Such great help!

Yesterday I noticed that the signal light on the fence tag was blinking to notify us that the electric fence charger was out of order.  Uh-oh.  I thought maybe yesterday's terrible 30-minute storm might have taken down another tree.  So I locked the horses inside the smaller paddocks and this morning I walked out to see if the fence was down.  It wasn't "down" -- but it WAS out of order.  There were weeds 8 or 10 feet tall all along the fence line leaning against the electric wires.  So I texted Buddy to see if he could come by and cut them down today.  And even though he and Lisa both worked hard all day long, they came by when they got off and he spent hours cutting down those horrendous weeds.  But what Buddy told me when he got done was that in two places poison ivy had twisted around one wire, then grown further up and twisted around the next one up.  That definitely shorted out the fence!  But Buddy got a nice wide strip down the outside of the fence cleared.  Now as soon as those weeds grow some little leaves they're going to get sprayed with a really tough herbicide. 

Unfortunately, a lot of the trees inside the pasture are covered with poison ivy.  But Duke actually EATS the stuff (hey-- what DOESN'T he eat!), so I'm afraid to spray it with a strong enough herbicide to work on poison ivy for fear it will poison HIM!



Now - if we could just kill all those weeds by the porch as well as the ones by the fence!

You know - I don't think I like that yellow door - although it IS better than the old lavender one!  I'm thinking maybe it should be the same dark blue as those shutters.  What do you think? 

And I think we need plain old regular shutters painted that same color on those upstairs windows, too.  Wonder if there's a way to make them closeable, too?  (Don't get excited, Mark -- adding those would be WAY down on our "to do" list.)



Seems like we are constantly having to add yet another thing to our "to do" list.  But we ARE getting somewhere finally.  Bryan has finished the cement board exterior paneling on the barn . . .

AND finished the walls on the inside of the barn . . .

 AND got the plywood ceilings on the porches in place.

Everything is ready to be painted now, as soon as he caulks all the windows and doors and fills in all the gaps he finds anywhere else.

Then once he's done painting everything, he's going to install that vinyl stall liner, too.  That's going to be quite a project! 

You have to drill holes about a quarter inch in diameter every 2 or 3 feet both horizontally and vertically, then use stainless screws with washers that are smaller than that so that the liner can expand and contract without buckling and pulling on the screws.  Tricky.  But I'm sure Bryan can handle it.  The guy is amazing!  He works SO hard and SO quickly.  I am really grateful to Buddy and Lisa for introducing him to us.  (He and Lisa's sister have been together for years.)

So anyway, after all this progress, at this point the only other thing I'm still concerned about is getting doors put on the stalls in case of a hurricane.  Those will probably be a lot like those shutters on our front windows -- a fine thing in case of a hurricane AND something that works really well on a day-to-day basis.  See how those shutters are closed on the window on the right in the picture above? . . . that's because if they are closed, Joey does NOT feel the need to eat the walls around those windows since he can't see anyone outside.  Not to mention the fact that I can sleep as late as I like when they're closed because they make it pitch dark inside.  VERY helpful.