The Weekend In Pictures

Walked outside a few minutes ago to feed our cat and noticed one of my banana trees is about to give birth to a nice batch of baby bananas. Me, all smiles.

Our weather is, fair. Has been for a week or so; clear dry days with highs in the lower eighties. I can't wait until the weather improves. Beautiful weather, to me, would be a rainy windy day with a high of about forty-five.

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As promised here are the pictures from our group workday. I'm sure many of you remember our retreat suffered from a very bad (historic) flood. The aftermath and clean-up has taken many months of hard work. Overall we have been very lucky. Many of the area residents lost the homes. We count our blessings.

All my friends arrived early and by the time I appeared (remember, I work for a living) had accomplished much. They had repositioned the outhouse and the old travel trailer adjacent to the Boar's Nest. We use the trailer for storage.  Senior sleeps in the outhouse. He's funny that way....

I was greeted by the younger crowd with their usual gang related hand signs. Class tells. Senior is the dude hiding his face. Kids...what can I say. We need them for the heavy lifting and comic relief.

Above, another shot of Senior hard at work on a bag of Mountain House.

Our 'shooting shed' was destroyed by the flood and needed to be rebuilt. After lunch we tackled the mess the flood left behind and after several hours of hard work we had the structure replaced. We'll complete the project next month. Above Duke hard at work. I've posted this picture of Duke for my lovely friend, kymber.

Above, Senior and Pirate Jim. If you're ever in a jam these are two guys you'd want in your foxhole.

As an aside we've decided to build a three gun range....should be fun.

We have a beautiful retreat.

Above, a very special young man. This is the son of my best friend, Pirate Jim. His name is Brandon and Brandon is special because he's closer to God than you and I. We're lucky to have him. He's a very hard worker and gives out hugs whenever or wherever they're needed. Brandon senses when a person is in need of support and without question walks over and 'hugs.' He always leaves me with a smile. In this picture he's inspecting the installation of one of the structures load bearing supports.  That 'log' took five grown men, and Senior, to place. Sucker was heavy.

Here we have ShooterSteve. He's shooting nails into a stud behind this old set of school lockers we've just placed. We use the cabinets for range storage such as targets, tape, sand bags and spare hearing protection. We had to dig them from beneath the old collapsed structure and as you can plainly see they've seen better days.   

That's it folks. It was a good day. Now, I need to get to work.

Take care.

Stephen