Is It Work or Play?

Johnny has strange ideas of fun. Between the California kids and Suue's visit, he butchered one of our hogs. He likes butchering. I've never dared ask him why. He then smoked the hams and bacon. I'm glad he likes doing that because I love eating them.

Between visits and after, Johnny spent much time building a foundation under the old outhouse. The decrepit (or "rustic" as Johnny prefers) building now has a lovely new split-face concrete block underpinning.

Once the foundation was finished, he had to move the outhouse back onto it. Neighbor Irv had helped pour the concrete and could not imagine how Johnny was going to get the outhouse back on top of this new, higher, foundation. Irv got to help it happen... with lots of jacks, levers, a come-along, and muscle power.

Success! Irv was impressed.

In the process of cutting the bottom off to get it to fit under a huge poplar limb on its higher foundation, plus the trauma of moving, some shingles fell off the corners. Johnny is in the process of replacing those.

When Johnny finished the outhouse project (other than a few details like setting up the wash stand),  he started taking down the cracked blocks around the chimney on our house and replacing them with new. He worked at this day after day... in 90 degree plus weather. On a hot tin roof. And loved it.

At last the chimney was completed and mortared, so he took down the platform he had constructed to hold the blocks before putting them up.

And now we have a lovely new, uncracked, chimney.

My idea of fun is saner. At least to me. I enjoy cleaning the horse paddock every morning and taking my load of manure in the EZ Go out to the arboretum and putting it around my trees. But now that the trees are all well-manured, I'm spreading it on the fields. That's fun, too. I like throwing it out with the pitchfork until it makes an arc of finely spread manure balls.

Maybe the heat has got to both of us.