It’s a good thing farts aren’t photographicable. At least not this far south and not in the summer. I heard tale of visible fartage in the cold of winter, and so I think that with enough practice and a bit of luck, a fart could indeed be photographed.

Today we drove down Alleghany Spring Road, a narrow and windy road (which says a lot around here), to go get our most recent craigslist find. We bought half a dozen or so locust posts. They started out being around 16 feet long, but Andy took a chainsaw to them and cut them in half so we could get them in the truck without it tipping over backwards from the weight. Even if they hadn’t been so so heavy, they may very well have not made it around some of those curves on the way home.

The original owner of the posts lives on a small farm with about a dozen horses, two small dogs, a doberman, and cranky cat. Anya wasn’t real sure of what to make of the dogs, especially the doberman, whose head was above my waist. He was a nice puppy, but I think he scared her a wee little bit. Anya also got to met several of the horses (neighhhhh neiiighhhh!). One of the horses tried to pull my gloves out of my back pocket, one of them nibbled on my finger, and all of them almost sniffed us up into their ginormous noses. Too bad we didn’t have the camera.

So what are we gonna do with these posts? They are about 8″ x 8″. Some of them are going to become Anya’s sandbox (whenever we clear out the brush pile that is where I’d like the box to go). The rest are going to be a raised bed, either for my pathetic raspberry patch or for veggies or something somewhere.

We’ve been working on a lot of projects the last few months. I think a list is in order. We …

– finished the terracey garden bed behind the house
– planted tomatoes, basil, sage, dill, rosemary, and lavender behind the house
– pruned most of the trees in “the yard”
– planted a fantastic-smelling viburnum by the duck house
– worked on the rock border by the driveway and planted a verbena there
– started to clean up the lilac and spice bush bed on the side of the house, pruned the spice bush but didn’t get to the lilac because the rams got loose and wanted to eat me
– have kept “the yard” mowed
– cleaned off the porch and planted and hung some baskets back there to make it feel homey
– deconstructed the big bunny cage and put the bunnies out on the porch until their room is finished
– cleaned out the sun room so Andy has an office area and Anya has an area to bounce balls and run in circles
– got the roof up and a bunch of the trim down on the kitty / plant room
– packed up and moved out a bunch of stuff in Anya’s room
– have kept the garden weeded and watered

I think that covers the main things. We have lots of projects for the summer, like putting new gravel on the driveway, getting the septic tank drained, chipping the huge pile of brush, building that sandbox and those raised beds, and finishing the kitty / plant rooms. Anyone who is bored is welcome to come out and do some work.