okra: Rewind

Well, I'm still working hard on the house and yard. The porch cover is completely painted, the railing is done, and the floor is painted. I just need to paint the base of the porch to match the floor. Despite all of the miserable painting, I really do like being outside. It's interesting to see what's going on in the neighborhood. We have great neighbors. Yesterday, it was very hot and our neighbor brought me a big cup of iced tea. I also borrowed his ladder to inspect and photograph our new roof, though he begged me not to fall off, haha. Luckily, I didn't. The roof was completed Friday. Though they didn't put down new tar paper as they had indicated. Fearing that other things had not been done, I had someone from another company come out and inspect the roof. They said that it looked good, despite a few minor problems. The owner of the roofing company we hired came out today, and he fixed the problems, so it think it is ok now. They also started on our gutters today. Though, the guy nearly was electrocuted when he dropped the old metal gutter on our security light, pulling out live wires. It tripped our circuit breaker. Thankfully, he didn't get shocked, or even seem to notice. At least we got a new security light out of it. The landscapers are supposed to come out this Friday. Soon the major ripping/reparining/general chaos should be over.

Here's my new green roof; the roof is the majority of the view from the window over the kitchen sink. It looks much better than the old dingy gray roof. I've gotten a lot of compliments from neighbors on the green color. The second picture was taken from the ladder this morning.

The roofers left a little flap just hanging there. I discovered that you can look right in under lower roof. They fixed that today. I'm very relieved; I could imagine all kinds of small animals moving in there.

I think that elementary school must be out for the summer now. The frequency of neighborhood kid visits has spiked. Today, a kid on rollerblades wanted to visit the chickens. Oddly enough, the chickens were quite interested in his skates; they were pecking at and investigating the wheels. He had a lot of interesting chicken observations, such as chickens have two legs and a funny red thing on their heads. Another, much younger, kid has been knocking on my door almost everyday demanding that I give him flower seeds. I gave him some marigold seeds to plant with his older sister last week, and he was very excited. Now he wants more, haha. He is probably about four or so. He has various creative explanations of why he needs more seeds.

My orchid is in full bloom now. I guess I did ok! I had been reading about orchid care and such. I still don't think I'm any expert, but the thing looks pretty good. Speaking of plant projects, my grandma gave me this Venus flytrap. I was reading about them, and man, they are picky. You can't even water it with tap water. It looks rather pitiful right now, but I have plans for a terrarium-like set up for it. Hopefully it will perk up.

I took some pictures of the chickens this morning. Well, I tried to anyway. They wouldn't hold still. Except when they were pecking at my clogs. They love those.

The chicks were running away from the camera, irritated by the little focusing beeps and lens adjusting mechanical sounds. I got a lot of chicken butt shots. I am so not posting those. I did get a good shot of Frieda perching on a concrete block. Her feathers have almost re-grown; she lost nearly all of them on her back this winter and had to visit the vet.

On a sadder note, I took these pictures of the baby birds that were in the flowerpot on our front porch. A few days after I took photos, I noticed it was eerily quiet, no parent birds flying around, no baby birds sticking their heads up to be fed. I looked in the nest and it was empty. I think that the little guys were eaten up by something larger. I suppose that's just the way it goes, but I was pretty sad. I miss the little buggers.