Moving Upward

Phil had errands in town most of Thursday (among others, he took the car in for its regular servicing; he had an appointment, and they pretty much just did an oil change, but he waited for almost three hours!).

While Phil was away, I spent an hour or so outside and hacked 23 osage orange tree pots out of their crate. I killed the obligatory black widow or two, and realized, about halfway through, that I had been so disappointed in January that I only found about 40 viable seeds among the dozens of osage oranges I had picked up. I had hoped for hundreds.

Imagine if I had had hundreds of osage oranges grown through the bottoms of tree pots! What a blessing in disguise that I didn't have many sprout. (What would I have done? Torched the whole project? Eek!)

Today the weather broke 60, and with full sun and no wind, it felt like an entirely different season than cold, grey Wednesday. Jadon woke with a sore throat (the fourth in the family to get it: I suspect I was the carrier, as I've been teaching Sunday school this semester, and there were some sniffly children last Sunday). "Jadon, I'm so sorry you don't feel better!"

"I'm just sorry I can't make you cookies," was his sweet reply. He felt well enough to eat pizza for dinner, but until about 2pm, every time I'd happen through the house, he was either dozing or looking pathetic.

Phil and I poured three batches of grout, which got us as far with that as we could go today. Then he loaded up a half batch of mortar. After he laid eight more bond beams on the south-facing wall (which means soon we can do a bit more grout), he got started on half-high blocks. I forget why we have a layer of half-highs, but that's what the design calls for.

After a little bit, I went up to make lunch and Phil, using a new diamond saw blade I picked up last Saturday, tried to cut some blocks to fit around the rebar. He had wanted a 6.5" blade, but the only size our small local hardware store carried was 4.5". The smaller blade couldn't quite cut through the full block, but it left too much to easily knock out without demolishing the entire block.

He had a few other errands to run, so he headed to the little town about 20 minutes away, hoping for a better blade. Which they didn't have. Nor did the car repair shop have the truck alternator he'd ordered in the morning and been promised. And the propane man wasn't around to refill the propane tanks.

Two hours later, after a total bust of a trip, he returned. We figured out how to make the smaller blade work, and carried on.

Thankfully it was warm, because we didn't finish the half batch of mortar until almost two hours after dark. Thirty-one more blocks down in a day that started promising (eight bond beams laid in twenty minutes, which just last week would have taken an hour!) and ended a bit deflated.

Abraham and I went to water the cows, since Jadon was sick. It took an hour! Forever! We petted the cows and laughed at their antics; we admired the wide sides of the older girls and watched as they fought for their place at the water tank. Abraham said repeatedly how much fun that had been, and on the way back, we held hands and ran through the green grass in the orchard, laughing.