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This Christmas, my uncle Russ, my dad Mo, and a helper named LuJu, started a pine bench with me from a downed tree.

I can’t speak fir the others, but I am an inexperienced woodworker. I had fun whacking my thumb a lot, and with Russ’s / Mo’s sage advice, the log began to resemble a bench.

Despite a full day of chipping, we were nowhere near done, and needed the space for a socially-distanced gathering. We flipped the bench over as a seat, and took pictures sitting on it.

After Christmas, the log was still heavy with water weight. It dried on a table by the wood stove for weeks, and then finally used a nice Stiel saw to shave off the bottom half. Legs and bracing are built from broken shovel and broom handles.

After the bench grew legs, and became a welcome addition to the workshop, we invited others to have a seat!

This bench is unique. It has individual bucket seats like a race car, a baseball bat leg, and has not been treated with an epoxy resin.

With almost no time left on the clock, Julia and Lu pulled out of the driveway, Lu driving as slowly Juniper Hills ex employees around 3:45 in the afternoon. His white truck turned left, and my mom and dad, who I live with, turned to walk the dog, Annabelle, in the opposite direction. Briefly, I decided my plan was to spend time in the studio, and ascended the steps to the second floor of the workshop.

It was a good weekend for all. We are mid-Corona Virus outbreak and for the first time in six weeks, we had guests at our house. Some small social interactions changed, like my parents did not hug as much as they once would have, my dad did not pound on anyone’s chest like he could have. Instead, my parents embraced humor, laughing at one another, their circumstance and our unique behaviors: Julia, for example, taught Annabelle to “stay focused,” during their five mile run around the lake, which we found hilarious.

Caring for animals, exploring and celebrating Julia’s accomplishments were highlights of the weekend. We obviously spent time and attention on our family dog, but we also learned more on Sperm Whales from Lu than ever before. Beavers, having dammed up a stream behind our house, announced their presence into our sphere, much like the large Pileated Woodpeckers with their evening calls and bright red heads. We learned the birds migrating to Maine and told stories about their breeding behaviors: from the Buffalo Head birds bobbing their domes in and out of the water to attract females, to Osprey returning to their nests (which they do year after year), to Vultures taking Osprey nests, and to the long run-out Buffalo Heads make when they hit the water. The Atlantic Puffin, as rare and exotic as some extinct species, can be seen on an island near Maine. All of this, and more, we beheld in our imaginations, through the lore told by others, and made painfully aware of its accessibility if only you are willing to go outdoors and observe.

Exploring can be as simple as getting reacquainted with your property, trying a new food, or speaking some broken Spanish.

When the two love birds first came to Juniper Hill Farm, we strolled around the property, exploring a new patio to the rear, raised beds, a “man town shed turned boat storage”, the garlic garden, and various other stops. The short stories that accompanied each stop on the tour—as if Ju had never heard them before—shocked a sense of regularity of the place that there was no awkward or abrupt end to.

As effortlessly as Lu drove down the driveway, so did the tour carry a very natural progression, like a freestyle rap in the back seat of someone’s glee cruise, it brought us inside hungry for more. We dug into the Goya tin Lu brought to share. Complete with crackers and cream cheese, the Guava paste snack was so new and delicious I practically ate the whole tin myself. It peeled away from the edges of the can line a strip of tape off fresh paint—very clean. Unlike the leave-no-traces tidy ness of Guava paste and sugar, however, our collective Spanish and French were not so immaculate, in fact if it were not for Lu, I’d say we are all desperately clinging on to English for support. Saying El clima es basura, the weather is garbage, and adding “ito” to the end of our names may not have staked a new path to fluency in another language, but it did elicit a smile, and tie the twine on another day of being a family.

Patio is in. I’m grateful, because it was a hard process and that made it more satisfying. There are some really good pictures of Lu, Julia and I jumping onto it —as a celebration of Julia’s Doctorate PhD. They’re here for the weekend, and it’s a good reason to celebrate.

We’re planning a cookout tomorrow and hope to make use of the space again then. In this above photo, the perennials sitting left of the patio are not installed. They are: Spearmint, Allegheny Spurge and a Mt Airy Fothergilla. The last two are known as shade plants and will have to be moved or shaded behind something larger. I’m not sure what yet. Perhaps I’ll transplant the Spirea Mo- wants to move. But for now, the grass is in, its growing and I look forward to watering it tomorrow am.