outdoor projects and training day

This weekend we got to go outside. This season has been very strange with record breaking rain and so our outdoor projects have been hit and miss, but this weekend we finally assembled the parts of the wall that were tentatively in place last year. This included taking old sections of iron fence and grinding it down, priming and painting it. One problem that had to be solved was the fact that one of these fence sections was seriously bent on a slant. Thinking this would be easy to hammer out Bryan and I were shocked when reality had another plan. Hammering didn't do it. Next course of action... my husband screwing the whole thing to our deck and then hanging off of it hoping that his body weight would bend it...

nope.

Final and last resort... enter the mighty Element.

Yea, I know, sounded kinda crazy to me too.

Bolting the fence to a railroad tie and then chaining the fence to the Element, Bryan hoped for an easy bend...

ya think?

As he backed up the car the fence indeed bent, but once he gave it slack to our surprise it actually bounced back. Determined not to give up, and frankly really needing this section of fence to be ok, he persisted. A combination of pulling and hammering finally got the thing into shape. I really wish I had a picture of it because it sounds like a fish story now.

At any rate, here is a before and after of the fence section.

At the same time as we were working on our fence and wall something magical was happening. For weeks now I have had a pair of blue jays nested under our deck. And today it was time for flying lessons. This little guy found his first few practice flaps in the safety of my grapevines. He was the tentative of the three babies, and their eagerness ended up being their undoing as they flapped right into our neighbor's yard (the cat people). Stopping our work we cringed as we could only assume that the screeches from the parent jays indicated certain doom for the first two. But this little guy managed to make it. It was really amazing to witness the instruction of the two parents as this newly plumed infant awkwardly took to the air.