Terrace Complete!

It's only fair that I insert a photo of Bob hard at work on our terrace so that you don't mistakenly think that I did all the work. So here's Bob, mixing up the final batch of mortar to finish off those decorative seams of quartz rocks. This is, after all, The House That Quartz Built.

This is a nice detail shot, showing how we cleverly united the cement areas to the mixed cement and stone areas. It's a perfect balance between playful and practical (much like us!) and it looks good to boot.  It was great to be able to say, "We're done!" and take down the construction zone fencing and open the door directly out onto the lovely new terrace...

We celebrated it's completion yesterday, despite a steady rain and less than cooperative weather in general. The last two months have been unrelentingly warm and sunny and conducive to outdoor living on a nice terrace but plan a celebration and you get rain... at least it's good for curing cement!
It's great to finally finish a project that has been on our minds for the last six years. We do spend a huge percentage of our time outside and having a new outdoor room is a treat. I have almost forgotten how awful that rotting deck was.
And if you look really carefully at the back right hand side of the terrace, you'll see the flat cement slab that was already there and to the right of that is a small pile of rocks. This was intentionally put there: it's a new toad house. We have had a toad- or a few toads that all look pretty similar- residing under our rotting deck. We provided a small heap of canted rocks on the dirt at the edge of the terrace- a perfect replacement house for our resident toads. We hope s/he enjoys it!

Wildlife at the BauHaus Chicken Coop

Ooops! Hahahahaha that's not wildlife, that's me hard at work on the foundation. But figure that it was like 99 degrees and really humid and maybe Bob and I smelled like wildlife.
Lately, there has been a remarkable proliferation of wildlife sightings. While sitting outside and enjoying the evening weather on my birthday, we saw bats for the first time this year. That was especially gratifying as entire local colonies of bats have succumbed to Brown Nose Disease in recent years. We saw at least two and possibly three bats the other night; we're hoping that they're mixed boys and girls and make additional little bats. I applauded their wobbly overhead flight patterns. They entertained us and consumed many mosquitoes that night.
Also not captured for posterity was the Blue Heron that I saw several mornings in a row on my walk. But several other visitors are featured below.

Pretty blurry, but that's our "Deck Toad". He sits underneath the lawn furniture and emerges at night when I take Jules out. I didn't want to disturb him, so I didn't use the flash which resulted in the "atmospheric" photo. He's cute: lumpy and about the size of one of Jules' tennis balls. (Between the toad and the bats, you'd think we were witches...)

Also on my birthday was this appearance of an entire brood of turkeys- several adults and eight babies. I've seen them down past Maggie's pasture, crossing the stream. But on our way out the driveway, in broad daylight, the whole slew of them meandered across the lawn. The background looks wonky because I photoshopped our suburban neighbor's house out of the picture... not for the first time! Hey! They probably do the same for our house; I guess we do count as wildlife after all.