Paint, and Wind, is the story

       The wind has been unrelenting for the past three days, yesterday it was accompanied by 3 inches of rain. Today the sun is rich and full and the light is beautiful, but the wind will blow you off the face of the earth if you don't hold on! Wind is not a good thing at Shore Side Farm. Wind travels directly through this old house of Shore Side Farm and we freeze. Thankfully today is not freezing, but it is darn cold from the wind. We can't even get the heat to maintain at 68 on these sort of days. The wind is coming from the west, but it travels across 3 miles of 45 degree water before it comes into my livingroom and it is darn cold.  
      The birds are having difficulty flying because of the wind, so I have lots of visitors at my bird feeders. That is a small joy, I enjoy watching them. For some nebulous reason I find it soothing to watch them. I guess we each have our own peculiarities.
       I took a walk outside this morning and the rain seems to have anchored my plants into the ground, a good thing since they would have blown away with all this wind! Just overnight the day lillies I have in pots doubled in height. I thought that was pretty amazing. I still have not started my veggies. Not a good thing. We are losing time. So much to do and so little time to do it.
      There was some progress on the house yesterday. Mr scraped and stripped windows, moldings, and doors in preparation to do some painting. 140 years of paint coats make for a rough peeling surface...

Scraped, their surface looks brand new, well at least the molding do.

 I regretted having to paint the moldings because the wood looked great just scraped.




 The doors didn't scrape clean, but it is certainly a better surface for painting than the alligatored surface.




As for painting itself. It is arduous. All of the windows and doors in the diningroom were painted a medium blue.

That blue is like a sponge. So far three coats, one of which was a primer, have been put on the doors,windows and moldings and they still need a fourth coat to try to smooth out the white color to an even finish.









Well at least the doors do, or else three coats still leaves you with shadows of blue.

The fouth coat is the charm. It looks clean and bright.

This place is the black hole of effort. I can't help but think it is not going to be worth it. By the time we are done we will be too old to enjoy it.  We just have too many miles through the speedometer to justify the time it is going to take to finish this project. It is getting me down.
          I'll add some timely editorializing at this point. This winter has been the winter equivalent of the summer of the locusts. We had three blizzards that literally and figuratively froze us and the whole area. We have had enough winds to relocate the Sahara Desert to North America, and enough rain for Noah to float his arc. In the last two weeks we have had so much rain that my neighbors normally dry meadow has turned into a pond, and a pretty one at that. I realized that collection of water was turning us into an island. It is pretty, though misplaced. It makes another beautiful waterview from our home. Take a look. Oh ,also seen in the photo is my fun house plant project for the winter. My pink Oleander. It is blooming indoors bringing me the tropics...a joy...and awfully pretty!