We Love Company!

Now, don't get us wrong. Most days, we do really, really well having only each other and Nick the Dog to talk to up here on Flat Top. But we DO love having company, and this weekend, we had our first "outsiders" visit since June.

Former co-workers Kathleen (see photo below) and Chris (that's headless Chris, above, in full relaxation mode, which I've never really seen him in before) added their names to the list of brave souls who have ventured to see what the hell we've done with our lives. It was great to catch up with all of the latest in the Twin Cities news media world, and even better to enjoy Kathleen's laugh and Chris' great sense of humor. Hilarious, these two! And in a bonus for Nick, they love dogs. Even one that begs for food a whole lot.

It was a busy (and beautiful, see that sunshine?) Saturday, with more weekenders up here than we've ever seen in one non-holiday weekend, and we were pleased that Chris and Kathleen got the full exposure to the Flat Top gunfire experience, including 50-caliber ka-BOOMS! in the not-too-distant distance. (It seems we have new neighbors: a Florida couple with toddlers who bought the cabin at the end of the road so they could come up and "shoot guns." Friendly folk!)

Any more of you Northerners dare the wilds (and the dirt road into Flat Top)? Come on, show us your adventurist spirit!

And as a final note .... the night before the Clontses arrived, Mason thought it was a good time to clean the firearms.

Me? I polished the silverware (or at least four knives, spoons and forks). I found that kinda funny, in a Southern "Garden and Gun" kind of way. (OK, maybe it's just me.)

P.S. Notice that super green new front lawn behind Mason in that photo?? That's mine!!

Back to Our Usual Antics

Summer is about over, more or less, so our month of piddling is over and we're back to work here on Flat Top, cutting down trees so we can install a solar panel to augment our own little power grid.  (Minneapolis friends, please note that it's still low-80s and terribly gorgeous here.)

Our tree-taking-down technique calls for a steel cable tied as high up as our 16-foot extension ladder lets us (or should I say, lets Mason). The other end is looped around another tree for directional leverage, then tied to the trusty (and rusty) old pickup. Insert chainsaw. The end result? Big tree go BOOM. Right across the road:

You can also see there some of our stockpile of firewood for the coming winter. That's right, this year we won't be scavenging the property in January for dead scraps to burn. At least, we hope we won't.

We've also been busy re-seeding the front "lawn," if you can call it that. That involved lots of roto-tillering, raking, backbreaking rock clearing, and then even more raking. We're finally down to the watering phase, which should bring little green sprouts in a week or so:

With that, we'll leave you with photos of our greatest loves: Nick the Dog and my slowly growing garden:

Love You Always, Dad

I'm taking a timeout today from our usual Tennessee mountain adventures to say probably a few too many words about my sweet, loved, dear old dad, Nick B. Williams Jr.

He died a couple of weeks ago, at age 75, after more than 10 years of that rotten-godawful-dreadful-demeaning-I-hate-it disease Alzheimer's. Our family -- my mom, sister and me -- have been mourning Dad for years now, ever since we had to turn to a nursing home for his daily care. I'm not going to lie; it was a miserable end to a wonderful life.

Dad was a newspaperman, the old-school kind with rolled-up oxford sleeves, inky fingers and an inclination toward alcohol to take the edge off of deadline stress. The best years of his life were spent chasing stories in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, living in Bangkok and Cyprus with an exotic collection of other ex-patriots. Dad's dad was a newspaperman, too, and sure enough, I followed both of them, at least for awhile.

When Dad wasn't at work, or thinking about work, he was in the garden, on the tennis court, or on the couch watching the Dodgers or Bruins. I sometimes tried to be the son he didn't have, playing football in the street, listening to the Dodgers while I helped in the yard. In high school, I'd stay up "late" and watch "Cheers" with him. Got my first sip of beer -- Coors -- when I went to watch him and his old buddy Eric Malnic hit the yellow fuzzy ball around the court.

Last week when I was in Texas with Mom, I spent hours going through old photos of him, putting together a photo album for his wake. It was good to be reminded of those so many good years. There was Dad playing host to our annual Kentucky Derby Day parties; Dad looking lovingly at Mom through the years; on the burning oilfields of Kuwait; in a field of burning marijuana plants in Thailand (rough job); and shaking hands with the Dali Lama; and -- even once Alzheimer's took hold -- dutifully walking his dog Will, who now dutifully watches over Mom.

