Sunday, Nov 11 Happy Veteran’s Day to all our friends who fought for our freedom around the world, in different wars. We have friends still living who fought in WW II, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
This morning we awoke to a chilly morning, but the temperatures were only in the high 20s and not the high teens predicted. That gives John another day to fix up the cathouse with heat and light. The cats will have to start coming into the little building for water and food, and sleeping in a warmer environment. In case you missed last year’s building (cathouse) construction, check: www.ellensburg.com/nancyh/2011cathouse.html
As my computer was starting up this morning (slowly), keeping me from visiting the web, I opened my SongWriter software and continued putting in notes for A Jolly Holly Christmas. I still need to enter chords, words, and critical markings. This is the only one I have to do because we have a bunch from last year that are all ready to go, with lyrics for the audiences.
This one was never transposed and I need to fix it for our Clarinet player. I think last year she just did it by ear, when we told her the key and the beginning note.
I knew John planned to walk me around the projects, for a photographic record and update on what happened to change the landscape, so I dressed up for the cold. I had my head covered well and my body, but I should have put on wool socks. I wore gloves, but cannot take photos with them, so my right hand got cold. John showed me first the size of the tractor used, by standing in front of the front-end loader. It is amazingly larger than ours or even than the one our pole builder used. We walked around the other side and took a photo of the first project at the end of the driveway to the pole building, where they are going to put in culverts covered by rocky “soil” to a new level height, getting rid of the sharp dip. The rear of the travel trailer scrapes now – actually 2 v-shaped metal pieces installed for protection of the trailer itself – They gouge the soil and lift the trailer. A new level drive will prevent this. From there we walked over to the round pen area, where the land is being dug and moved to allow the round pen panels to be properly seated. New panels have thick wood along the base, like this (almost) . . .
http://www.wwmanufacturing.com/images/steelsiderp.jpg
. . . with a slope in, starting halfway down. That means there is a kink or “dog-leg-bend” in them. The pen has to be on level ground for the connectors to lock in place. This style is much safer than this one:
Note the openings at the bottom that an excited/running/kicking horse can put a hoof through. One of our old ones is bent badly from a hoof hitting the intersection of the J-shaped piece where it is welded to the bottom rung. I chose this photo of the green panel because it seems to be standing up without support. Ours won’t do that!
Our ground has layers of rock right next to fine dirt/soil. The ancient stream coming out of the canyon to our north left many rock-filled channels and areas in between with sand and other finer deposited material. The rocky parts are the high spots and ribbons that run across our property. There is an outcrop of small rocks right where the round pen needs to go. The landscaper is using the big machine, now the backhoe part, to dig out the area, and separate the mostly-rocks into one pile and the mostly-dirt into another. I took pictures of the soil horizon and the activity in progress. He will use his front-end loader to move the rocks to the driveway leveling project and cover the culverts. The plans are for him to move the dirt down into a depression where John will make a large additional garden for sun-loving plants. John has had to move some fence posts (old telephone poles), three baby trees, and disentangle an old barbed wire fence, to prepare for this. He got some help with removal of the two posts yesterday. The link below transfers you to the start of our landscape change story. It will be a continuing saga, so stay tuned:
www.ellensburg.com/nancyh/LandscapeChangeNaneumFan.html
On back to clean-up, sort-out chores. Stopping for pizza, after a break to finish A Holly Jolly Christmas. Now it’s finished, transposed, and mailed to the computer (the one with a printer) in the back room. We finished a nice pizza John doctored up with adding our tomatoes, some red peppers, cheddar cheese, & BBQ sauce. It supposedly started with some cheese, sauce, and 4 meats. It was actually very good. Afterwards, I went back outside to see what John had been working on the past several hours. He put together some metal roofing (an angular piece from the top of our old barn reroofed in 2010), like this:
http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=I.4899162578224008&pid=1.7
and tied it (with baling twine) on top of the somewhat banged up concrete culverts (we got from our roofer this year as they were in his way and no longer needed). The reason for that is the culverts have some end damage and don’t fit together as designed. These breaks would allow dirt and small rocks to get inside. The metal sheeting (overlapping) is now tied in-place to be covered on the entrance driveway described above. John also put some little homemade Skunk and other critter deflectors on the ends of the pipes. He made those from plastic containers we used to use as “spit buckets” in our wine tasting for our class: Wine, A Geographical Appreciation, we taught every summer from 1998 to 2008. He made flower pots of these last year by drilling holes in the bottom. Now, with additional holes, they are culvert skunk repellers. They are white but otherwise look like this and are just the right size for the bottom (small) end to fit into the pipe and the top, being flared, stops it from going fully in.
