December 1st, 2008
by Alan
in
goings on, images |
No Comments →
I find myself recomposing this entry. I had it set to publish on the 31st of November. I think that confused the system and now the post is nowhere to be found. No matter. Winter has still come. In the first version of this post, I reflected on my poor winter photography. I’ll let you be the judge. See if your eye enjoys what can be seen in the cozy frozen country.
A few of the shots might appear randomly below. More shots of the snowy landscape can be seen in the 2008 Flowers and Farm gallery link on the right. Winter begins on page 7 of gallery.
November 30th, 2008
by Alan
in
goings on, images |
No Comments →
The holiday weekend is nearly over. The leftovers are nearly finished. Time to get back to work!
A bunch of snow welcomed us home to Iowa yesterday. A different bunch of snow ushered us out of Colorado. Snow seems to have hastened the collapse of poorly structured hoop house in the garden. The wind helped peel off the plastic even before we left for the weekend, but now the demise is complete. Bummer.
All is certainly not lost. We can rebuild him. But we have likely missed our opportunity to bury the edges of the plastic. My backup plan is to sandwich the plastic edges with 2×4’s and stack rocks and bricks on top of the 2×4’s. And I need to build a door on the one edge. But not today. Today is an inside day.
November 11th, 2008
by Alan
in
goings on, images |
1 Comment →
It occurred to me today that there isn’t a room in the house that might be considered finished. That says something about our ambition, but also about our apparent incapacity to finish anything. It is now my goal to actually finish a room every month. That’s actually really generous of me. It would take most people a week and they would just be done with everything. But I like to puzzle things out before I start building. Deconstruction is quick, but construction takes time. I like to anticipate problems and contemplate alternatives. And we opened up a huge can of contemplation this last weekend when we ripped out the kitchen ceiling.
We were inspired by Better Homes and Gardens magazine, of all things. There were plans, loose ones, to fix the sagging and deformed kitchen ceiling, but those plans seemed to be for the distant future. But then we saw the pictures in the magazine and thought, hey, we could expose the beams in our kitchen too. And so we did. It was extremely dirty. I recommend wearing a mask for this job. Goggles would be good too. I’m still picking dust from my eyelashes.
The truck is full of plaster. We burned up the lath. The plan now is to think some more about how to fix it up. We will probably paint the beams white. Need to insulate the walls a little and patch up the gaps with wood or drywall, not sure which would be better. And then trim it up. We might add some cool timber framing accents here and there too. Why not? That would be a good project.
November 9th, 2008
by Anne
in
goings on |
No Comments →
On the far edge of our property sit a couple of decent-sized mulberry trees that look as though they were braided. They were obscured behind a huge old rotted stump that I felled by pushing it over. The wood was so rotted that I didn’t need Alan’s big biceps. I hacked it up into mulch and spread it around the trees. It will be great food for them (not that mulberries need it).
To the right of the mulberries is a wild cherry growing more or less horizontally. It was beautiful before it dropped it’s yellow leaves. As you can see I didn’t get my butt over there with the camera in time. I have just made a mental note to get over there in early spring in time for the blossoms.
November 6th, 2008
by Anne
in
goings on |
No Comments →
Susan's Cabin, aka The Sue Shack
Alan’s brother, David, built a work studio that he calls “The Dave Cave”, so Alan and I have started calling my mom’s new cabin “The Sue Shack”. Check out freshly painted door and trim. When it snows it’ll look like a little gingerbread house. All guests are welcome to stay here. Unfortunately this offer doesn’t appeal to everyone as there’s no bathroom or running water. But there’s a nice thicket of willows about 50 feet away.
