Cairns' Cairns

One of our many stone walls borders the woods on one side of our driveway. We've always thought that, since we are the Cairns, it would be appropriate to have some cairns along that wall. Stones are heavy so the project had to wait until we had stones that needed a home.

Our basement has a number of windows. The ones in the older part of the basement are above ground level but the 3 in the newer basement have window wells. The wells were constructed of stacked field stones which, with the holes of some burrowing rodents, tended to turn into aquariums when the snow melted too quickly.

My project this Spring was to replace the stacked field stones with fiberglass rings that the water wouldn't get through. I suddenly had more stones than I knew what to do with.

The old wall was kind of flimsy so we used most of the stones to build it up. We did save the best stones to finally build 3 cairns along the wall.

-JC-

Oakham Center National Historic District

It's been about 3 years since we heard that our house is a part of what was being submitted as the Oakham Center National Historic District (to be administered by the National Park Service). It had apparently been a work in progress until the person responsible died. We heard about it because someone else had picked up the baton.

We attended a meeting back then and then heard nothing else. Suddenly, things have gotten hot again. There's a local information meeting tomorrow night and a final decision meeting in Boston on June 12.

The last 2 days, we've found groups of fifth graders (and their parents and teachers) standing on the front lawn. Apparently, each kid was assigned a house to research and write a paper about. The groups were apparently stopped on the lawn while the papers about our house were read.

Yesterday, Kristen was at the market while I washed window screens. I saw all of this and thought "What the heck?". Today, we were both working out front when another group showed up. We decided to join them for the reading. The student didn't have everything quite right but it wasn't the place for us to try to set them straight. Kind of cool though.

I'm sure that we'll have more to report later...

-JC-