http://www.plastic-flower-pots.com/productpic/pb_o8m31288765788.jpg
John worked until dark on some tree stuff and now is feeding the outside cats. I just took a break from loading dishes and took the pictures off my camera from yesterday and today. I have some cool ones, from the day before that, of Rascal climbing up the Nanking Cherry trees to get to the roof. I have seen him do that a couple of times, but I’ve never seen him come down (still haven’t). We assume he sees birds on the roof. Also got a couple of pictures of Annie with one of her apples. We have to get them out of reach or she steals them from a box in the kitchen or pantry. She is used to picking them up in our orchard and toting them around and sometimes back into the house, where she eats them–down to the core and leaves it on the floor. John just brought me a dish of cut up pieces of Bosc pears and Honeycrisp apples, along with some Cheetos for a treat; he said this is our hors d’oeuvres for tonight’s meal of leftovers, coming later. Dinner will be orange sauce on chicken, John’s fine fried cauliflower (beer & Bisquick), and cornbread. It is snowing again, just in time for Mr. Bulldozer man to arrive in the morning. Jeez, why? I know, Murphy’s Law at work. I just finished cropping the pictures I took today and need to go back to the Nov 4 before shots to crop them and then combine a few into a story. Now, however, I’m ready for tomorrow’s photographing session and hoping for no snow.
Monday, Nov 12 the official holiday, so I thought I didn’t have to go to exercise class today, but found out they are not taking a holiday and will take off the day after Thanksgiving instead. I guess that’s better for the people who depend on their $3.00 lunch from the AAC, because they already have it on Mondays, but have to go elsewhere on Fridays. This morning our landscaper, the Bulldozer man, returns to finish the job. That means I will be around to record the details of change.
Awoke from overnight snow to 5 inches. Haven’t seen Mr. Bulldozer Man. John has been taking snow off the ladders to cat haymow, from cars, trucks, front concrete in front of garage, used for storage (not cars), and the back patio. John came in and warmed 3 pieces of pizza for us for lunch, and he has returned out to cut down a poplar tree to be used for next year’s firewood, and to get it out of the way of where dirt and rocks will be stockpiled. The man came at 1:30 and is moving stuff around. I saw him talking to John, but I cannot tell what is going on. This is frustrating; I finally put my coat and hat on and went out to see at 3:40. Took my camera and a couple of pictures but the visibility is awful. It is quite foggy. He has managed to build up the entrance into the pole building, but it is all a muddy rocky base. Sometime later, after some touch up work, we will have to have a load of gravel spread on it. Probably after winter is over. He is currently leveling the round pen and pushing off dirt into the depression. He only has a half hour of time left, so I expect this job won’t be finished now. At first, he told John a couple days ago, that he made another appointment elsewhere, for tomorrow morning. However, late tonight he said he would be back in the morning. Who knows what time? This afternoon, John has been out covering asparagus, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberry bushes with straw. Some folks use leaves . . .
http://www.gardengrapevine.com/WinterShrubInsulationRxBC-K3559.jpg
. . . but our trees shed on rough and brushy ground and collecting them is not possible. Our neighbor gave us a dozen straw bales from an uncle’s farm – John gives his parents firewood. Not actually barter – ‘cause the exchange is so uneven in a value sense.
I wasn’t out for long and I’m very cold. Guess I didn’t need to stay home today after all, but I accomplished a fair amount. Sadly, so much more to do.
Tuesday, Nov 13 Our farrier comes today to work on 3 of the horses, and the Mr. Bulldozer Man is expected back, with his bulldozer this time. Well, the best-laid plans…our farrier came an hour early and John was not ready with the horses where he wanted them corralled near the workspace. Now that’s done and John was back in for a late lunch, when at 2:15 Mr. Bulldozer Man and son came down the driveway with the machine, but stopped short of getting in. Seemed to be having a problem with something. Now they’ve got it moved into the yard and John is out so can’t bring back news. I know nothing at this point. I do know John just fast came into the house, closed off the doggie/cat door to the backyard, and opened the back gate for the bulldozer to create a new driveway into our back yard, building it up, so it will be raised and flattened, no longer leaning downhill. I will have to go out in the sun tomorrow to take a picture from that vantage where I have the before shot.
The guys stayed bulldozing and back hoeing until after dark and they could see no more–only going by feel. That’s not my idea of good procedure with a bulldozer. John went forth and back between the two machines confabbing with the operators so they got things right. They will be back in the morning. There was a tremendous amount of dirt and rocks moved today, and I’m anxious to see it in the morning. Even if I had gone out to look this afternoon, I wouldn’t have seen much because of the heavy fog.
