump, which was fried by a lightning strike a few weeks back. While they worked outside, I was refinishing bedroom floors - but that's for another post.

Since I took these pictures I insulated the pump and buttoned up the well pit, and Lee Ann and I have already cut up a lot of the tree. With any luck, we won't have any "water in" or "water out" issues for many years.

One Egg - No Basket

All summer we have watched the pumpkin vines that sprang from last year's Halloween pumpkin snake all over the back yard. For weeks we have patiently waited for pumpkin fruit to begin forming. Now - success! We have ONE pumpkin on the vine. I had almost given up, thinking that we had an infertile hybrid or something.

This little guy is about the size of a baseball. Any size bigger than a muskmelon by the end of October will suit my purpose, but I'm not counting my Jack-o-lanterns yet. Typically our vine crops are polished off by boring insects just about the time whatever they are producing nears maturity (the downside of organic gardening!), so Jack may never make it to usable girth. But since optimism is just as cheap as pessimism, and more fun, I am dreaming of a BIG result.

Last First Day Of School Picture

This was Annie on Wednesday, headed off to school.

Wonder Girl

After a long, hard summer, Annie starts school tomorrow. It will be the first day of her senior year, and it's just like they say - kids grow up so fast! One moment she's a tiny little baby some nurse hands to me at the hospital, so I can carry her swaddled form down the hall for cleanup and first weigh-in. Then, in the blink of an eye, she is seventeen, fiercely intelligent, principled beyond her years, and working three jobs to sock it away for the college expenses that loom just ahead.

Good luck, Annie. I hope you have a wonderful last year of high school.

Unleash The...Frogs!

Lee Ann has been very happy with her pond. It has attracted birds and dragonflies and the deer drink out of it, so it has become a feature of the local natural world. Still, there was something missing - frogs. Every pond should have them, right? The pond has been in place well over a year, and we were sorta hoping frogs might just show up on their own. Finally Lee Ann had to force Mother Nature's hand a bit - she frognapped a couple of likely specimens from a puddle at the barn and we had the release yesterday. Live free, little frogs.