Dream Knitter: Summer home update!

I want to start this post with food ...porn. I decided to make peach cobbler a few days ago, and I absolutely love peach cobbler. LOVE. I ate most of it. Steve does not like peaches. Too bad for him!

Next up, Steve and I went over to a farmers stand orchard shop thing and picked up peaches, corn, and something I have never tried before. Green tomatos. I decided now was the best time as ever to try making fried green tomatos. They were pretty darn good. Could use more spice though, I felt they were sorta plain. But for a first try they tasted great!

Lastly for food, Steve and I made up some beer battered bluegill. When I asked the Deacon (from my school) where the good fishing places were, he handed me a bag of frozen bluegill that his friend had caught. Told me they were great beer battered. He was absolutely right.

This is also something I have never done before, but they turned out realllllly good. Like... so good I wanted to go out and catch more...
Too bad all I caught was a stupid catfish... ;)

KITTY BREAK!

Ok now onto your previously scheduled show. The summer home. If you have followed my blog you know that this has been the.... most stressful part of my life other than school. Long story short, its on an island in Indiana. The water level went down for 8 ish years, and we could not get onto the island, unless we wanted to walk through waist deep muck. So for 8 years... we didnt do any yardwork, we didnt clean, we didnt do laundry, we didn't kill any mice or bugs, we didnt turn on the electricity or water. So everything .... went downhill. Last year my brother and I went against dads will to start cleaning since the water was back up. It was bad. But we did alot of work. ---> this is the blog post from last year. It has some great pictures! http://dreamknitter.blogspot.com/2010/05/welcome-to-island.html

Ok, to continue on for this year. Our row boat was stolen a few years back. Some idiot. We think we know who it is. I want to punch him in the gut. Because it has to be him. ugh.
Annnnyways. We ended up buying a jon boat so we could get to the island to do work.

Yay!
Greg and I got ready to get some work done in the heat! Gotta love my little brother.....

Alright, Here are before and after pictures of the stuff we did in the two days we were there. (excluding stuff inside)

The front entrance-all overgrown and insane. We did a whoooole bunch of work cutting down the weeds and raking up everything.

Much better once we got all the leaves into the fire pit!

Looking down the hill at the main shed. Very overgrown and weedy.

Now all deweeded and cut down, the are by the shed was pretty much overgrown like it is next to the water. We cut some of that down and then mowed the rest.

The view from the front window out towards the lake. This used to be a view of the lake, and had turned into a bush grove.... so I took the liberty to cut all the bushes down.

And I did a great job. It was hard with the litte saw I was using, but I got it done. And then realized the area I was standing was actually.... a poison ivy patch.... Thank God for the kitchen gloves I was using to keep the bugs off of me! :)

Dad on the old swing. Not very safe...

While I was working on a bunch of yardwork, and eventually cleaning up the inside of the house with mother, Greg and dad went to the shore and built our pier. They did a lot of work. A LOT OF WORK to get those piers in. They had to clear the water of the water plants. See how the plants on on the left of the pier? Yeah, thats how it was everywhere....