Winter garden

 The Yarnell Community Garden Project decided for the first time to try a winter garden. So we constructed hoop houses to protect the plants.

 Our first winter crop included broccoli and cauliflower, which I planted and brought down to the greenhouse in the garden.

 When they were big enough, we transplanted the seedlings into beds. Roger covered the soil with leaf mulch to preserve moisture. He also painted gallon milk jugs black and filled them with water to absorb heat during the day.

We also had a very nice little crop of lettuce. We picked lettuce every week and had a garden-fresh salad nearly every day.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

 Gerald make a list of all the projects that remained undone and tackled the projects one by one. There was a bit of molding in the kitchen to do.

 Which have it a nice, finished look

Road trip!

 In the fall, Gerald's high-school buddy, John Anderson, and his wife, Vicki, came to visit.

 They spent a couple of days at the ranch. Then we took them up to Sedona, where we rented a little cabin on Oak Creek.

 We did the usual things. The drive up Oak Creek Canyon, the visit to Tlaquepaque... It was a lot of fun.

One flue over the cuckoo's nest

 After four-plus years of burning construction scrap and pinyon pine, we thought it would be a good idea to get a chimney sweep out. The only trouble was the apparently only chimney sweep in Yavapai County didn't like the pitch of our roof. We weren't sure what to do.

But the chimney sweep said he'd come out and give the place a look when he was next in the area. He did come, and decided that he could get most of it if he did the job from the inside. I had never seen this done, and found it interesting. They basically took a vacuum-like thing and used it to clean the flue. I was a little worried about soot getting on the floor, but they were very careful, as you can see.

On the beam

With Gerald's manager back to work leaving us more time at home, we, too, got back to work... on the house. One of the projects that has been near and dear to my heart, is to finish the faux beam in the kitchen, so we wouldn't have a hole in our ceiling. We started by installing a 2x6 to cover up the hole.

 Meanwhile, Gerald worked on finishing the beam itself at the shop. It went together in three pieces. One on each side and one at the bottom. We had to use clamps to close the gaps.

 Then Gerald used ring shank nails to hold it together, and voila!

Stocking up for Winter

 Fall was definitely upon us, with daytime temps in the mid-70s and nighttime temps in the 50s, which put us in mind to start preparing for winter. Gerald spent a day splitting oak from the tree we lost, then we loaded it into our little wagon and filled up our wood racks.

 We rearranged and consolidated things so we had our wood sorted by species and size.

 The guys we paid to cut up the oak last winter had cut some of the pieces too long, so Gerald cut them on the saw and stacked those pieces on the front porch.

By the end of the day, we had made visible progress.

Progress on the Homes Front

 Coming home, one day, we saw these giant tracks in the road. We knew it was a monster piece of equipment that could leave tracks like this on a dry road. We suspected it was Steve Hampton putting in a driveway for Brian and Nora Evans. Sure enough, that's just where the tracks led.

 It was a steep climb up the roughly cut driveway.

 At the top, we found Steve's employee, Squeak, with the machine.

 There was some beautiful views up there.

 Since we were there, we decided to check out the progress of the Evans' next-door neighbors, the Shopes. Their place was coming right along.