Hard to believe it’s the last day of May… and Gene’s to-do list is still so long. (Monarch Sanctuary, wherefore art tho? Certainly not in my front yard.) We seemed to have skipped spring, and jumped straight into summer. Complete with 90 degree temps and clouds of mosquitoes. On the plus side, lightening bugs and thunderstorms!

The geese, (fingers crossed) appear to be two girls and a boy, so I’ve named them Higgins, Priscilla, and Claire. They are old enough now to spend the entire day outside, where they roam the yard eating dandelions and napping in the sun. We put them back in the secure pen at night, but they’ll move into a section of the new coop as soon as it’s ready.

We’re turning the old homestead in the front yard into their new quarters. Gene boarded up the side door so it’s warmer in the winter, and redid the ceiling and insulation where water had gotten in. We also had to climb up on the roof and repair the cracks in the chimney with some bucket of stretchy stuff that bore a disturbing resemblance to a melting Tootsie roll. Gene of course made applying it look super easy – he just stuck a trowel thing in the bucket, then spread it evenly onto the shingles and didn’t get a speck on him. I, on the other hand, promptly stuck the trowel to my hand, ruined my favorite t-shirt, stepped in melting Tootsie roll, and made the chimney look like someone went crazy with the chocolate frosting. But hey – it’s waterproof!

It seems like the more I help, the more I hinder. For instance this afternoon we were painting the interior with Killz to fix the mold situation, and Gene saw me eyeballing the roller that he’d had the brilliant idea of screwing onto the broom handle so we could paint the ceiling without a ladder. He let me paint with it while he went in to grab a cold beer, and came back not two minutes later to find me sadly holding a roller and a broken broomstick. Apparently you can’t press that hard – I blame the pythons.

Ceri decided she wanted to help as well. Her contribution was stepping on the paint can lid and tracking prints all over the floor, then rushing up behind me and knocking into the wet paint brush as we were walking back to the house. I guess it runs in the family.

We’re still doing the mail route once a week, which I still absolutely love. Gene, not so much. Getting him out the door at the crack of dawn is like herding an extremely large, grumpy badger. But we get to see so many cool things on the route!

Normally I remember to grab my good camera, although today I forgot. So of course today we saw a beautiful young fox whose coat was just starting to turn red, a huge crane, and a porcupine. The porcupine was awesome – they look like spiky koalas, and they can climb up trees with a quickness. I would have gotten even closer with my camera phone, but I totally fell for it when one of the locals said they could launch their spines at you. Sigh.