John came in late and went with me to town to shop while I played music. It was nice to have him along. On the way home, we stopped by Jack in the Box, and bought two Sour Dough Cheese-steak Melts, for the price of one. They were quite good–added to the finely sliced steak, red & green peppers and onions, with cheese, but probably not for $4.49 each (regular price). We shared one of them (leaving one for another day), and added a half a pear each and a half an apple each. It was fine. We enjoy using coupons to check out stuff. They don’t make much money on such sales and it is only such times we buy. I suppose the plan is for the coupon holder to buy fries and a drink (way over priced), but we don’t.
Wednesday, Nov 14 An interesting day. Started with John exercising the dogs in the fog, and about 9:30 the earth moving duo arrived. [The son ran the dozer and his dad the backhoe – both very accomplished with these big machines.] They finished just before 11:00 and loaded the dozer on its trailer for the trip home. The father drove the other unit as it is a wheeled vehicle. They had to return for a truck and to present the bill. I was not yet dressed nor was John ready to go, and John wanted me to watch for him to return and get my checkbook ready. I waited with my coat on, at the front door until 11:15, and decided I must get ready because we had to pull out at 11:30. Finally, the man came with 4 minutes to spare. I wrote him a check for almost $2000 including tax and just under our agreed on deal. Then we left and John let me off at the Food Bank, and went on himself for foot care at the AAC, and I set up to play. I decided to move the front table back to allow for our music stands to fit. We had two singers and two instruments (with singers) today. I moved a table (with 3 chairs on each side), laid my violin on the table, and after it was moved, I picked up my violin, stepped back, but the chair to my left fell backwards onto my violin, breaking an E string and a bow hair, and dropping my shoulder rest to the floor, knocking off one of the “feet”, or bending it somehow that it no longer fits. I reeled backwards, not onto the floor, but was left sitting on the table behind. Luckily, the patrons were not yet seated. It was frightening and I still do not know what happened. The chair (metal folding) fell to the floor with a loud bang. I was a little shaky after that, but went ahead and played low notes using only 3 strings. I came home and was able to put a replacement string on. We still have to fix the shoulder rest.
http://i3.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/lens19576678_1340478172a–.JPG
John returned to have lunch with us. It was Parmesan Chicken with noodles, mixed veggies, garlic bread, and a quite spicy salad of beans, onions, peppers. Dessert was homemade apple cobbler. Then we left to go to the AAC again, this time for me to go to the SAIL exercise class. He found a comfy chair and a Zane Grey book to read. We came home from sunshine requiring sunglasses in town, to patchy fog at our place and a gray overcast environment. So, another day went by without my taking any “after” pictures. Maybe in the morning. Once home, John worked outside until dark, because he was using the truck to move the heavy feeders back up closer to the barn. Now the horses can again have the run of the pasture and get into the old barn for cover if they want. It’s so nice to have the pole building for storing our hay, and not have to fit it into the little old barn, which was not truly built for that purpose.
Thursday, Nov 15 Early morning phone call from one of the people in our music group that he had to take his wife in at 11 PM last night and didn’t get home from ER till 5:00 AM. They suspect gall stones. He was calling to say the two of them would miss today. She is doing better.
Then, John took me for a walk around all the bulldozing and backhoe accomplishments. Wow, there was even more than I realized had been completed. Almost 98% of what John hoped for was done. There are a few finishing touches that he will do using our tractor, the old pickup, and trusty hand tools. I took a ton of pictures, and now have to work them into my continuing photo essay of before and after landscape change.
John stayed home today to finish up several yard projects while it wasn’t raining or snowing. From the newly landscaped places he sifted and moved a lot of dirt adjacent to our baby yellow raspberry plants. He mixed dirt that hadn’t seen the sun for thousands of years with the compost to create a soil next to the 3 new plants. Now it is their job to grow roots – increase and multiply — into this space. As well, he trimmed a bunch of trees (wildlife viewing improvement) behind our house and this also gives us a better view of the “hole in the ground” (Jay’s Folly) back there, and he trimmed a bunch of trees out on the front main driveway too.
I went in alone and played in the afternoon at Dry Creek. That’s always a fun place because the people will participate very well singing, and at least one will get up and dance. (She was a Geography Dept. secretary for 27 years.) Wow, it went well today, with 10 people there (2 banjos, 3 guitars, a mandolin, 2 violins, a clarinet, and a vocalist. We were late starting because somehow we were left off the schedule. No clue why, as we have been going there for years, at the same time, but we had a great audience turnout anyway. We had to wait for an exercise class to finish so we could use the armless chairs and not interrupt the class. Then I had to run back to my car because I brought in the wrong set of music lyrics. I was worn out by the time we ended, and I also had a card for us all to sign for the lady who had the ER experience. I had taken pears, apples, and onions to share with the musicians, but they didn’t take all of the apples and pears. I took the box of apples back inside and gave some to many of the residents. One of my favorite admirers, in a wheel chair and on oxygen, commented, “Not only do you come fiddle around with us for an hour, but you also bring us apples!” (Nice to be appreciated). From there off to the P.O. to mail the card, and on to the University to deliver some library books to my co-author of the hay project, give another to our political geographer (on international boundary disputes), and to take the rest of the apples and pears to our secretary. On to the vet for Shay’s thyroid pills, but not before visiting with a couple of colleagues. Their quarter ends a week earlier than when I was teaching (Finals week is the first week in December). Boy, am I happy to be retired. I guess it was another busy day.
