Productive & Constructive

The summer is whizzing by way too fast! It's mid-August and it finally got hot enough that tomatoes are ripening --these, our very first garden tomatoes, were delectable with garden basil. When/If the crop ever ripens, we will be up to our eyeballs in tomatoes - the plants are so productive, loaded with fruit.

We people are being productive as well, but have MANY projects to complete before fall. Some of our recent accomplishments:
In order to make the clay pizza oven more impervious to rain, Rog decided to cover it with a mosaic. With the design assistance of the chickens, he covered the oven with beach-worn tile shards we gathered years ago on the Amalfi Coast, tile scraps from previous home improvement projects, and boxes and boxes of pretty rocks we have accumulated over the decades.
The mosaic layer seems to have done the trick--and made the oven much more beautiful. Now to build the bigger brick oven...
The small square windows on the old chicken coop were rather decrepit already, but one morning we discovered one of the windows seriously broken. Owl vandalism, perhaps? (A great-horned owl has been feasting on our free-range chickens lately!)
So, this weekend I replaced all four windows and figured out how to make them operable so the chickens can have a breeze on hot, steamy nights. The windows are now installed and primed. I still need to put in the stops and paint the finish coat. It looks so much more civilized.
The granary project is progessing slowly but surely. Cadence decided to build a loft over the future bathroom and part of the kitchen. She and Rog constructed the loft a couple weeks ago. Note the cute row of square windows we found on Craigslist--they have the same character as most of our outbuilding windows (my chicken coop!) but are very energy efficient.
Now Rog is installing tile on the granary kitchen floor (under Nutmeg's supervision). The floor will be a crazy patchwork of architectural tile samples that were discontinued and going to be discarded.
We have mountains of small branches and debris from our recent tree-felling. Rog had created a huge brush pile in the center of the campfire circle which we couldn't burn for weeks because it was too dry. The chickens preferred that brushy nest for their nightly roosting spot. Finally we got some rain and one night last week Rog decided to burn one of the piles in a big bonfire. The chickens gathered around their bonfire nest, perched on the stumps, singing something that sounded sort of like "kum-ba-yah."