Of birthdays, beer, and blossoms

Sparky, wet from the water tank,
but he let me put a daylily on his
collar.  It didn't last long.

So, I've been working my butt off outdoors in the heat this summer, trying to lose some weight and get this place in shape.  What I really notice about being 55 is that I just run out of power.  I can do four, five, maybe six hours working outdoors, but then I just reach a point where I can do no more.  I come in, cool down, but there's no second wind.  I feel like I need to go to bed at 7:00p.m., just because I need to lay down.  I don't actually go to sleep until 11 or after usually, but I just need to take the load off my feet and not ask my arms to do anything either.

Fortunately I've found a guy with mad carpentry skills who is making a lot of the repairs and improvements around here, both inside and out.  I'm painting, cleaning up, and doing basic grunt work.  The old kennels are almost entirely demolished; things are really looking different around here.


Adding hops, the smell is amazing.

On Thursday, Clay bottled up our latest batch of beer, a porter, and moved the next one, a bitter, to the secondary fermentation stage.  On Saturday he brewed up another batch of the Belgian ale we call Cabell Cooler, it's my favorite. 

It's daylily season so I thought I'd better get some pictures of them.  Ours are growing in unkempt beds, but they are blooming a lot this year.  Some years the deer have come by and eaten all the flower buds. 

Gigi, after a bath

Spent grains, drying.
I'm going to put them out for the birds.