Old Chinese Proverb... "Kill the Chicken to Scare the Monkey"

Busy, busy, busy...

Mr M has been busy grouting this week... all the grouting is finished! woohoo.... amazing how much better the tiles look now!

Shower....

 

Floor...... 

And kitchen.....

He also got the all the plumbing working and the hot water tank all fitted, involved lots of faffing around with the water system, but it is in and working!

Pressure release valve, overflows down the drain to the outside...

Earthquake straps in place, at least the hot water tank won't fall over - can't be sure about the rest of us though...

 

And voila we are off and flowing...

 



I cleaned up the sink & taps for the bathroom, all ready for installation...

As are all the pipes, fancied up with shutoff valves ready to be attached to fittings and fixtures...

Our building Inspector came out this week to take a look, he is happy with everything and once our Electrical Inspector has signed off we can move in as soon as we are ready under a temporary permit, which gives us 30 days to get everything finished off for our final permit!

So we are moving right along - really don't know how much longer until we get to sleep in there :) please don't ask, as the answer will be "just 6 more weeks"!

This weekend we went to the beach for our dog walk, and found that SOLVE was taking place! What is SOLVE? it is Oregon's beach clean up! so naturally we picked up a bag and off we went!

http://solveoregon.org/what-we-do/solve-spring-oregon-beach-cleanup

I think I have mentioned before how shocked I am to see so much plastic washed up on our beaches after storms, one day all our sand will just be teeny tiny bits of plastic! We collected a whole bag and managed to drag some larger items back up the beach with our spare dog lead (spare dog lead - do we need another dog?).  The majority of what we picked up was plastic, and shockingly most of that was plastic bottle tops!

This week San Francisco has just become the first city in America to ban the sale of plastic water bottles, a move that is building on a global movement to reduce the huge amount of waste from the billion-dollar plastic bottle industry.

This is huge!! and I sincerely hope that more cities follow in their footsteps, after all with a reusable water bottle at least you know where your water has come from! The production of one plastic bottle uses energy, omits toxins into the air, and uses more water to produce than actually put into the bottle for drinking.

And there endeth my rant for the week.....  PLEASE consider us next time you are buying bottled drinks!  My back is killing me after walking 4 miles stooped over :)

WELL one of my chickens has been a bit under the weather for a week or more! I was convinced she wasn't going to make it, and we (Mr M) were going to have to do the kindest thing and euthanize her!

Have you ever googled how to humanely euthanize a chicken? well I have, in fact I spent quite some time last week on the internet, top 4 tips were:

• Decapitation - "Probably one of the oldest methods used, decapitation is a quick death for a chicken when done swiftly. You will need a very sharp, heavy knife/cleaver or a sharpened hatchet, plus someone there to hold the chicken." LOL Mr M you are on your own!
• Cervical dislocation  I cannot stress enough that you must be confident in your ability to use this method correctly. That rules this one out then Mr M.
• Use a gun or pellet gun We do have a pellet gun I am not convinced that would work! but Butch our neighbor has a real gun... I did ask him if he would take care of her if I needed him to, but he thought I was joking! Ummm no, I was serious!
• Using a CO2 ‘chamber’ At last a solution I might finally be able to get on board with! plus Mr M would get to design something, and I am sure it would be over engineered and more than capable for the job!  

So I kept on procrastinating, and poking at my chicken trying to decide if she was in the final throes of life and hoping that I would just wake up one morning and she would have passed peacefully in her sleep!

But as the old Chinese proverb tell us "Kill the Chicken to Scare the Monkey".  Good job I don't have any monkeys to scare as it seems she still has some life left in her! In fact a week on and she is looking much more like her old self! 

Giving me the stink eye....

And wondering why I keep focusing so much attention on her...

My garden is coming along.... beds are pretty much all built - next to fill them and then they are ready for planting..

Soon we will be picking some of our salad leaves, these are growing well under the watchful eye of our pole dancing gnomes!

 

Keep on Keeping On Bunty Chokin.... just one more week!