Summer work

As usual, summer is full of work and projects to be done. Sam has been getting up at 5:30 every day this summer to work a full day of construction, then coming home to lift weights and squeeze in a round of golf before bed. Recently he cut his head at work and it was bleeding pretty badly so he wrapped it in a t-shirt and finished out the day. Fortunately, once he unwrapped it, he discovered it was a much smaller cut than suspected so no hospital visit was required. 

My summer projects have been primarily tending the garden and painting. I just finished painting the front porch (minus the floor - that will have to wait) and a stairwell at St. Ed's school that was peeling. Unsure of how to reach the high walls, Seth told me he could just "build some scaffolding quick." He went to the school and finished in about 2 hours. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this! It worked really well and covered the whole area without needing to be moved so it made for a quick and easy paint job.

 

In addition to the weeds, some of our grapevines have been getting out of control. In one area, they had completely taken over our gooseberries and yellow raspberry bushes. Frank was complaining that he was bored on the day I had decided to tackle the grapevines so I told him I would pay him to help me with them. He worked outside for about an hour while I did laundry, and when I went to check on him, I was blown away by the work he did. He had gotten right into the thick of the (very prickly) bushes and pulled out most of the grapevines including some very thick vines that required a lot of hacking and tugging. Then he made several trips to the compost pile and packed them all down. This was our conversation when I got outside:

Me: I'm really impressed you did all of that! That was really hard work.

Frank: Well, I pretty much got that from Dad. Dad's really strong and works hard so I got that from him. And you're good at cleaning (this is debatable), so I got that from you. And that's why I was able to do it! 

After thinking about it for a minute, he added: "...but my dance moves. That's just all natural."