Dad was charming and sweet, yet rascally if not dirty. I like to think I have his sense of humor, though Mom has a pretty good one, too. The first day he met my college boyfriend Mike -- later my husband -- he took him to Bangkok's infamous red light district and watched Mike squirm as mostly naked, underage girls sat on his lap. Dad? He just sipped his drink and smiled with that smirk of his. Those who knew him, you know that smirk.

I know this was weird, but I named my dog after my dad. I called Dad dad, not Nick, but I always loved that name: Nick. Manly but sweet. That was Dad.

We told Dad that I now I lived in the Tennessee mountains -- not too close, but not too far, from where his family had roots back in the 1800s -- but I'm not sure he really ever knew. Those later years were just so hard; you wanted to think there was still a glimmer of the man he used to be. Days before he died, a nurse checked in on him, and he said, "Still here." Who knows, but it sure sounded just like the witty Dad we knew all along.

Dad had a Southern heart, and always loved the stories of his family's heritage. And living here on Flat Top Mountain often reminds me of those stories. Digging in the dirt also reminds me of him. Not to mention throwing back a beer or two.

So I'll be thinking a lot about Dad here on the mountain. And if you made it this far into this blog post, thanks for listening a lot about Dad.

Singing the Septic Blues

I can think of no better time than in the dripping humidity of high summer to face the inevitable: Our septic "system" is a piece of ... yeah, I'm gonna say it: crap. 

About four days ago during our evening showers, a loud gurgle coming from the toilet and the kitchen sink gave us the telltale sign that something was amiss. Two days later, the gurgle stopped, and so did the flow. 

Rut-roh.

To keep the story as pleasant as possible, let's just say it boiled down (and yes, we were boiling) to five hours of digging -- 3 feet down, for about 25 feet, in packed soil -- and $15 worth of gravel to get us back in the flow. 

I must add that digging dirt out of a 3-foot-deep ditch requires Squats From Hell.  And Squats From Hell requires heavy breathing. And heavy breathing is the LAST thing you want to do during a septic system rebuild.

But now we're fairly confident that the system is good to go for at least another 18 months (from what we saw of the original and given the "upgrade" we installed, more like five years, sez Mason), and "Installing a New Septic System" has moved up higher on our never-ending project list. 

Needless to mention, no photo with this blog. Trust me on this one. 

July Is For Puttering

Halfway into July, we decided that the month would be dedicated to NO BIG PROJECTS!! Just puttering. A little gardening here, maybe some gutter installation there, and lots of reading. OK, some of you may think that gutter installation sounds like a big project, but not when Mason's on the job.

Helping us out has been rain, rain and more rain. Ever since we got that $%*#! Cow-on-a-Tractor rain gauge, we've been clocking an inch or two of the stuff a day, so we really don't know what "drought" everybody's talking about. Even our little nearby creeks, which usually dry up in summer, are running full steam. Today I even had to run-and-jump to get across one.

On the rainiest days, we did a lot of reading. Yup, even Mason, who pored through three novels in six days. Our highest recommendation goes to "City of Thieves," a WWII-era Russian buddy story that my hip friend Leslie sent me. We also consumed "Child 44," another Russian thriller, post-WWII, and I devoured a few books about living the country life. It got me all worked up about adding a chicken coop to our homestead. Stay tuned on that.

So on last week's trip into town, Home Depot had a bunch of shrubs on clearance, and I couldn't resist a wisteria vine, which I had planted and loved in our Minnesota garden. So, as soon as I got it home, Mason got energized to build a pergola on our fenced-in well-house/garden/generator storage area. We had planned to build the pergola about a year ago, so it was one of those smaller projects that we had left in mid-construction. But, in the past two days, we got much of the pergola completed (see photo).

The next big project is adding solar power. (That job will entail taking down MANY very large trees. We're hoping to not drop any of them on the house. ... This time.) But all this rain also has us talking about adding a French drain to help direct the rainwater runoff away from the cabin. Not sure which project we'll undertake first, but tomorrow we're going to build several little wooden "bridges" that will help the runoff find its way around my mulch pathways. For the record, "little wooden 'bridges' " qualify as a puttering project.

And also, for the record, I'm still LOVING my new kitchen! (And our very laid-back, no-worries mountaintop lifestyle.)

Aloha, y'all ...

Rainy Day Confession

I'm fancy myself a gardener, or at least a severe garden putterer. I can spend hours in the yard, pulling weeds, digging shredded leaves into the sandy soil, or just wandering about my plants, which I confess I talk to, and possibly treat better than family members. I check in on them daily, pamper them and worry about them. I know, it's pathetic. Just buy me a cat and call me Old Lady.

So I've done a fair amount of planting around the cabin, and after two weeks of nothing but 100-degree temps here, I was starting to get a bit concerned about our ability to keep everything alive.  We usually get a fair amount of rain, but the TV weatherman kept telling me Chattanooga was down 7 inches for the year. I couldn't believe it, because when it does rain up here on Flat Top, it's almost always a gully-washer. But then, after two weeks of Africa-hot heat (without even a fan to cool us), I started to think a bit too much about getting enough water for my garden. (Maybe blame it on not having a kitchen remodel to fret about?)

So I told Mason: Let's get a rain gauge so I can keep track of how much is falling up here. Oh man, just call us Old People.

Mason dutifully put it on The List. (We keep a serious list up here; we have to, because we only go to town once or twice a week, and lord knows our aging brains couldn't remember whether it was wasp spray we needed or cooking spray.)

Now, with the kitchen remodel finished, The List hasn't had much on it. Maybe that's why Mason seemed overly determined to fulfill the order. First we hit up the Tractor Supply store in Soddy-Daisy, but all there was to pick from was either a really boring plastic tube or a hideously kitschy cow-on-a-tractor gauge. It's on clearance, Mason said excitedly, as he picked up the mini-tractor. ("It's imported!" he mentioned, trying to close the deal and not have to stop at 14 more stores looking for a damn rain gauge. Me? "China does not count as 'imported.' ") I wanted something a bit more "cute" than a piece of plaster, but a cow on a tractor? Um, no way. So off to Home Depot. Nothing but the boring variety. Stockdale's. Nope.

So guess what now graces our upstairs deck railing? Yup. So, so sad. And sure enough, as soon as we brought home the hideous lawn kitsch, the heat broke and the skies fell open. Yesterday it rained nearly 3 inches, and today? Check out that photo (that's our real tractor in the background)! Four inches of rain by about 6 p.m., and it hasn't stopped falling since then. See what I mean? It's nothing but buckets up here.

Oh man, I just hope that smiling cow doesn't show up in a nightmare tonight.

Our Kitchen: Then and Now

OK, let's refresh our memories and take a look at what the kitchen looked like on the day we moved into our little cabin in the woods:

Oh dear. But really, how appropriate that our utility room door -- yes, that's a door -- had a sailboat/beach scene painted on it? Note all the water jugs (no running water at the time). That red tile table served as an "island" -- and the only real work surface. The cupboards were that cheap crappy oak-laminate stuff, warped on the outside and filled with mouse turds on the inside! Here's another angle in a shot taken about a month after moving in:

OK, are you ready for this??? Here's our kitchen today:

Yes, we're very happy. Looking at those photos, it's hard to believe it's the same room. The addition of the matching window over the stove was a winning idea, bringing in a lot more light. I'm also in love with the checkered floor. The other real game-changer was painting the ceiling (which I finished up just today in 98-degree heat and humidity).

OK, OK, the whole thing was a game-changer! Seriously, the new kitchen has transformed my ability to cook. (Tonight, I'm making babaganoosh!) and every day I smile when I see it. Sometimes I even hug that damn island. And I can't tell you how much I owe Mason for making it happen!!

OK, photos are better than words, so here are some more:

That last photo is Mason's ice tea urn, which I made sure would have it's own special place in the new kitchen. It's the least I could do, right?  (OK, he'd rather have it out on the counter, but ...) And that pantry!! It's culinary heaven. Mason pushed for the butcherblock countertops, and I'm glad he did.

Well, that's what we've been up to since about April, in between brewing beer and bottling beer and drinking beer. What's next, you ask? We're already researching our next project: installing solar panels. Step one is more tree removal. Lots and lots of trees. Hello winter firewood!