We have had beautiful (60-70’s) and sunny weather most of the last month. Not necessarily a good thing, but lovely just the same.
No real news.. just working on getting more settled at the land. It’s a long and rough road.
We do live in a beautiful paradise.
Quite a big woodpecker is tearing up our log!
This was taken through the kitchen window…I adjusted contrast a bit much.
Here are a few small pics of the interior of the house. You can easily see that it is totally not-finished, or for that matter really started, except for the paint and the absolute necessities of living. We have a long way to go.
No pics yet, but we did get a new mattress, sleeping on broken down 5″ of foam was hurting both of us. We got a Spring Air with a tempur-pedic pillow top.
But the biggest step ahead has been… A NEW PROPANE REFRIGERATOR …!!!! A Servel, and now we are out of the 5 coolers we had going and the constant upkeep and runs for ice, pics next time maybe. The kitchen area is really not ‘too pretty’ right now.
That’s about it from the ‘living in the hills’ files. We are working on the water system, our pressure pump keeps dying and even the replacement pump does too, so we need to rethink how that is set up. And I am researching the whole home generator we will need for the battery array and inverter for the power system. I bet we end up with the generator first, which isn’t the way I wanted to go, but … time will tell.
And, Russel enlarged our fenced garden area in front of the house. He has wanted to do that for a long time. Raised beds I had planted years ago, had gone fallow due to either summers blast furnace heat and the deer. Now that we have all that enclosed, I may just get a bit of the gardening energy back that I used to have.
As for deer, we have a small herd of about 5 bucks who visit us almost daily. If my windows were clean enough to shoot through, I would have gotten some great shots. We have a couple ravens who we feed as well as juncos. The prettiest bird we’ve id’d though has been the Varied Thrush, which is much more striking than the common thrush that looks a lot like a robin.
We have a young buck with one antler gone who visits often. I was watching him through the binoculars while he was munching on madrone berries on the ground. I did this for quite awhile, then noticed to his left and behind the madrone tree…a trunk…not of a tree but a beast… big old granddaddy with antlers as long as my arms came slowing out of the wood onto the driveway.
He was HUGE.
And he looked at me looking at him and I would of gotten the best shots … but wouldn’t ya know it, the camera was in town as I left it there just the day before to charge and pull images off. Damn. Really, this was a rare photo opportunity that i missed.
The same day just after my deer friends continued on over the divide, our resident grey squirrel with the biggest fluffiest tail I have ever seen, was posing for me as well. AND i saw a bright PINK mushroom… all this in one day and the one day the camera wasn’t with me.
We are having a beautiful fall, for the north coast. We don’t get the great color changes that many areas of the world get, so we have to make do with the bit that comes our way.
A ‘fancy’ type of maple I think. I really like the shape, unfortunately a branch is missing from this tree, I drive by it on the way into town hope to buy one for our place soon.
Here’s some Orange sherbert clouds and sunset. I have a very narrow window through the trees to take sunset pictures.
I also uploaded a couple more Agave pics over at the gallery, EyeSee.
These will be the last in the series, as the owner is going to cut the stalks down before they come down and do damage to someone or something. They will be missed. Even before the flowering started, the rosettes always caught my eye. He did tell me that I can dig as many baby plants up as I want, I just haven’t done that yet.
Kaya is finally accumulating to the new homestead. She is going out at night a lot, as it is better for her to hunt the little critters. She is still a bit timid about the space as it is far larger and wild than town life was. She did grow up as a baby in the hills for four years, so I hope some of the savvy comes back to her.
Life in the hills is great…wish I had this computer and the power to run it safely there, and I would very rarely come into town.
We are finally into our rainy season, although we have been blessed with sunny days in between the storms for now, I believe an El Nino is forming and may account for a very wet winter yet.
Back in town for the weekend. Mostly catching up on errands, housework, laundry, but giving myself ‘quality time on the computer as well *lol*’.
I did add a few photos to my gallery, EyeSee, there’s some of the dragonfly and a couple more of the Agave. I guess the layout and look of the gallery will have to wait until I have more time, but I have more photos I would like to get up and they won!
The week went well, no major problems with any of the systems. We are using a generator for power, and it is louder than I would like and so we don’t use it all day and all night. I made some progress in the house with shelving and finding homes for stuff. It’s funny in that, there are no cabinets as yet, creative storage is the key here.
I started pulling the dead stuff out of the garden.. we still are harvesting tomatoes. The weather has been great, high 80’s and with a breeze in the afternoon and cool (low 50s) nights. Clear as a bell too with a full moon coming on…moonlight streaming through the bedroom window.
I started the huge process of cleaning out and organizing the storage shed. The shed was the first thing built on this site. It’s been there for 10 years, and it holds 10 years of stuff that wouldn’t fit in town (remember 1 room town house), or flea market finds that I knew I would use one day…and I did find a few things to actually bring into the house. This project will take weeks I am sure.
Mainly it’s quiet there. There is stuff to do at every turn and look, so it is hard for me to relax. I was busier than I would of been in town, even with out my computer. I get one tv channel (nbc) which has mostly lousy early evening programing. I do have a vcr/dvd combo on order at the local radio shack, I need to check into that.
I miss my cat, Kaya.
We’re not settled enough to bring her out there yet. Russel is spending time in both places, he is on the road a lot with teaching at the schools and bringing me ICE for the ice chests as we don’t have a refrigerator there yet either. Nor do I have a vehicle with me, Russel needs the truck for work and the ’71 VW bus would shake apart after just a couple of runs down the road, so those things are high on my list when work picks up this year.
It’s just around the corner. We have had a little rain, very little compared to what has been happening in the south and east. But just the same it is a sign of things to come… the winter rains.
I won’t be around here much at all, certainly not every day, ha! like I am now *lol* But much less, hopefully with more to say.
We’ve been working hard all summer to get the house in a much more livable space and I am going to spend a lot of time there this winter, perhaps the posts that get put here will actually have tales of homesteading and living off the grid. I hope that soon I will be able to bring my computer out there with me…then I may never come to town again!
This is a little something I took in the summer, never got around to uploading the rest of these or other photos I have to my gallery, which lays fallow until time presents itself, as does this blog redesign and the redesign of my other sites.
Hope you enjoy it!
Prezident Brown (google him!) is coming out on tour again, it looks like he may swing close enough to be able to go see him… that would be really cool. He’s playing in my old stomping grounds of Bolinas and Fairfax…that would just be too fun to go to, but there is no chance of getting to the bay area again any time soon ;(
I will try and get some good interior shots of the house with fresh paint with my Canon G3, it’s flash leaves much to be desired, and I don’t have the add on one yet.
Oh, and one other thing… a while back a certain blog woman posted a link to a word game, Weboggle. She did warn that is was addicting… I sent it to a friend. My darling husband found the link in the sent mails and now HE IS ADDICTED!
Geez, one more game to take his time away!!!
August 21 found us down the road again to Hopland and Solfest.
It was a great festival with tons of learning exhibits if you were new to or just beginning to think about solar energy or sustainable living. We mostly browsed the booths and hung out by the pond in the shade
until Bruce came on stage.
It was a good show, it was hot and dusty and he coughed quite a bit. He had lots to say and I did take notes. I am in the process of writing them up for the Cockburn Project (www.cockburnproject.net), but I just haven’t had time to do much on the computer this past week or so.
