Cattle Gates, Tools, and More Mysteries of Suburban Life

A man working, with tools, and getting all dirty and sweaty, is soooo hot. Literally. Especially since this weekend was an unseasonably warm October Thanksgiving weekend.

We got some stuff done around the ol Subdivision Homestead. First order of business- move some gravel. One of the nice things about living in town is that you might get a neighbour's kid show up with a rake and you can put him to work. I love when kids get to work. It's good for them.


Notice my son Bucky over there on the left of the picture. Go Bucky go! Here you can also see the piers which will hold up the deck. The boards will overhang by about a foot. Also notice the poor little Pug up there on the steps. He's looking more forlorn than usual because we had to keep him tied up. The fence was down, so that we could get the gravel truck in.



The back of our house is incredibly ugly right now. We plan to remedy that situation. The plan is to add another layer of crushed limestone on top, which normal people would then build a patio on top of but we are too cheap. It'll do. The deck has to get done before the snow flies, or we have no way out of our back door. There was nothing but a three foot drop for a few hours yesterday while Jethro was preparing the ledger board, with all the measurements. The Girl opened the back door to see what was going on, and the dog, assuming that it was squirrel chasin time, leaped out the door like he usually does, only to find that the top step was...pretty much just not there. I don't think his vision is great to start with, but let's just say he was a little more cautious a few hours later when the steps were nailed back on again! Poor little guy!


Yesterday, Jethro got himself up, stood by the window with his hands on his hips and announced, "I'm gonna drive the pickup truck into the backyard today and set my tools on the tailgate."

Oh boy! A GMC workbench!!!




I think growing up surrounded by self-sufficient farmers has made me equate physical work with male worthiness. If I'd had a Daddy who wore a suit to an office, I might be totally turned off by the sight of a dude covered in sawdust stuck to his own sweat. Don't get me wrong, when Jethro puts on a suit once a year, I admire him greatly. But I love it when he's out of the studio, with his hands building something instead of clicking a mouse, tuning note after note as it slides across the screen and blips out of the speakers.

I love what he does for a living, and am fascinated by the fact that he can make music. But...in my world, if a guy's tractor breaks down in the middle of the field, he goes back for his toolbox and fixes that thing.

I love a guy who can fix things. I love a guy who isn't afraid of dirt. I can't fix a darn thing. Useless. Not strong. Not tough. Somewhat helpful though. I held up a board so he could drill through it and stick a concrete anchor into the side of the house. I held the level. The rest of the time I just looked at him lovingly and handed him a glass of water.

Here he is, with his traveling tool box.




What? Is that a rude hand gesture?


"Is that for your blog?"

"Yeah, of course it is...Hey! What's that for!" Isn't he difficult sometimes???

Here's our newest home improvement!



I wasn't kidding. He's sick of taking down the fence every time we want to get machinery in there. I said screw it let's get a farm gate! so we did. We went to the nearest farm supply store and got this lovely galvanized cattle gate. We had to recycle the chain link fence to Pug-proof it.



He was not happy with the fence down. I mean, what an indignity, being tied up in your own yard. He is meant to run free, free, except that he'll disappear if he's not contained. All your livestock needs to be contained.

Because you see, that's what a livestock gate does. It keeps the livestock in. Our Pugstock is smaller than most breeds of cattle.


He'll never work his way outta here!

It did occur to us that this is not normal in our neighbourhood.

And that we are not all that normal either.

We kind of hoped that we wouldn't get any hateful glares for uglifying the street like this.

We think it looks awesome.

But, like I said, we are kind of weird.

Also, very relieved and thankful once again to have landed among some very cool neighbours...who seem to have accepted us for who we are!

I had a revelation a few days ago, when I told a couple of my friends that we planned to put a cattle gate on our backyard so that it's easier to get machinery in and out.

"...so... how many more times do you think you'll have to do that?"

I think my reply was something about deck building and landscaping and whatever else, but it crossed my mind that this wise woman might know something I don't. I'm not sure what though. It's possible we are going at this project all wrong. But this is the only way we know how to do things. We're so used to having wide open spaces to work with that we can't conceive of any other way to work.




In the meantime, Jethro LOVES the new gate. He might park his car in there just for the heck of it. He's started talking about how easy it would be to park a boat in the yard. Or a motorhome. At which point I looked over and said, "Horse trailer!"

Or heck...why not two horses, just for a little weekend visit?

I am amazed that we haven't been run outta town yet.