This is the rest of the barn that I have been working on, I closed off the end of it and put the tin off the part of the building I tore down on the front.  I would have like to have before pictures, but you'll have to trust me if you haven't seen it yourself - it was an ugly barn.

This is the other end which I made into the kennel.  I found some fiberglass panels to put on the end so there would be more light in the kennel.  The whole thing is going to be painted soon - I could stick with white, but barn red sounds like something a little more fun.  I could always paint it orange like a pumpkin, but that may be a little overstated for me.  I am not a flamboyant person, but I do like things to at least look like I'm not the average stiff who lives on a farm that doesn't really "farm". 

This is Pumpkin and her new friend Olivia who we just got today.  I really didn't have a whole lot of advance notice about this new dog.  Apparently her owner's husband was in Iraq when she got him and when he came back he didn't like her because he only liked hunting dogs or something stupid like that.  Well he gave her one week to get rid of the dog and some how found Krista.  This is actually her 3rd home - her 1st home was just outside of Belle Plaine and her 1st set of owners didn't treat her very well either.  I will never understand people who want St. Bernard's that don't live in a home that has some land.  These dogs don't do well if they are tied up all the time and don't get a little space to move around.  Sorry about the rant, but it needed to be said.  It's a little big as far as kennels go, but I figured why not - the space wasn't being used and it was a nice way to reuse a barn that would have otherwise been tore down. 

They seem to be happy in their new home, Olivia was shaved pretty short before she came to us - I hope her coat gets as long and shiny as pumpkins.

Of course I couldn't blog (well I suppose I could) without a sunset picture - I have so many of them from this summer - this one was taken last night while we were out fishing on Clear lake which is just a little bit south of us.

Busy, but not to busy to take a few pictures.

Seems like the summer is just flying by - I had all these intentions to post pictures of plants in various stages of growing and write about bees - so I am going to try and do shorter posts and just try to catch up.  One of my summer projects was tearing down half of an old shed that was used to raise hogs.  It's sort of a worthless shed for anything other than that.  One end is about 7 feet tall and the other is about 5.  It was roughly about 90-100 feet long and there is a series of fences on the open end of it.  A picture wouldn't do it a lot of justice. Well anyway I tore down about half of it and made part into a new kennel for Pumpkin (our dog).  This is pretty much done and I'll try to do that next.

I left behind a skeleton of a small section of the other half and the 1st picture is the mostly completed playhouse that I am building for my boys.

The above is from one side - I'm going to save the front picture until I get it done, it's actually a nifty design if I do say so myself.  I have to do a few minor touch ups and then paint it and it will be the best playhouse two little boys could dream of.

This gives you some idea of what the fenced area looks like.  All these fences and posts are going to disappear as well, so I will be left with a huge slab of concrete which has bumps every 16 feet.  Not exactly sure what I am going to use this for, but I'm thinking that if I can put some holes in it here and there and plant some trees it would cease to look so ugly in a few years.

So this is one of the many things that has kept me out of trouble for the most part this summer.  I've found time to take a few pictures of sunsets that followed storms.  Neither picture really does what I saw a lot of justice, but they both turned out well.  I'll just let them speak for themselves.