2/14-16/06 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 1:00. There was snow in Seattle when I left, but there was no new snow at the property. It was pretty cold so the old snow was frozen stiff. When I pulled in, I noticed that the culvert was plugged up so water was running across the road and across my driveway. I took my long-handled shovel out and cleaned out the debris so the culvert was flowing again.

I brought six quarts of varnish with me and some more fallen branches. I hauled the branches to the compost pile and brought the varnish into the trailer. A flock of jays came around so I fed them a couple rounds of peanuts. After lunch, I cut steps in the snowbank down to the trailer. The frozen snow had made it pretty slippery and dangerous so the steps helped a lot.

I went to work and sanded all the logs that were due for another coat of varnish and then got a start planing and scraping the gable logs.

On Wednesday, it was clear and cold. I finished planing and scraping three gable logs. Two of them were lumpy and hard to do. The third one was a nice straight pure white lodgepole pine and it was easy to plane. I hardly had to do any scraping at all on it. I really appreciated it. When the logs were ready, I took the tarps down, swept off the scaffolding, and vacuumed the logs so they were ready for varnish.

I fed the flock of jays again several times during the day. In the evening before I went in, I sat and listened to two owls hooting. They hooted in about the same patterns that they had done before. It was a beautiful clear still quiet evening. Very pleasant.

On Thursday morning it was cold and clear again. I varnished the final coat on the three Grid E logs. Then I varnished the next coat on the end of the Ridgepole, and the top seven gable logs. I left for home at 1:30.

I have been thinking about my plans for the summer and I have decided to begin work on the three staircases. Having the Boy Scouts there made it clear how much better it will be to have staircases. I will have to do some concrete and rock work for the outside staircases and I can't do that in the winter. So as soon as the snow is gone, I will switch from varnishing to concrete and rock work no matter how far I get varnishing. Then when the staircases are complete -- except maybe for the railings --, I will return to varnishing and chinking until that is done.

I have done a rough inventory and I am pretty sure that I have plenty of log slabs for all the treads. I have also identified some logs and some trees that I am sure will provide me with enough structural logs. I haven't yet figured out what to do for the deck planks for the back deck. I may end up ripping some more logs, but I'll figure that out later. I am getting sort of excited about the prospect of doing some more log work. I like to do that.