Harmony’s face says it all.

She absolutely loves the feeling of the water on her toes. Bingley’s getting sleepy (that’s post-yawn).

I’ll have to post more alpaca bathing photos soon. Meanwhile, you can see some of Sunny here.

See previous wordles here, and/or get one for your blog here.

Believe it or not, underneath is the most wonderful garden compost imaginable.

As you can see, over the course of the nearly two years since I’ve been owned by alpacas, we’ve amassed quite a bit of it. This turned out splendidly as, after giving away batches to neighbors, we were left with more than enough to do the beds surrounding the ranch house which were all in desperate need of compost, so it’s been a huge win all the way around (ha, literally), because to have had to have trucked in soil/compost in the amount I needed would have cost hundreds of $$. This was a huge job and took 3 days to complete — David and Megan transformed this heap into beds encircling the entire house using a lasagna gardening (layering) approach: so the beds were covered first with a layer of cardboard (and alpaca grain bags), then a layer of compost, and next comes the bark (that part is still in process). The front now features two gorgeous swoopy Dr. Seussian European Larch trees which I’ll be training to make an archway. I’ll write more about them and post photos soon.

It’s truly amazing the difference all of this work has made on the ranch, and I am truly grateful to have had such a magnificent team. When it’s all done I’ll post photos, but I couldn’t let another day go by without acknowledging what’s been going on here. The alpacas have been thrilled to have David, Megan, Tiny, Izzy and Chloe for company (and so have I!).

***

I’m writing this next part down to remember what it took to get the ranch just to this point.

What you don’t see in photos is what it took to get to here. I think it’s important to remember all of this — it’s been an integral part of the journey — and I’ve learned quite a bit in the process. When you move onto a property you inherit everything that comes with it and let’s face it, all of the previous owners’ choices: the good, the bad (and the ugly). To get your place to where you want it to be, and in the case of Iolanthe, I wanted it to be open and light and airy (and kid friendly), may require a lot of work. And a lot of planning.

When I first moved here I walked around the property and made notes about the landscape. I took photos of all angles, printed them out, put them into a book and made more notes. Over the last two years I would give everything that was giveaway-able away, that which wasn’t would require hiring folks to help with the clearing out and when all was said and done, over 24 truckloads (and by truckload I mean those big Ford F series truckloads) of things + plant material were stripped off of the property. There were plant things that would have to be removed (such as big bushes with poisonous berries, there were more than 20 of them, each approximately 6′-7′ wide by 6′-8′ high, one even came sporting a wasps nest). I gave much of these bushes away on Craigslist and lots of folks came and dug them up, a few ended up in the chipper. Then there are the massive fir trees in the front of the property which would need to be limbed up; all of the fir and pine trees along the East side of the property (the treeline in the photo above) would need to be trimmed as well (no fun mowing and being whacked by 4′-6′ long limbs, I got clocked while on the mower a couple of times and it’s no joke when you get whacked in the face with a heavy limb. It’s like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat. Ouch.).

There were sumac trees on either side of the plum tree that were rehomed as well, crazy trees with these velvety dark red flowers that melted in your hands and stained your hands red — those had to go; truckloads of tree limbs and bushes were removed. Then there were the bushes in the front of the property (a rhodie, two forsythia, a lilac tree, and two rose bushes, all overrun with weeds from years of not really being cared for properly, the folks who lived here were ill so it wasn’t their fault), plus a few more truckloads of garden treasure the previous owners left for me, including a wooden ramp for a wheelchair (that was rehomed for a crippled dog so he could walk up the ramp to get into his owner’s fifth wheel easier), all kinds of bricks, wood bits, bits of rusty pipe, rebar and t-posts, and then some. All of this equalled at least another 6 truckloads worth. I met some truly wonderful people in the process, people have been so willing to share ideas and wisdom and so as a result I learned quite a bit in the process about all sorts of things. This, to me, was recycling at its finest.

