Dog Days of Summer

(That saying doesn't mean what I thought it meant...)

At any rate, it's still hot, and dry.

The forecast for this past week was for heavy, soaking rain, 3 to 6 inches, and much cooler temps, down in the 80's for the highs.

Yeah...no. Not even close.

Nope, no rain for you.

Heckuva storm right up the street. Not here, tho.

 I don't have a picture because I haven't even bothered going into the garden for several days, but I lost all my pumpkin plants. Couldn't keep them watered enough, I guess, or I don't know if the sun was right?
The jack-be-little pumpkins I planted last year, which ended up in the shade until around lunchtime or so did really well.
These pumpkins get/got sun from morning until later in the afternoon, 3 - 4 o'clock. The package said "full sun", but...I don't know.
Anyway. It was probably the lack of good, soaking rain waterings.

Corn and tomatoes.

Also don't have a picture - well, I do have video, but I won't post it - we're down 4 roosters.
Two went to dinner, the other two are at freezer camp.

Still have 4 roosters left. (Not counting the last four chicks, which I think at least two of are also roos.) Trying to sell 3 of them. Not having much luck, though.

The last babies, the 4-pack, are getting big. I still don't know what kind (breed) they are, but I'm pretty sure two are roosters and the other two are probably/possibly hens. 

I went up to visit my Mom and Dad a couple of weekends ago, and ended up getting roped into shucking and putting 150+ ears of corn in the freezer.  (By myself. They weren't home.)
After several hours, I determined that corn silk's only purpose is to make you work for your meal, or torture. (Actual reason.)

I brought home a box of peaches from my Dad's fruit orchard. They were really small this year, I think because of the drought, which affected them up there also. But they were still good tasting.

I canned some of them in a light syrup. This way they can be eaten right out of the jar, or used for pie or cobbler. 
I also made 3 quarts of peach pie filling, but I think just canning them in syrup is more versatile.

We've been (fairly) hard at working on the Ugly Stairwell this summer.
I'm not really sure how that happened exactly. We had to replace the ceiling awhile back, not much choice, it was falling down, but otherwise the stairs were way low on the list of House Stuff To Do.

I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with the space as far as how it should look. It's a really tall - 16 feet high - really narrow - about 3 feet wide - space.
I finally decided it'd just be best to stick with the plain old white drywall walls (any darker color would make it look even more closed in than it already is).

So we got one side drywalled and I started mudding it, but it just did not go well at all. It was bad. To the point I even contacted someone about hiring them to fix the mess.

(Not surprisingly with my history of managing to find the worst possible candidates for hiring to do anything around here, the person never got back to me. I didn't bother trying to find any one else. I figured with my luck I'd find one to charge me a fortune to not do any better of a job than I did. )

In the end I decided we'd go with the faux planking/shiplap and cover the whole thing with wood.

Found out pretty quickly why the drywall wasn't working out too well. The walls are badly warped and wavy and weird. 

 
The boys said they kinda liked the plain natural look, but it made the tiny space look even tinier and darker.

Painted, scaffolding removed, moving on to lower wall.
I have no idea what kind of decor/art work to use in this tiny space, but it needs something to distract from the bulges and uneven gaps and other bad looking places.

(It maybe (hopefully) doesn't look as bad as I feel like it does because I compare it to the work on Fixer Upper or Blogs where people have better conditions to work with, or their husbands actually care about doing a good job rather than the least they can get by with.)

We got rusty tin put on the lower ceiling to match the rusty tin on the upper ceiling.

I mentioned thinking the space needed a light, but my suggestion was ignored. 
I went online and found some battery operated, motion sensor ceiling lights. They're not very pretty but I have an idea for making it look like it maybe goes with the rusty tin, but I haven't worked on it yet because I'm afraid I'll mess it up.  

A light I did finally work on is one of the (two) old chandeliers I pulled out of Cousin Joe's scrap metal pile.

I had originally intended to find some solar lights I liked and make them into outdoor chandeliers, but then recently, I can't remember exactly how/when the idea came from...probably something I saw on Pinterest, I got the idea to fix it into a Halloween decoration.

It's not finished yet, but here's a peek of it in progress.

Welp, that's about it from here for now.
Hope everyone is enjoying their Summer. Or, well, Season of Back to School (that I am so thankfully finished with!).

"Goodby Amigos!" ~Cisco Kid
"See you soon, ha!" ~Pancho