Monday, July 19, 2010

Put a tick in that box

the steps are not dirty.....they are WET.....if you look just thru the crap apple tree to the right you can just see a part of the puddle that is in the lawn!!!

well......after a few days of kneeling on my little foam pad, cutting bricks, my project is complete.....another box ticked off, and I"m pretty happy with the results. I have plans to start on some castle stone raised shrub/flower beds around the house, but it has to really DRY up to start that project! Those blocks are heavy and they will need a good dry base to start with. First tho the lattice has to go back on around the deck, and there's some work on the barn that needs to be done.......maybe we'll get lucky and some of the lakes in the hay fields will dry up so we can get some haying done. Oh what a year its been!

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Projects

part of the bricks set in place
Getting started
preparing the bed
ick!! the right side full of weeds!
I've been busy and haven't posted anything for a while, so thought I'd better get with it! The rain, and mosquitoes have made working dogs most unenjoyable, and I've become kind of a princess about the mosquitoes, so I've been working on other projects. First off, I've been on the hunt for some new sheep. I've had my little band of "mutt" sheep for 5 years now and used them only for dog sheep, I haven't bred a ewe since we moved to Alberta. I really miss having good sheep around and I like lambing time, so I've decided to sell most of my sheep......I'll keep the better Barbados ones and sell the rest. I wanted to buy some Katahdin ewe lambs, but WOW, finding some good ewe lambs this year was proving difficult! I finally did find some that I will be picking up in mid/late August. That will give me time to thin out my flock here and get ready for the new ones!

I also decided that the flower beds on either side of the sidewalk that leads from the driveway area to the house needed refurbishing. I use the term "flowerbeds" loosely, as with 6 dogs roaming back and forth across the sidewalk, flowers would never survive there, so I never planted any :o) and container flowers are more my style! :) I've decided to brick in the beds, making a brick border on either side of the sidewalk. Its coming along, I'm almost done laying bricks on one side, and when its finished I"ll have to sweep sand into the cracks between the bricks. It would be really nice if the dimensions of the bed would let me lay full bricks, but of course that isn't the case, so I have to do a lot of cutting.......sure slows up the project!! Anyway, I think it'll look nice when I'm done :)

The next project on the board, is to do some major repairs to the barn.......that will have to be done before the snow flies!

I'll post some pictures of the finished project when I'm done!