Retreat fun!

OK, here is the gnome house which I finished at our wonderful Elk Mtn cabin with my dear friends. There were several hollowed logs last year which we decided would make great projects for this year. I took saws, drills, construction materials and a bucket of odds and ends I had collected for embellishments for birdhouses. The "roof" I used was a piece of kitchenware found at the Goodwill with a hole in the center. We decided we could put a plant in the center. I put this in my shade garden and had been given a fern start which I decided had not lived. To my surprise, when I got home, I found that the fern had indeed lived and put up one small frond. This will be perfect for my gnome village and this is the first of many more homes to come. I will post pictures of the others my friends made later. We had so many laughs. The logs were of various thicknesses and it was a trick to use the hole saws, but with a little patience and some ingenuity we succeeded! Just to give you an idea of our workspace, this photo shows our plywood tables perched on very old saw horses. We were shaded and protected and this is next to a stream. We discovered that we had neighbors in the form of a pair of robins with 4 little babies just outside the covered area. As we laughed and sawed and drilled and made all kinds of noise, they continued to feed the babies until one fell out of the nest. The resident boxer discovered the baby and with a ladder and gloves, our hostess carefully put the baby back and we were pleased to see that it was fine and continued to be fed.