I’ve lived in the city all my life. There’s so much to know, you know? Especially when you’re new to an area. And you don’t even know what it is you don’t know until someone says “hey did you know. . .” and you realize you had NO IDEA that . . . and then, there you are. Wham! More knowledge. I learned about local places to get x, y, and z. Details about things, like mowing, or weeding, or tree identification. About tools. About wildlife. About the birds.

So. Many. Things.

With those interested I shared what I’ve learned about alpacas. As an added bonus, the herd has had a nice supply of humans to observe every week.

As a species I’d imagine we’re quite fascinating.

It’s been great.

During all of this I gave away all of the moving boxes from the initial move, and every few months or so put an ad on Craigslist for more boxes because, and you may or may not know this, cardboard mating habits are very much like those of the rabbit. It multiplies when you’re not looking, I’m convinced of it.

I’ve got a few more things to rehome in the garage but for the most part it’s clear of ‘schtuff’. I have grand plans to convert the garage too into a more usable space.

What I’m trying to say here is that the ranch is starting to really feel like it can breathe. There are many (many) more plans to continue with the transformation, and I’ll write more about them soon.

Meanwhile, the sun is finally here and the fresh air is intoxicating.

Yay for Springtime!

Faith at dinnertime, she always comes over to check on me and give me a cuddle. Such love.

We had sunshine. We had rain.

Faith and Summer, in all their fleecy gorgeousness.

We had a warm breeze. We had birds chirping and frogs croaking and baby quail chasing after their parents. I finally heard the little bird who sounds like R2D2 when Rox was outside and she told me he’s a red-tailed blackbird.

The herd went for a little pronk tonight after dinner.

I recently read an article in Alpacas Magazine by Marty McGee Bennett and Nina Faust talking about how important it is to enrich your alpacas’ lives with things to keep their minds active. I totally agree. The herd gets a daily dose of exposure to all kinds of things: from watching humans walk, ride (be it on horseback or bicycle), or run by on the Olympic Discovery Trail (which travels by the ranch); seeing neighbors walking their dogs, the cows in the pasture over past Rox’s house; the mailman (and the FedEx and UPS delivery guys); noises from the neighbor on the other side of the treeline (he’s like Tim the Toolman Taylor over there, he’s always making power tool sounds that intrigue them); and of course Rox in her garden.

We also have neighbors across the empty pasture with the big black poodle (and their new little black dog); an occasional heron or eagle zooming overhead, and, somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 gazillion birds we have that come to visit. Jeanette’s horse, sheep, and miniature horses a couple of pastures over are also a constant source of entertainment.

And then they also have me.

She who brings them fresh hay, and water, and dinner. And who cleans up after them. And takes care of them. She who often carries that thing that makes all the clicking noises.

Behold, the sloping horizon behind all the cuteness. Not sure how that happened, but I like how this one turned out.

They’ve gotten so used to having the camera around.

With Sunny all I have to do is say “C’mere and gimme some sugar,” and she does, just like this:

It’s hard to believe that in July it will be two years that I’ve been owned by these magical creatures.

My how time flies.

This is the fluffeh.
The rainbows are here.

Fluffeh and the Rainbows, almost sounds like a band name, doesn’t it?

After the last coat of varnish finally dried, I lugged all of those boards and the two sawhorses into the house. One by one, up the stairs (there are 3 from the garage to the mud room), navigating 8′ of heavy lumber through the kitchen (8′ is long enough as it is, but when you’re 5’2 I don’t know, it just seems massive somehow), around the corner into the living room, deftly avoiding a Tiffany lamp I’d totally be bummed about breaking if I were to hit it, and into the dining area. Then came putting the boards up against one of the dining room walls. One must do this carefully because that length tends to bonk the ceiling if one isn’t careful. I am writing all this down in the hopes that if, someday, someone is daring enough to undertake this project they will remember the watch-out-for-everything warning when bringing the pieces into the house.

