Dear Joie & Fitz

Hello! And greetings from Montrose! We’ve made it back to our little house on wheels, but wanted to give you the low-down on our wonderful three weeks at The Cabin.
But you knew it’d be grand, didn’t you? We had enough picture perfect Vermont days to cancel out the cool and rainy ones, and most of the other days , while maybe not crystal clear, but were winners nonetheless! We were blessed with lots of company – a sweet youngster (21!) that we met on a SOWER project , my college roommate & hubby, friends from when our kids were small who now live in VT (who we even put to work), cousins from Gary’s side, SOWER friends who came for a mid-week weekend, and a wonderful day with all of our Vermont family.

But all of our wonderful company aside, I bet you’re wondering what Gary was up to. Right? Well, as usual, he kept himself plenty busy! One of his first projects was to build a deck around the well and pump. I know it doesn’t get as much use as back in the day when we’d be hand pumping water into buckets, but he wanted to make it safer for those times when folks ARE down at the well.
Here’s the before –

During

and After

Looks great, doesn’t it?
Then there was the outhouse door. We brought this door up about 5 years ago, and it seemed like it was time to get it installed. Of course, it wasn’t the same size as the original door, so some adjustments were necessary. =)
Before

During

After

(Look – a real doorknob!!)
After he got those two projects done, he moved to building birdhouses. Remember how he asked if he could build some birdhouses a couple of years ago? Well, the factory was opened this year!

Eleven birhouses, one bat box and one owl house later…..

If they are all occupied next spring, we’ll have quite a neighborhood!
Hanging the owl house and bat box was a bit more of a challenge –

and I was definitely honing my ladder holding skills! So all are hung – and time will tell!
Oh – remember how I was telling you that our neighbors down the hill came up and were fishing in the pond? Well, I’m pretty sure that this guy (who was quite the regular visitor) will not pay any attention to whatever sign we might put up to discourage non-cabin folk Â from fishing.

So what was I doing while Gary was busy with his projects? Well, I worked mostly on the inside – organizing some cupboards (and the games!), dusting away cobwebs and then dusting them away the next day. I got some reading done – and some writing too! Oh, and I washed those little mice over the papertowel rack.

Taking care of the important stuff – that was what I was all about. Of course, I needed to always be available to hold a ladder or steady a board for my man too! 🙂

You know I was also taking random pictures – sometimes just to delay getting some other chore done. Like the time I looked outside and saw the perfect ‘golden hour’ one afternoon.

That was a great distraction from the newsletter I was working on!

And then there were the sunsets –

(Just a representative one here – the slow internet tonight is making me a bit crazy as I’m trying to do this!!!)

You know we are often here this time of year, but it seemed that THIS year we could really see (and feel) the beginning of Fall. It was like September 1st hit, and BAM – Fall was in the air. It’s a bit subtle, but here’s a shot of the valley on one of our first mornings

and then a similar shot from our last Sunday –

Yep, Fall is on its way!

Well, I better call it a day and wrap this note up. I caught up on the laundry today and got our vacation stuff unpacked (more or less!). Tomorrow we head west for a couple of days with the kids and grands in Ohio before we head on to Texas. I have to say – ending our time east with a nice long stretch at the cabin filled with family and friends (and maybe a bit of work but lots of naps too) was a perfect ending to a lovely summer.