Bunkhouse Progress

Lord knows what she just ate. She spits out the toads,
but chomps the blue-striped lizards.

Solidly into our eighth year here on Flat Top Mountain, weeks fly by once again without anything that seems worthy of reporting.

The day Mason killed three copperheads within a matter of hours? Ho hum. (We haven’t seen any since, though the tally for the season is at eight.)

About 36"-40" deep so far. Jackhammer possibly to come.

The days I spent hours digging the hole for a new septic tank? (Didn’t we do that already? Yes, but this one’s for the bunkhouse.)

There are all of the adorable moments with Layla the Wonder Dog, but seriously, cute dog stories? Is that what this blog has come down to?

Layla the Wonder Dog.

You can see how Flat Top seems a bit mundane after so much time living in the backwoods.

But Wednesday? Wednesday is going to be pretty sweet, because Mason is on schedule to finish siding the new bunkhouse — the cedar shake siding that he started so long ago. But we’ll just brush over that fact. Let’s talk, instead, about how cute it is!

Mason: up and down, and up and down.

As I type this, I’m watching Mason climb down the ladder for about the 50th time today. There will be leg cramps tonight. He’s been on the porch roof all day, nailing those shingles up one at a time. He was the one who insisted on cedar shakes, thank goodness, because otherwise I’d be getting an earful.

We’ve been hitting it pretty hard for what feels like months now, working up until 7 p.m., when we finally call it quits with an ice-cold beer enjoyed on the porch of the bunkhouse. We rock in a pair of rocking chairs we scored from my sister, who scored them from my mother years earlier. We rock, and drink and watch the setting sun filter through all our trees and stretch across the back yard. When the last rays finally hit the farthest woodpile, we know we’ve lingered too long and that dinner will be late. But with summer in full sizzle, there’s really no hurry to return inside to the Big House. Without air conditioning or a decent breeze, it can still be over 80 degrees inside by 8 p.m., sometimes 9. 

As soon as those shingles are done, we should take a break. But we won’t. It’s time to start working on the inside of the bunkhouse. First up: Build the wall that sections off the bathroom from the main room. The shower will have a giant window that looks out onto the forest; you’re gonna love it! But it will be a while before we get around to building that part. After the wall comes more digging; this time it’s a long narrow trench from the wellhouse through my vegetable garden and out to the bunkhouse.  As we dig, we will bury propane and electrical lines to bring power and hot water to our future guests. 

See? Who wants to hear about all this digging in 90-degree heat and 90-percent humidity? B-O-R-I-N-G!

We do have one more bit of news, but I better save that for now, so I have something to write about again soon. 

Check out the floating air compressor!
It got elevated so the hose would reach the peak,
 which I can just now officially report is DONE!!

What's Blooming

Columbine are popping up everywhere.

Spring has arrived in full glory in the past few weeks, and in between bunkhouse building, beer brewing, landscape designing, working down at the nursery, tending to weeds and planting new plants, there's been too few hours to enjoy it all. But we do what we can, especially around the 7 p.m. cocktail hour. Enjoy....

Creeping Mazus, thank to Terry.

Dropmore Scarlett honeysuckle -- the hummingbirds love it.

Smokebush in the setting sun.

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Native Dwarf Crested Iris

Shasta Viburnum -- one of two, thanks to Craig Walker.

Meet Layla

We are three again.

Meet Layla, a good-looking girl who just melted our hearts with her big brown eyes when we stumbled across her on petfinder.com.

We had talked about waiting until spring for a new dog, but I made the big mistake of checking the local shelters’ websites. As my longtime friend Cindy said, “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

We first saw her photo on a Sunday night. She has Nick’s eyes. And she looked smart. Australian Shepherd was listed as her dominant breed; I’m partial to herding dogs. When I showed her photo to Mason, I was really just sharing a photo of a really good-looking dog. I didn’t expect his response.

“Let’s go get her.”

The shelter required a 4-page online application. As we filled it out that night, you would have thought we were applying to get into Harvard. Of course she would sleep inside, on her own bed. Of course we would train her. Kennel? Never!! We argued over how to best word all of our answers so they would know we were devoted dog people. 

The application submitted, we were now stuck in a waiting game. The shelter said it took 1-2 days to review an application. But Monday was New Year’s Eve, so the shelter was closed until noon Wednesday. For two days, we stared at her photos. I was convinced someone must have adopted her over the previous weekend. She was young, adorable and one of the few non-pit bulls available at the local shelters.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up and turned on the phone to stare at her photo again. But this time, it read “ADOPTED” under her photo. Heartbreak!! Mason moped all morning. I told him I’d call the shelter when it opened at noon just to see if they got our application and see if we might be “cleared” to adopt in the future.

The shelter worker put me on hold. She was confused, because she thought "our" dog was still available. What??? Yup, apparently someone had been approved to adopt her, but never showed up. Loser! SHE WAS STILL AVAILABLE!

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Mason was in the middle of bottling beer, and you know how important beer is in this household. It didn’t matter. We bolted out of the house and down the mountain to the shelter in record time. Thirty minutes more, and we had a dog!

She came into Chattanooga’s main shelter as a stray, so we know nothing about her history. They named her Layla, and adopted her out, but the family who took her quickly realized they didn’t have enough time for her, so back to the shelter she went. Then for some reason, she got moved over to this other, smaller, shelter and renamed Lucile.

Alas, she’s now back to Layla and she’s all ours, for almost two weeks now. She’s very smart, with good food motivation, so she has taken quickly to training and building trust/loyalty. But she also has a strong predator instinct, which adds challenges when you live, without fencing, among all sorts of wild animals, from squirrels to deer to bobcats.

She seems a bit more like a dog's dog than sweet, timid Nick. In one week, she's destroyed several toys that Nick had for a decade. Still, she seems new to toys, but we're thinking a Frisbee may be in our future.

As for Australian Shepherd, we’re doubtful. Australian Cattle Dog more likely. She’s got beefy legs and thick short hair. Eventually we will splurge on a DNA test for her. But, of course, it really doesn’t matter. She already has our hearts.

She’s just over a year old, so we have lots of good years ahead of us.