In the snow in our yard, with hot chocolate afterward.

February we built the well-house shed, using the 2x4 lumber that was milled last year from the blow-down of the year before. It took us a month (rather than the promised weekend) to get to the stage for the well pump contractor to install the well controls, after which the electrician would wire the shed. Those occurred later in the spring.

March was for time in the snow: a week's skiing with Rashaad's and Bowen's families. We lucked out; there was a great snow dump while we were there. Not pictured are Bowen and Shad catching some of the fresh powder. I tried out my one-and-a-half-year-old new right knee on the bunny slope. It was great, but the other knee complained. More on that later.

Summer is hunter/gatherer time. As a rule, John and Bowen fish together, Bowen having become a proficient boat operator. Then we split the catch: Ling cod, rock cod, salmon, crabs and shrimp, which we freeze for winter use. Albacore we purchase and can. John assures us that none of the lures hanging from his vest has ever been known to catch a salmonid or a cod.

In late spring, back to well-house construction. Utility installation was a multi-stage process. An excavator dug trenches for the PUD cabling. The electrician roughed-in the meter pedestal; the PUD installed a junction box and a transformer. We were called in to do some last-minute trenching by hand. The electrician returned to lay conduit from the transformer to the meter pedestal and to the well house. Then the well-pump contractor installed water lines and well controls. Next the electrical contractor reappeared to connect all the well controls. Finally we back-filled all the trenches by hand.

As summer wore on, we finished up the interior of the pump house: insulation, then interior walls. We stained the exterior.

Fall brought more harvesting (with younger-generation help), canning the harvest, preparing Chewbacca for Hallowe'en.

Then off to Jackson again, this time for left-knee replacement and associated rehab.

Back home in time for Thanksgiving, both knees back in service, it's time to tackle the annual downed-tree cleanup, gifted to us by the bomb cyclone while we were gone. The only victim of this last event was an old shed, fortunately already emptied and replaced by our new pump house. The old shed was slated to be demolished as soon as we found the time, then it suffered a direct hit from a falling tree. Hint, hint! There's more work to do.