Water!!

First, a blue bird update. The baby birds were raised to flying size by their very attentive parents and have flown away. We were so happy that it worked out so well.

We flew back to Lahaska, PA to attend memorial services for Chris' mother and spend time with family. It was a wonderful trip with many rewarding moments and a very fitting tribute to Bet ... the immediate family scattered a portion of her ashes on the farm under one of the many trees she rescued from suffocating vines in her beloved woods. The rest of her ashes will be buried at Arlington Cemetery in Washington DC later in the fall with her first husband, Admiral Leydon.

Before our trip we went to witness a timber raising up past Kenosha Pass. Our own timber raising will be in August if all goes as planned. It was up in the high country and very, very cold (we were all in summer clothes, of course). On the ride back we drove through a snow/sleet storm and marveled at the snow on the ground considering that this is July.

WATER!! We have water!! The well was drilled last year and we were told there was water down there, but now we have a temporary setup so we can actually turn on a hose and get at the wet stuff whenever we want. This is BIG.

Work is progressing, slowly it seems ... everything takes a long time because there is so much laborious handwork. Water proofing is applied to the basement walls prior to the soil being back filled ... Chris and I spent hours removing excess foam and other debris from the walls so the tacky sheets would stick.