A full and physical day

Saturday was a nice day around here, sunny, less humid, less hot than it has been.  A good day to work on my latest kennel improvement project.  The kennel next to Sparky we call the Lexi kennel in honor of a small female shepherd we had years ago.  Her special gift was an ability and inclination to climb fences.  In order to contain her we stretched wire fencing over the top of a 10x20 kennel.  Inside the Lexi kennel was a structure we called the Doll House, built for a big boned female shepherd we had named Dolly.  It was made from the wooden framed French doors that we replaced with steel framed doors because the dogs had scratched them up so badly.  The doors laid on their side, about 3' apart, with a plywood roof.  One end was closed up and the other was open.  It made a greenhouse essentially, and was a very cozy shelter in the winter filled with straw.  The top also made a good viewing platform.  I had also built ground level platforms using old fence boards when we had new fencing built many years ago.  They had deteriorated over time and the Doll House had as well.  So I'm gutting the entire kennel and starting from scratch. 

Today was demolition day.  I had previously removed the roof and today I removed the Doll House and all the planking, board by board, nail by nail. 

I'm now down to bare dirt and pretty much a blank slate, ready to rebuild.  I'm still debating how much of the ground surface to cover with a new platform, but that's really the only new construction there will be.  It's a small kennel so an A-frame and an igloo will be all I put in it and they are ready to go.  It's still nice to have a covered kennel for escape artists, so I'm going to use the two remaining kennel panel sections that came with the labs and suspend them across the top of the kennel.  Then I'll cover it with another canopy and install more fans.

I pretty much worked to exhaustion on this project today because I wanted to get the demolition part done.  After a shower I sat out front for a while and watched the hummingbirds and swallows on the front porch. 

I had changed the food in the hummingbird feeders and only put one out.  I saw that one bird seemed to be chasing the others away when they came to feed so I put out a second.  It was a busy time out there this afternoon with at least 4 hummers buzzing around.  The swallows have another brood of babies in their nest so they were swooping in and out frequently bringing food. 

I finished my work for the day and then decided I had time for another float down the Rivanna.  I didn't have any cold beer so I made a cocktail in my Yellowstone souvenier coffee travel mug and off we went. 

We have had over an inch of rain in the last day or two, so I knew the river would be running nicely, and it was.  I made the trip in just under two hours, paddling slowly but fairly steadily.  Late afternoon isn't the best time for wildlife viewing, but I saw one Great Blue Heron (shown here), one green heron, a kingfisher, and one bird that was either an osprey or an eagle. 

It was a nice trip, a nice day.  I floated to the sound of Janis Joplin's rendition of  "Summertime" playing in my head.  Tomorrow is Gainesville with the dogs.