Good morning, dear reader. If you want to make your reading of today’s entry one with sensory participation resembling what many of us experienced, take the following steps:
- Turn off your air conditioner.
- Turn on some bright lamps and point ‘em right at you.
- Start a fire in the fireplace.
- Sit next to it.
- Rub some dirt and tar on your arms, face, and in your hair.
- Bend over and lift up your computer fifty times or so.
Doing all that could be key to feeling the heat of the day out in Verina, Iowa. I’ll cut to the chase and say that after our work day ended, I discovered a post on my Facebook page from Art saying the state of Iowa had declared a heat advisory and asked people to get indoors near the time we’d wrapped up for the day. Sunday looks to be even hotter, so we’ll see what happens in terms of what sort of work we do and at what time.
Paint the Town Red, White, and Blue
As you can likely tell by now, today saw us return to Verina to continue work on yesterday’s unfinished projects. If we had thought a little more, we’d of taken more “before” photos of the park because the “after” is a night and day difference in terms of a welcoming arena for gathering, playing, and town pride. The crew finished painting the bell (red for the bell, white and blue for the base) as well as the small barn (a more accurate nomenclature, I’ve been told by the youth, than when I named it a “shed” in yesterday’s post), the merry-go-round got its white panels to match the red panels and blue bars, and the picnic shelter got a fresh coat of white paint on its peaks and beamwork.
The merry-go-round received a little extra white paint in the center, which had already been painted blue. A little splatter turned into *ahem* a clearly intentional white splatter piece of artwork. Despite its accidental origins, it does look nice, indeed. The merry-go-round isn’t the only thing that received accidental painting. Stepping off of it, Kelsey managed to stick her foot onto the edge of a paint can and tipped a wave of white paint on her white shoe, leaving one side white with mud and dirt and the other side pristine white. Meanwhile, William reports the crew had to contend with not only hornet nests in the picnic shelter rafters but also “spider nests,” – large clumps of spider webs with hard clumps of wrapped egg sacs and “food.”
Later, several people got to Continue Reading »
