New Tile

Before we left for Canada, we pulled up the entry way and kitchen floors so that our friend, Mike, could install sub-flooring and tile while we were gone. Here are a couple shots of the kitchen before:Here is the work in progress:
Note the Supervisor, keeping an eye on the craftsman...
















giving it a closer inspection...











making sure clean up is complete...





















and then the Supervisor takes a much needed rest. Phew! That was tiring...

Leave it to Beaver

So back to the beaver story...

Michael and I walked up close to the dam and I started making a clicking sound to see if The Beav would be curious and swim over. The closer he got, the more sure I became that he would slap his tail and splash stinky swamp water all over us. He swam within ten feet of where we stood and couldn't be bothered. After checking us out, he glided away and at about 25 feet he rolled out of the water, dove under and we got a look at how HUGE he was. I wish that picture had come out! Here's a shot of him swiming towards us.

For Primus fans: we decided we had met Winona's Big Brown Beaver.

Monday Morning

So we're back from the lovely woods of Canada and we had a wonderful, relaxing time. The new screen house was the perfect addition to our campsite, and I can't say enough good things about a hot, mosquito-free shower in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't look like that much, but boy do we love it.We met some folks who have a camp near by, and explored some of the (seemingly endless) logging roads. One afternoon we walked a few miles and discovered multiple interesting intersections. We decided to go back for the truck and follow one that eventually led us to an almost-washed-out road and a gigantic beaver dam.
While we checked it out, a beaver came swimming across the water... zig-zagging through the submerged trees and slowly coming closer to where we stood.

Hey, I'll add to this story later. I need to get ready for work.

Julie's New Kitten

We haven't met her yet, but Julie got a new kitten two weeks ago. She emailed me some pictures yesterday and I had to post a couple because Kooky is so darned cute. Here she is with Bad Boy, the oldest of Julie's three cats. The second picture is Kooky looking like she's about to go kooky. Look at the size of those paws! I think she's double pawed all around... velcro kitty!

M... M... M... Good!

The M... M... M... stands for: More Milton Mills.

So, there's this place called the Music Mill and we stopped in last Wednesday to see what it was all about. One of the owners, Gordon, told us about an open blues/folk/bluegrass jam held every two weeks at this chuch with the hand on the top of the steeple.

When we were there Sunday I took these pictures:



And the little park with a gazebo and waterfall:

Okay, can you tell we're a little fixated on this village?

Time Travel

Here's a picture I took yesterday of the Milton Mills Free Public Library. I wanted to get the same angle as the old picture I posted last week, but I couldn't do it with the position of the sun. If you scroll back and forth between the two pictures you can see the changes made over the last 132 years.

Hey Michael --

I came across this picture while doing research. Have you seen it before? Cool, huh?

The caption with the photo is: School Building, Milton Mills, NH; from a c. 1910 postcard. Built in 1875, the building became the Milton Free Public Library in 1992.

One of My Favorite Flowers

Yesterday I cut some of my Siberian Irises to enjoy them before they became weather-beaten by rain. They're doing really well this year and I have a lot of blossoms. The peonies are looking very promising too, lots of big, round buds. Lovely, lovely...

I put the irises into a vase and set everything up to take a picture. It appears that Mr. Nosey-Pants is a flower lover too... look who had to see what I was doing...

St. Joseph Road

In less than two weeks we leave for a week's "vacation" in Canada. I used quotes around the word vacation because you know how our vacations usually are... sort of like our favorite picture:

Recently we've been really busy with a bunch of different things, and we haven't started any preparations for our trip. For all our previous excursions, we'd started making lists and pulling/prep-ing camping gear and work equipment by this time. One good thing is: we haven't put away the small amount of camping gear we used last weekend -- so those few items are ready to go!

A second good thing is: we've ordered a screen house with bonus points from a credit card and hopefully it will arrive before we leave. Figuring that mosquitoes will probably be horrible, we want to put the shower inside a screen house so that we can clean up without being eaten alive. Ah yes... the little luxuries mean so much while you're livin' in the woods. Maybe next year we'll get a screen house for the latrine! Ha!

I know it all sounds crazy to some of you, but Michael and I really love it.

Weirdos.