Arrival thru Christmas

Oh dear, its been six weeks without pictures! But we've been busy...

We had quite a bit of finishing work on the masonry aspects of the new guest room done while we were gone, so we arrived to a long list of tasks to get the rooms finished. First we got Junior, our electrician, in to put all of the wiring in place. This was followed by having Garnett put a coat of white paint on all of the walls and ceilings. While this was going on, Barbara worked in the gardens and applied paint to the new railings that Tom installed.

Before we can move the windows from the living room wall and open up the doorway into the new space we needed to be able to secure the space. This was accomplished by Tom creating the Dragon Grate, which finally got installed a few days before Christmas.

Rain. Did I mention we've been getting a lot of rain? When we got here the road in was almost impassable due to the erosion and mud. It was almost two weeks before we could get a truck in with the supplies we needed. And it has not really stopped, with some rain on almost half of the days we've been here. According to our rain gauge we've had 3 1/4" of rain since we arrived, and that's a lot for this time of year. The plants are loving it!

Our friends and fellow Valley View residents Jeff and Diane Laughlin were here for the first three weeks of our visit, and Jake Spiegel came down for a week with four of his friends. It was good to see someone using the Spiegel residence.

We have a Northern Potoo who spends some of his days (5 so far) roosting in the mango tree right next to the house where we have an excellent view.

That's about all for now. Tom is starting tile work again now that the steel work is done, so we'll have pictures of that next time. Until then, have a Happy New Year!

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