Friday, Nov 9 I thought I had a scholarship luncheon today, but I had written it wrongly on the calendar. I have no reason to go to town, just for one thing. So, I have been working on various projects. Late last night I finally uploaded photos from Jim Huckabay’s Retirement Party that I took with the intention of putting on a CD as a gift to him and his wife. However, while the 90 pictures would fit on one CD, the videos I took would not all fit on one CD, perhaps on a DVD, but not everyone’s computer has a CD/DVD reader. I initiated a SkyDrive account (using my hotmail account), because one needs a live.com access to use it. I uploaded my pictures, and am slowly uploading the videos. I’m able to share everything with edit capabilities, so that the Huckabays (or any viewer for that matter) can add to the captions people’s names I do not know, and they can also share with anyone they wish (who has a computer Internet access). I need to work on some songwriting software to make ready to go to the Bluegrass Jam Sunday afternoon at the Grange, and take along some copies of music for people to join in singing. It’s John’s pet peeve that more people don’t do that, and involve everyone more. No one in the group and audience can hear most of the words anyway, because microphones are not used. I think the first one I’ll finish is one I started 2 weeks ago, Blowin’ in the Wind. I will add Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes, and possibly some others. I’ll Fly Away is always a popular one, and perhaps I will take another spiritual. We had an early dinner (for us), and John is making Brownies with our walnuts. (I frosted them after they cooled).
We had a wonderful conversation this afternoon with Joel Andress, who was a cartographer here at CWU when I arrived. He was around for another year, before retirement. When he retired, he and his wife moved back to the area where he grew up in upstate Vermont. This summer he was diagnosed with a brain tumor like the one that killed Senator Kennedy. Thankfully, we just heard today that the summer and early fall of radiation has miraculously set back (cured) the tumor. That is the best news I have heard in a couple of years.
Saturday, Nov 17 I went to bed early last night but awoke at 3:30 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep, but finally did, and then slept in late (so that rested me !!). John fed the horses and exercised the dogs (and moved a few rocks around) while a light rain fell. The rain seemed to increase and so we decided to go visit our friend in the hospital and go get some compact oil heaters from Bi-Mart (on sale for 2/3-rds price). We ate a hot sandwich of cut up bratwurst, cheese, and egg, and drove to Yakima. We spent a ton of money ($345) there and filled our car with gas as well, at the best price we have seen in years, $3.239/gal. Part of the grocery bill actually was $39 of stuff for our neighbor who has MS. I got my exercise walking around Costco because they didn’t have any electric (riding) carts available. I did fine. We bought so much stuff so we do not have to go back again until after Christmas. The place was a zoo today, but it will be much worse in the next 5.5 weeks. Came on back in the rain (and low hanging clouds), and went by the hospital to visit our friend with the gall stone(s). We thought she would be there until Monday, when they would decide whether or not to operate, but as we went in the room, she was sitting in the chair and they were working through the paperwork to send her home. We visited her and her husband for a while, and then they were ready to dress her and release her. I think if we’d been a half hour later, we’d have missed the whole thing and been quite surprised.
We got home just before dark, after a stop at the neighbors and a short visit with mutual friends visiting her, picked up our mail, and loaded a lot of food into the house from the car. John went to feed the horses and then returned to take the dogs for their afternoon exercise. All of that we managed to do before it started raining. Now it’s coming down pretty good. We had a wonderful dinner. Last night John slow-cooked petite sirloin steaks with onions, tomato sauce, and barbeque sauce. It cooked for 12 hours, so it was nice and tender. Just the way I like it. We no longer eat steak because I cannot easily chew it. Tonight, he cut up one large carrot – like the largest one in this image
http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=I.4627630465286548&pid=1.7
and baked it, along with some potatoes, and then heated the beef mixture, which we poured over the potato. Boy, was that a dinner fit for royalty!
Now I must stop and get this to John to post, and I will try to make more progress on the before and after landscaping story for which I gave you the link above. Please check back, because there’s no way I can finish it in one day.
Hope your week was a good one.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan