Nine Years on Flat Top

The bunkhouse as of Jan. 14. Yup, still under construction.

Yes, we’re alive. No, we haven’t fallen victim to wayward chainsaws, hungry bobcats or angry Trump supporters. Yet.

We’re still here in the woods, staring at the calendar in disbelief that it was nine years ago today that we pulled our U-Haul up to this pile of sticks and called it home. We reminisce about those early days often. Living with no running water. Chipping ice off the rain barrel so we could get enough water to flush the toilet. Sleeping in a winter cap. Choking on the fumes of the fire-trap woodstove.

We had some new Chattanooga friends come up the other day. I felt compelled to show them the “before” photos, so they could see how great this place really is, compared with what it was. After the years, I fear we’ve lost some perspective. It IS great, right? Because it looks a little rough around the edges again after nine years. 

I posted our biggest news of last year on Facebook, then never got around to posting it here: We’ve doubled our property from five to 10 acres. Neighbors put their 5 acres up for sale, and while we didn’t pine for a larger hunk of land, we didn’t want anyone else to move in so close to us.  And we love that this new land comes with a creek most months of the year, especially with the crazy amount of rain that’s been falling here. More than 66 inches last year!

The bunkhouse will have its own water supply, or at least 165 gallons.

The bunkhouse project has dragged into its second year. After the distractions of December, we’re back on the job. Mason got to wedge himself in the narrow crawlspace, installing all the drain piping, which now await the rental of some heavy machinery so we can finish digging the septic tank pit that I started by hand this summer. The past week Mason’s had more comfortable working conditions, manning the blow torch to run the copper water pipes. Yes, he’s heard of Pex, but he’s old-school.

Mason had to create a water system for the bunkhouse, and its first test this week found two leaks and the realization that the pressurization pump needs a check valve. Only two leaks? Not bad! Besides, he can fix it. Two steps forward, one step back.

As lead painter, I’ve been occupied slapping stain onto the bunkhouse’s cedar shakes. Boring, but at least the unusually warm winter weather has made the job more pleasant. Before staining, I was on rock duty. With Mason's help, we hauled a bunch up from the new property, and I spent a day lining them up  along the path to the bunkhouse.

Estimates for bunkhouse completion remain a little fuzzy. We’re thinking possibly by this summer, but it just depends on the bank account and our backs. Spring gets a bit busy around here, adding new plants, restarting the veggie garden and picking up shifts down at the garden nursery. But we’re hoping to at least have the bathroom operational by then; a second bathroom on the property will feel like progress. We set the bar low around here.

As for low bars, let’s see if I can do a bit better by this blog this year, because it appears a few people actually do look at it now and then.

We saw a dusting in December, but for the most part,
the temps have been unseasonably warm.

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.

Add caption

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.

Our Itty Bitty Bunkhouse

We had to make a temporary pathway out of plastic.
It's muddy out there. (Until I get all those new plants in!)
We also have to build a small bridge along the path.

We’re all bunkhouse, all the time! Unless it’s too wet, or too cold, or the bank account is empty that week — all three of which occur frequently. 

Of course, we usually don’t get started until after 11 a.m., because we’re “retired” and really enjoy our morning ritual of lapping up the (awful) news and a hearty breakfast. 

And of course, we have to stop working by 5:30 p.m., because it’s dark.

Still, we’ve made major progress. The walls are all up. The windows are all framed. Some were even framed twice, because we built them wrong the first time. (Hey, it’s been a while since Mason played carpenter, and I’m just the fetch-and-hold helper on this job.) It all worked out in the end, because when we rebuilt them, I changed my mind on exactly how many and how big I wanted them. Luckily these change orders only cost me some verbal harassment from the job boss.

Reframing windows: These are two huge windows that will look out over our woods.
A wood stove will sit in between them in the corner.

The next few days, if this rain ever stops, will be our greatest challenge: raising the roof. The cabin will have an open cathedral roof, which sounds complicated but it’s a really small cabin, so it should be manageable. Mason already has a Rube Goldberg-like plan that I’m certain is fully baked.

The 8-foot window view from the built-in couch/daybed,
assuming we build it as planned.

All of this has proved good therapy, filling our minds and hours that used to be dedicated to Nick. Every time we’re in town and see a cute dog, we get sentimental for everything that a good dog provides. 

But for now, our minds are on that bunkhouse roof. Gotta get her dried in.

Rejected Xmas Photo 1

Rejected Xmas Photo 2

Nick, 2004-2018

Nick The Dog. He was loved.

