March Madness - Construction & Fires

February and March were a little crazy down here. Construction continued full blast, with the roof deck being cast over the new rooms and porch. This was a major project, with lots of form work and mountains of concrete. The deck was done in two stages - the first stage saw the front porch used to make a huge batch of concrete that went up the ladder to the roof. The second stage took place a week later, with all of the materials moved up to the roof, the final forms built, and the the concrete mixed on the roof and put in place. Barbara wanted it done before the Laughlins came back from Colorado, and we just made it.

While all of this was going on we were not idle either. Tom built a new gate for the top of the property, so now pedestrian traffic does not have to deal with the barbed wire. Barbara did a lot of quilting and entertained the neighborhood kids. Tom worked on tile and drew a portrait of Binghi as a birthday present for him.

And we fought fires. This year was a bad one for brush fires, as we spent the large part of four different days fighting fires along the borders of our property. During one, up at the top of the property, we heard pitiful mewing from the upstairs of our tower, and discovered three kittens up there. Apparently mom cat had decided that was a safe place to have her kittens. The story ends sadly, as either mom abandoned them or just did not have enough milk, but the kittens died a few days later.

We have huge termite nests in the trees here, and when they burn they are quite spectacular. They also get recycled by other wildlife, and after one of the fires Barbara noticed bees going in and out of one. Apparently parrots had hollowed out the termite nest to use as a nest (we've seen this before) and then when they moved out the bees moved in. It looked like they had packed it pretty full of honeycomb, and this was confirmed a few days ago when Jeff and Diane saw the bees swarm and head off for new more spacious lodging.

So now we're getting out the "stuff to do before we leave:" list and starting to think about heading back north in a couple of weeks. We'll see you all then!

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