Bikers arrive

…but not big bearded guys in black leather riding Harleys. More like, two energetic young friends of ours riding their bikes from Seattle to Denver. Yes, you heard that right. What an adventure! To give themselves a break, Danny and Robyn decided to vacation for a spell with us.

It’s fun to see what we do through other people’s eyes. Yeah, I like weeding, but to visitors our garden work is a whole lot of fun. Or at least, it must be, because they spent DAYS weeding the beds and paths of our vegetable plot. A huge help to us, and fresh air and good time for them. They also wanted a piece of the construction action, so we were happy to provide that opportunity to them. Here we see them destroying the last of the walls that need to be removed, in order to get rid of the LAST piece of dry rot in the structure. At least I hope it’s the last- I don’t think there are any parts of the building left that I haven’t seen. So, congratulations Danny and Robyn, you are the 15th and 16th friend and family member to become a part of our building community. 🙂

We had a work party on Saturday, and even my parents helped out. Did I mention that they are in town? It made me really happy- when we were fist looking at the project last summer, they were the source of the most resistance amongst our friends and family. Everyone else was positive and excited for us, but they were pretty negative about the idea. Even at the time, I realized that it is their self-appointed job to worry about the sorts of trouble I can get myself into. And, as my dad pointed out, “it’s a lot of work.” But these are the sorts of things that get me up in the morning. And you have to do the things that get you up in the morning. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Well, I’m pleased to announce that they now seem pretty pleased with the whole thing. Rather than seeing the immense mountain of work that remains, they too are now able to see into the future, and visualize what could be. We took sandwiches out and they spent an afternoon helping me out, a thing that in some ways made me feel more complete. Despite his lack of wind due to worsening lung capacity, Dad ran the DR mower. He has worked out a system where he takes breaks as needed, and we made sure he had a comfy seat in the shade.

Emily got busy with the weedwacker, which is a tall order on this piece of property at this time of year. Everything is full-on rain forest right now, lush and big and green. This means that the weeds explode when you hit them- check out the spray of chlorophyll and cellulose surrounding Emily! For the first part of this, my mom was sitting on a chair on the deck, reading.

This is my fault, due to a preconceived notion that she would prefer that to sweating in the sun and doing a lot of work. After a few minutes of that, though, she came inside where I was pulling out out fiberglass insulation, and asked if there was a second machete. It seems that Emily had moved on to the thicker weeds, and was mowing them as we do in Guatemala- and Mom didn’t want to be left out. As luck (?) would have it, I had two more in the cabin, so she went to work. How could I have doubted? After all, she DID survive the journey all the way to our village in Guatemala!  Here we see the two ladies in the midst of a garden mêlée. Note Mom’s shirt reads “∏rate”.  Yarr, indeed!

On a side note, as I was removing some of the last of the insulation, I found another funny archaeological artifact. Here’s a cool looking face that was drawn on the side of one of the rafters. I think it is a genie, who has been watching over the house for almost three decades. That has to be it, otherwise it surely would have been destroyed by the big storm in 2007, or a forest fire, or SOMETHING. Who drew him? Why? These things make my mind go wild with imagination.