Faith's newfound "toys"

Faith has been coming home with "toys" from the woods. She has killed 2 squirrels, a chipmunk and a mole that we know about. But she's found bigger prizes as well. And a few times has returned with the most awful breath you can imagine, not to mention that she has rolled in rotten carcasses at least 4 times since we moved in.

Last night she came home with a full front leg of a deer. Poor dog, Brad took it away from her and put it in the back of his truck, to dispose of at a suitable moment.

Well, this morning, she appeared with the OTHER leg ----- presumably the same deer, as the condition seems the same. We do wonder where she is finding these treasures.

Woodpecker

I keep thinking that I need to have photos in order to post. However, many bloggers just write thoughts and don't include pictures. I am going to have to make some adjustments to my thinking as the photo ops become less frequent. Come December 1, we will be entering the time of year that we really have not experienced at Hanshill before. I am looking forward to that. The leaves are mostly down from the trees, except for a few species that tend to cling to their leaves until spring. We can see lights from at least six houses on the ridge at Hans Hill Estates.

But today I do have a couple of pictures. We have discovered that we have a resident pair of redheaded woodpeckers living here. They make a distinctive noise and we hear them frequently. Yesterday afternoon I heard one of them making lots of noise (I had the window open because the temperature was 71). I looked and determined that the noise was a redheaded woodpecker arguing with a pileated woodpecker!  They were on the same tree, and the redhead was flying at the other one and trying to peck it and trying to chase it away. Given the size difference, it was comical. The pileated easily defended itself, but eventually it moved away to another part of the woods.

This morning when I was making myself some coffee, I noticed a redhead on a tree right outside the kitchen, on a tree between the house and cabin, so VERY close. Eventually I was able to get a photo --- although it is blurry because I had the zoom level cranked up.

 Brad worked some more yesterday afternoon to finish installing the TV in the kitchen. I think he's pretty happy with it.

He also did some more work with the bush-hog in the pastures in front of the house. It looks really nice. We are excited that Nina & Charlie, and Eddie & Kelly will all be arriving on Wednesday for a great weekend together. I've been doing some advanced cooking, and today I did the really big shopping trip for all the necessary supplies.

dresser drawer pulls

The things we accomplish now are small changes, not the big sweeping ones that took place over the summer. The dresser that Brad is using was missing a handle. I searched extensively online and found a perfect match. It really looks great! It's a bit hard to see but if you enlarge this photo you'll see the problem defined ---- the bottom left handle was missing. Here is a shot from a couple of years ago, before the renovation.

 Brad suggested that I purchase two new handles so that the bottom drawer would have two that match, especially if they differed from the originals.

 But look at how similar in shape they are! Now I wish I knew how to freshen the old pulls.

Another small project is getting a TV installed in the kitchen. This is still a work in progress! but we wanted to have it in place by Thanksgiving when more football fans will be here.

drink time

Earlier this week we probably had our last few nights of enjoying the drinking porch before supper. Monday night we sat in the dwindling light after a gorgeous sunset. Tuesday, although the temperature was still around 70, the sky was dark and gray, so there was no sunset and it got darker quicker. So we used a candle to provide enough light to open pistachios. We "re-purposed" the fixture that had been in the upstairs hall as an electric light. It had been a fire just waiting to happen. It looks pretty with a candle, and provides beautiful light.Here's a photo of our little cocktail hour spot for those couple of nights.

natural arrangements

While walking to the mailbox one day, I noticed a small stand of bittersweet near the entry gate. This is the time of year when the bittersweet berries mature. I cut one little piece

 and thought I would search around other parts of the property to see if I could find some more. So Brad and I went on quite a hike last Sunday afternoon, looking for it. We came home with these items instead ---

some wispy grass and a single cattail, which we found in a moist marshy area next to Fawn Creek, all by itself. I want to find some more cattails, as I like them with this particular jug/vase.

Later I talked to Anne and she told me to be grateful that I didn't find more bittersweet. It is quite invasive and kills the things on which it climbs. It's worse than wisteria, and as bad as kudzu! Yikes. So guess I will search other places to find bittersweet for arranging. There is plenty of it around Lynchburg.

Anne brought me some bittersweet, and because of her advice I cut just about all of it that is down by the gate.

Brad wants to to see how many plants we can find on the property to use in arrangements this winter. The one below is half from Hanshill --- the yellow "Japanese bitter oranges" which grow on a  horrible thorny weed in the pastures. Anne found a write-up about this plant online, and somebody actually sells the things. I cannot imagine why anybody would buy them!!!!  The green globes are from a mock orange tree (osage orange) in town. Neither variety is edible, at least by humans. However, both varieties smell wonderful and last a very long time.

Door handles

If you are familiar with Hanshill, you recall the interesting door latches on the interior doors. There is a horizontal strip of wood, about the size of a paint stirrer that raises up or lowers into a latch that is on the door frame. A leather string (shoelace) is tied to the strip of wood. The string passes through a hole drilled in the door, to the other face of the door. To open the door, a person pulls on the leather string to raise the little wood strip to the unlatch position.

Here are photos of the original design, although this particular door has black nylon rather than leather.

Daddy made the discovery that the leather laces had a tendency to rot and break at stress points. He addressed this two different ways. One was to replace the leather with black nylon, as you see above. The nylon is much more durable. The other solution was to add a pull handle to do the strength work for the leather lace, thus reducing the stress on the leather and giving it a longer life. Oops, this handle really needs to be re-furbished!

So we wanted to have similar wrought iron pull handles on the new doors in the house. However, extensive searching at local stores and on the internet did not turn up the same handles as were already here. So we went with a different design, but one that seems to blend well with other materials in the house. We had to place the handles off to the right, toward the door center, because these handles screw into the door from the back side. If placed directly below the hole for the lace, the screws on the back side would interfere with the little wooden piece that raises and lowers.

 The two doors that lead into/out of the sunroom both have the new handles, plus there is one on a door to the new guest bathroom.

After I had ordered the three new handles, I discovered that we had a similar one, just smaller in length, on the screen door between the eating and drinking porches. So definitely we stayed with the flavor of the original. Here's the older version. However, the old handle has the screws on the same side as the handle, not on the "back." Gosh, there are so many things we notice or learn as we go along, that are not always immediately apparent!

Finally, yesterday Brad did not have school because it was Election Day and the schools are used as polling places. He borrowed Elmer Loving's tractor with the bush-hog attachment and had a fine morning mowing pastures. Since it was his first time manipulating this piece of machinery he stuck to fairly flat areas. He hopes to continue the process and cover most all of our pastures, as he gains a little more confidence. At least he has the good sense to fear the tractor turning over on top of him.

gift from the Carys

 We had a wonderful visit with Hal Craddock our architect this past week. He said that the place has a warm, comfortable, inviting feel. He is sending a professional photographer to take pictures!

     Another thing that we did this week was to find a spot for the beautiful cutting board that Sue and H Cary gave us. It is made of bamboo, and is far too pretty actually to use to chop things. So we were trying to find a good place for it in the kitchen. I wanted to place it on a cabinet. It would fit perfectly inside the 4 raised sides. But Brad would have none of that --- no nails in the cabinets!

So we found a good alternate location for it, as you can see below. It is shaped like a wine bottle! and it pulls out the lighter brown colors in the stone chimney. Thank you , Sue and H!

There are a number of other things in the house that have been gifts in the past from Sue. Here are photos of a couple of them: First, a cute mobile that I decided to hang from a long-resident nail on the end of the mantelpiece.

Next a wonderful hand-painted box. The dots on the box mimic the dots on the Peace plaque, which came from another good friend, Linda Milam. All very cool.