Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Spring Me


Spring up here as I see it has three parts. The first is sugaring time when the snow begins to really melt, but the ground is still so cold and hard that the water from the snow just freezes to a thick layer of ice on the ground. Then comes mud season, when the ground breaks up, the geese pass over, the creek runs over its banks and for a few weeks the clay parts of our truck trail turn to a marvelous pudding consistency. And finally real Spring comes, with the overwhelming leafing out everywhere and the beginning of the year's procession of blossoms and bugs.
The sap has been running daily for a couple weeks. Our neighbors are collecting a horse trough full. I've been plugging windows into their holes a little at a time. We have all of the windows on the site. We collected them over about 5 years from renovation junk piles and from Habitat for Humanity's thrift store. There are about 5 new windows which came from a Weather Shield outlet store in Kingsford. You can spend a ton on windows, so Im grateful to have found a complete set of warm ones (hopefully) for about $2000.
I'm also grateful Mike Potts left his scaffolding at our house when they were done working in December. It would be terrific to get the exterior work done before he needs it, especially the work on the eaves.
I want to do open eaves. I just love the way they look. So the rafter tails need to be cut I think and then vents and rain gutters will need to be installed. All of these jobs would be crappy to do on the top of a ladder, so their moving to the top of the list.
One of my goals this week is to haul up materials for these projects so that when mud season breaks (which may not be for a couple weeks) I'll have materials enough to stay busy even if I have to walk in from the bridge.
I'll be out there Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday pretty much every week for a while. Some Saturdays too. In a month or two there'll be a party to assemble the ceiling in the dance room. It's going to be a giant basket made out of 8-inch wood strips.

Blog Archive