fishing trees

The calendar has announced that it is officially fall. Today I witnessed the foreshadowing of winter to come and spring to follow.

We have a sick cat. She did not move much through several days of antibiotic treatment. Today she got up and sat in front of a mole hole most of the day. She seems to have the heart of an ice fisherman. No matter the conditions, she has set up her shanty and is willing to wait for the big catch.

I take a midday drive on a regular basis. Sometimes it is a waste of time, but most of the time I return home with a sleeping child. I like to drive up to the north and look at our house from a distance. It was so nice and sunny today I lost my sense of season while looking at a tree whose leaves had wilted to a pale spring green.

The upstairs floor system is in place. It is an amazing grid-work put together above sheetrock and on top of the beams. The subfloor will be completed after plumbing and electricity are in place. The big excitement came at the end of this week when the excavator showed up to work on the septic system. Getting our septic done is a big step towards moving in. I think we will be able to winter inside our house, but I expect I will still have house building news to report when the fishermen cut holes in the ice and later when the spring green appears on the trees.

buzzing sounds pushing progress

It seems we have worker bees now. The fully enclosed house without windows feels like a bee hive. Standing outside I cannot see that anything is going on, though I can hear the warning sound of buzzing (actually it's a saw being used for joinery). It is unusual for bees to use hammers and chisels to build the hive, but I am sure if they had the ability they would (of course if we could build perfectly formed houses of wax with our bodies we would probably be done by now). Timber frame work with its steady focused pace picked up again this week to create a floor system for the second story and at the same time an amazingly beautiful ceiling for the first story. Tilt, Dad and Dale are putting the joinery together then hoisting the heavy beams up into the air with a pulley system to finish the work. As it is going, every day another section is done. By the end of the week we should have a floor system ready for a floor!

I am feeling a bit pushy about things. Last week I asked for a door frame to be moved and Tilt did it. It was the office door and its trim was set to be very close to the brace of the timber frame. Aesthetically, I didn't like it and functionally I felt we'd have more space inside the tiny office if the door was more to one side. This week I am pushing to have the door to the basement stairs pushed back a bit to leave a larger opening to the stairs to the second story. In designing the house we underestimated the impact of the post in this walkway. It turned out to be quite narrow. I am again pushing both on aesthetic quality and on function. In my few years working in Occupational Therapy I went to many homes to evaluate how a patient could function in their home. Tight walkways are not helpful. Okay, so that being my snotty know-it-all argument with minor credentials to back it up, we only gain about an inch of space physically, but I think visually it will look like much more.

At the start of this project, I told Tilt I would be his toughest customer yet and I think it is proving to be true. Fortunately as I have said before, Tilt is a director. He continues to focus on keeping the show moving while delegating his vision, listening to others argue their point, always keeping the whole picture in mind, making changes when necessary, and not changing or accommodating if he really doesn't want to. So although I feel pushy I know he will not bend like a birch in heavy snow unless the timing is right and it fits the show. Though my eye is focused on this flaw right now, I am sure I can live with it however it turns out. I must be patient though, for now the focus is finishing the floor system.

I sit and listen

the bees busily buzzing

now I crave

honey in my tea