Bear and Daisy (my chihuahuas) were tucked safely into their crate long before I brought in the first board as they tend to like to help me by dancing around my feet. Which is not really a good combination when you’re wielding massive lumber. And, you know, trying not to clobber things (happy to report we all survived the migration unscathed).

Next came revisiting the math. I should pause here to admit that math is not my friend. Never has been. They’re tricky little buggers, those numbers. Especially when they deviate from the plan without my express written permission.

I’ll not bore you with the details but let’s just say that my measurements, while they were sound (and I would just like to point out that I went over them at least a half dozen times), had one flaw: they didn’t take into account that brief moment that I was now vaguely remembering that happened when I was in Home Depot. The lumber guy said (as he was handing me heavy board number 5 to put on the cart from on high where he was perched bringing it down for me): “you know these are more like 5 and a half inches wide, not 6 exactly, will that be okay?”

I must have said something along the lines of “sure, no problem!” as I tried to get that 8′ beast onto the cart with some decorum and without clobbering fellow shoppers, thinking for sure I’d remember to recalculate before we went over to the wood cutting section, which, alas, I did not.

Where was I? Oh yes, the assembly: so when I went to put everything together, the results were not what I was expecting. How on earth? Where was that tape measure? How were the boards only 5 and a half inches long and not 6″?

(Cue the flashback to Home Depot moment HERE).

Okay, okay, calm. So what that ended up meaning was that the 42″ boards were going to stick out a little bit. 1 and 3/4 inches on each side, to be exact. My table was going to have character. Lots of character.

Once all measured out, the sawhorses and 42″ boards in place, with my tape measure I measured off the 5.5″ widths and attached the middle board and the two side boards. Everything was starting to come together.

Now it was time to put down a layer of WeldBond^TM to create a nice seal for where the mosaic would go.

While the WeldBond^TM was curing, I brought over all of the bits of glass scrap and began to lay out the design. And then remembered to go grab my camera so I could take some photos.

And a few more.

When I finally had all the pieces where I wanted them, I went and mixed up the grout (in a beautiful Mist Gray) and was shocked to discover I didn’t have nearly enough (!). Now I had globs of grout drying out and not enough to make the whole piece. I still had some mosaic garden stone concrete mix left over from the stones I made last summer, so I mixed up a batch of that post haste and mooshed that in with the grout. Improvisation, baby. Sometimes you just have to go with it. I think I mentioned somewhere above how this table was going to have character, yes?

So now although the grout/concrete mixture was dark grey and light grey and not what I’d originally envisioned, all was not lost, I just had to move quickly because this stuff dries fast (read: mostly made of concrete). Especially when you don’t have a lot of water in it to begin with, which is how you’re supposed to do it according to the instructions (which say mix enough water into it to get to the consistency of peanut butter).

I had 1/2 peanut butter, half concrete.

I always did like a good challenge.

The design was already laid out, all I had to do now was move the pieces up and onto the grout mixture before it dried. You know, like a rock. At one point I don’t know what I was thinking but I started to Deviate From the Design. What was I doing? This was going to be a mess if I didn’t follow the design I’d spent hours the night before working on.

OK so it was going to be a mess, but it would be a beautiful mess.

And I realized I was more than okay with that.

Je ne sais quoi. The French say it best. I suppose you could say I like, no, prefer things with character: be they photographs with a bit of motion blur, that one piece of fabric turned the wrong way in a quilt, that one particular “thing” about something that makes it feel more, I don’t know, real, like when someone improvises in a song. Or in a scene. I love those moments. Those ineffable moments where life just seems so right.

A few random spots (okay a bunch of random spots) wouldn’t ruin things, especially with this kind of a design.

Look the thing is, the joy was definitely in the doing — with all its glorious imperfections. And this table really started to remind me of life itself. It isn’t perfect, it’s got it’s trials and tribulations to be sure, but despite all of it, life is beautiful. The glass I was using was all scrap glass, bits and pieces, “oopses” from glass factories. All gorgeous in its own right. Just because it wasn’t good enough to make the cut for a particular art form didn’t mean it wasn’t still beautiful enough to work elsewhere.