Five days ago we said goodbye to Nick, our dog and best friend for almost 13 years. 

He was maybe 2 when we rescued him. We drove more than 2 hours from Minneapolis to a shelter in Amery, Wis., in pursuit of a dog with border collie in him. I had shared a life with a border collie mutt years before and was won over by their intelligence. But when we met Nick, he was extremely timid, so much so that I didn't want him. He seemed joyless. He didn't play. He was shelter-shocked.

That afternoon, we left him behind at the shelter. Driving back to the Twin Cities, Mason and I argued. He wanted this dog, originally named Sailor. It seemed fitting, since sailing had figured prominently in our former life. After 10 minutes of arguing, Mason turned the truck around, and Sailor came home with us. He soon became Nick, named after my father, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a couple of years before.

Soon after we adopted Nick, I got to talk with the man who had surrendered him. He'd rescued Sailor/Nick from a bad situation. Someone had been keeping him in a baby playpen where he couldn't stand upright, and was trying to sell him off as a pure-bred border collie.

Nick was clearly scarred from those times. He was skittish and very slow to meet new people and dogs. He barked at all children and tried to herd them. He barked at and nipped mailmen; he ran from blimps. 

Eventually, we taught him to play, though never as much as a typical border collie. But Nick was absolutely devoted to us. Mason may have been his favorite (table scraps, treats and more table scraps), but I know he loved us both. And we loved him.

In Minnesota, we'd walk to a nearby park every day,
 and Nick loved to swing with Mason.

For the past year or more, Nick declined with dementia, failing hips and eventually kidney disease. First, he couldn't get on the couch any more, then, we had to block him from climbing our treacherous spiral staircase. One too many times, he had fallen down them in the middle of the night. 

We struggled with the decision over when to let him go. It should be a struggle, right? We both support assisted suicide, but it shouldn’t be too easy.

Five days ago, a very friendly horse veterinarian came to our house, unphased by 2.5 miles of rough dirt road. Nick had been napping in his bed on the living room floor. We showered him with treats and kisses, and watched him die. It was hard, but also a relief.

For five days now, we have struggled to adjust. It will take more time. He’s buried across the road in what we call "The Meadow,” where we feed the deer. Mason built one hell of a coffin for him. We buried him with his bed, favorite toy and the U.S. Postal Service card that warned of a "dangerous dog" at our address in Minnesota. We can see him from our bedroom, and from the kitchen window. 

Thank you, Nick, for making our lives so much richer. We will miss you forever.

Still Kicking

Too old to stand, but not to eat!

Look at him go, folks! He may be thick with dementia and thin with kidney disease, but Nick’s appetite has yet to fail. So yes, he’s still hanging in there. 

Sorry for the long lapse of time since the last post. Every day begins with the thought, “Will this be his last day?” so it’s kinda been a long summer. He particularly likes to take a turn for the worse on Fridays, when he knows it’ll be harder to get the vet to drive up the mountain.

Twice he’s gone missing. One time, in the dark of night, after searching for him for a good 45 minutes, we found him close to a half-mile down the road, past the cabin behind us. He had walked past the end of the road and into the woods, down an embankment, and his hips collapsed and he couldn’t get up. Luckily he yelped a few times and Mason heard him. We’re incredibly lucky we found him before a coyote did. (We'd heard them yapping about 30 minutes earlier.) Since then, he doesn’t get too much unsupervised time outdoors.

He sleeps most the day, then paces the house at night. The kitchen floor is too slick for his wobbly hips, so we’ve put up a couple strips of blue painter’s tape, keeping him out. We sleep with pillows over our heads to drown out the click, click, click of his nails on the wood floor.

Oh dear, this is all more than you want to hear. But I must confess that it’s been a bit all-consuming.

Other news? The biggest update comes from Mason, who has begun digging and setting piers for the bunkhouse. Next week we order lumber from the lumber yard, so that’s incredibly exciting.

"Mortgage Lifter" tomatoes were prolific.

I’m back working at the garden nursery on weekends until November, designing yards and dragging hoses around. I do that at home, too. That bean arch Mason built me? Big success. Several of the tomato plants were 8-feet-tall. The potatoes are all ready to be pulled from the ground all winter. The pesto is in the freezer, ready for winter, too. I still have to cure the sweet potatoes and roast the peanuts.

We’re definitely ready for the cooler fall temps. 

We are never ready for winter. (Well, all the firewood has been laid in since Spring, so we've got that going for us.) 

Beans hanging from the bean arch.

The bean arch.