Roofing

Phil's stakeout yielded nothing. He had connected the chicken netting to the perimeter fence, so it was putting out several times the shock. It could be that the predator decided a meal wasn't worth the risk. In any case, Phil stayed up very late, then slept on a mat in a sleeping bag in the back of the truck, ready with spotlight and gun.

We found a suspicious track near the building. Was it a coyote? Or just one of the dogs? We don't know, and even our book of tracks didn't help us much (except we know it's not bear, so that is nice).

In any case, tonight he's sleeping inside. The boys had a good time playing with his outdoor sleeping pad.

The boys and I, after a three week hiatus, resumed schoolwork. I think they were glad to be back (at least on some level). They headed up to ride the lift with Phil afterwards, and there was noticeably fewer spats than the last few days.

Isaiah saw me taking a photo of Joe, and he said, "Wait! I'll be a second head!" So here is Isaiah, attempting to look like a second head, sprouted from Joe's neck. I don't remember trying to take such photos when I was child.

I have probably told this before, but Joe remembered his joke this weekend, and repeated it for me. "If a bee landed on stinging nettle, the nettle would sting him, and then the bee would sting the stinging nettle!" I am confident that I did not make jokes about stinging nettle when I was a child.

Phil and I took down that last panel and put it up again. Then Phil fit the corner piece over it, and prepared to do the roof.

The first four feet of insulation was extremely challenging. How to unroll 42' of flexible insulation, up in the air at least thirteen feet, sometimes higher, without any piece sticking on the double sided tape? How to pull it tight, and not drop it down between the rafters?

In the end, he said, he went as high as the lift would go, and that helped him pull the insulation tight. Then he used the lift to hoist the first two roof panels.

Next, he had to put on a 6' wide roll of insulation. That was much, much worse. First, the roll itself weighed 50% more than the previous roll. Even with both of us carrying it to the lift, I wasn't sure I would make it. Thirteen feet up in the air, Phil had to manhandle it all himself.

Once he balanced it on the 3' of insulation and roofing panel, he had to cut off the plastic wrap that held it together, and then unroll it, all on that slim section of roof. And he wasn't in the manlift now, but he was also balanced on that 3'. At one point, right at the beginning, it looked like he was losing it, and the roll would drop down between the rafters.

But he recovered, and unrolled without too much more difficulty.

He figured out how to hoist the roof panels themselves, and by the time he quit, at full dark (a little after 9pm), he had four panels done, one panel in place but not screwed down, and one panel on the ground, ready to hoist.

The assembly is a bit more complex, as it requires various sealants and such, so though the driving screws isn't too bad, the process per panel is longer.

I finished weeding the tree nursery, and then spent an hour or so snapping Johnson grass seeds. Apparently, there are more than I had wished or realized a week ago. I wonder how long it would take to dig those horrible roots out of the ground: the mind boggles.

We've been here three years, and this last weekend, I wanted to pull poison ivy. It didn't go very well. I hadn't done much, but knew I wasn't actually pulling roots, just leaves, so I gave up. I must not have washed my wrists thoroughly, because I have a fairly bad reaction there. And in my weeding, I must have walked through seed tick haven, as I realized this evening that I was covered with them, dozens, in my clothes, my hair, all over my skin. Ugh! And this is what we dealt with when we moved here. But then, we had no running water or electricity, so that was definitely worse.