Like here.

So this little wrinkle in the assembly was quite fitting.

Without further ado, here’s what the table looks like:

And one more close-up of the glass bits, just because:

If you’re still reading, thanks for coming along for the ride, hope you enjoyed it.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming of alpaca cuteness this coming weekend.

One of the things I’ve been wanting for the ranch is a proper ranch dining room table. Robert Redford’s Sundance Catalog has several absolutely gorgeous ones in their catalog right now, one is even made out of reclaimed barn wood /swoon/.

A few weeks ago I found this gorgeous table made by Stephane Beauchet out of reclaimed pallet wood inlaid with mosaic glass over on Pinterest:

One day it dawned on me that I recently not only built a desk inspired by one made out of pallet wood but also have some experience with mosaic glass art:

These 3 things: the Sundance table, that gorgeous pallet table, and my limited experience in both art forms were the genesis of the idea to create an 8′ dining room table of my dreams.

The top is comprised of seven 8′ long boards. The dimensions are fairly simple: six are 8′x6″x2″, the 7th is 8′x6″x1″. Then there are two 18″x6″x1″ boards at each foot of the table giving the occupant of each of those seats plenty of room. Each board was chosen for it’s imperfections, more ‘love’ was added (by yours truly) to give each one more character, and then each was sanded 3x: once with 60 grit (to smooth out the rough edges); then with 150 grit (which made everything so much smoother), and then with the 220 grit, which basically makes the wood unbelievably smooth. Like buttah.

Then it was stained Golden Oak (so beautiful) and varnished. And varnished again. And again.

Here it is, having just received its fourth layer of varnish:

It’s so shiny and luscious.

That open space in the middle is 5′x6″x1″: that is where the mosaic river of glass is going to go.

The river will be comprised of bits of scrap glass, vintage antique marbles I’ve collected for years, millefiori, and glass remnants from a glassblowing factory that I found on etsy.

Colorful glass bits and some insanely gorgeous smooshed oopses from another glassblowing company (they make gorgeous paperweights and ornaments out of Mt. St. Helens Ash) for $1 each at a wonderful little shop I found in in Port Angeles called Olympic Stained Glass, where I learned how to cut stained glass today (c’mon, we’ll show you how, it’s easy!) and I have to say it’s easier than I ever would have thought it would be (!).

So, you know, more mosaic projects are definitely going on the list.

For those curious, the legs were super easy to make: they’re simply the basic wood sawhorses they sell at Home Depot for about $18 each, which I stained with the Golden Oak. It’s amazing how much stain transforms the wood, they went from looking like scrap lumber to vintage sawhorses with just one coat. The last bit is the 2″x6″x42″ supports that will rest on the sawhorses as crossbeams for the top: they bring the height up to a comfortable 30″.

Once the varnish dries completely I’ll bring everything inside (you *definitely* want to make sure you wait because while things don’t smell as strongly outside (with all the fresh air) it’s a whole different story when you bring them in the house (one of many lessons learned from the desk build).

But I digress.

Then all that’s left to do is put down a layer of WeldBond^TM to create a seal in the space where the mosaic is going to go. After that cures, I’ll mix up the grout (I am using a really pretty mist gray, a few shades darker than white but not the darker gray of regular grout, also found on etsy) and then set in all of the glass scrap, millefiori bits and the marbles.

A few nights ago I was clicking around YouTube and found this hilarious clip of Linda Richman (Mike Myers) and Barbra Streisand, and while I’ve been out in the garage most nights sanding and varnishing until this table is smooth as (you guessed it) buttah, I can’t help but think she would approve. In fact, it might even make her a little verklempt to find out that all combined the entire project has cost less than $200 (including the mosaic river of glass).

I’ll post more photos when it’s all done.

Iolanthe is a ranch for kids with cancer. All proceeds from the sale will go back into the ranch.  If you are interested in these two amazing little alpacas, please get in touch via email mylakent@gmail.com or call me at (206) 855-5594.