Catching up (again...)

Saturday was a gorgeous day, and since I was afraid that it might be The Very Last One, I got my butt in gear and washed up the brown alpaca yarn, and the last batch of the Cotswold, then hung them out on the deck to dry.

My spinning isn't great, but damned if it isn't well-balanced!

(And that's not blue sky you see there - that's a blue tarp that we've put up until we can get a proper roof put on... Our 5-year plan has unraveled into a 10-year plan, which is coasting toward a 15-year plan. Damn that Real Life stuff, anyhow...)

There was just enough of a breeze to dry the yarn nicely without blowing it out into the driveway. And luckily, I remembered it was out there late that night and brought it in - we had rain in the wee hours, and I would have been back to square one...

The other big project Saturday was getting new plastic on the hoophouse. Winter had left it looking like this:

We had untwisted as much of the framework as we could last spring, and re-built a much smaller version, but hadn't covered it. Now, with Jack Frost breathing down our necks, we had to get some protection up for our tomatoes and peppers.
Mission accomplished:
We're looking at killer frosts this week, so we'll be holding our breath. The garden has been running so late with all the rain and overcast skies that we haven't been able to harvest enough yet. I'd have my fingers crossed, but that makes it SO hard to type...

And just because I haven't put up a picture of the "little ones" in a while:
There's no way to get all 24 in one picture. If I stood back far enough to frame them all in, they'd be out the coop door and halfway to Canada before I could drop the camera...
And here's a closeup. The fellow in the foreground is a fellow - the comb gives him away. Just behind him and to the left is a hen.
Hard to believe that's this is what they looked like only a couple of months ago...

Peep, peep.