Fawn Season

Hide and seekThese fawns are probably just a few weeks old.  They’re tiny little things, not much bigger than our cat.

We learned a few things about fawns the other weekend. The mother deer sometimes leaves them while she goes off and forages.  And they just nap.  Like, all day.  Just sit there and hide in the grass.  We didn’t want to get too close to them because we didn’t want to spook them, but I got a few pics.

Mom's back Mother finally returned later in the day and picked them up.  Would have been nice if she paid us for day care service since we looked after them pretty much all afternoon.  But no.  She just came by and ate more of our grass.


Raspberry
And she stuck her tongue out at me.

Punching Bag Brackets

 

Sad and LonleyFor months, my punching bag has sat in a lonely corner in the garage, with ladders and push brooms leaning on it like it were a garbage sack full of leaves.  Before that, it lay in an even lonelier corner in a storage unit far from here.  It once held a position of honor, a place we went to create copious amounts of sweat and expend kinetic energy.  It was a staple of my workouts.

The PlansOnce we built this garage, I didn’t think the joists would be strong enough by themselves to hold the bag up.  They probably were, but the engineer in me really likes to over-fortify things.  So I thought to make these large brackets to help spread the load out and stabilize the joists it hangs from.

I’ve got a plethora of scrap lumber, not the least of which a few 2 x 12’s just waiting to be sawn into something useful.  Some people pay extra money for wood that looks distressed or a little weathered; I got it coming out of my ears.

Reclaimed Wood

The piece on the left is as I found it.  The piece on the right is after sanding.  Turns out very nice.

Here they are being cut and sanded down.  No matter what you do to construction lumber, it’s always going to look like construction lumber.  But if you cut and sand carefully and give it some crisp edges and shape it carefully, it doesn’t have to look like you have 2×12’s sticking out of your wall.  I had some leftover sikkens, which is basically linseed oil with some pigment to it, and that worked great for wood treatment.

Ready to be punched Installed

The final product works great.  I still need to adjust the chain a bit but otherwise the bag takes impact well and I don’t feel like I’m going to pull the whole roof down when I work out.

 

The Riddle of the 38 Pots

When we bought the house, the deck was bordered by these terracotta pots.

Pots

 

Thirty eight of them.

Seriously, pots

They ringed the entire house.  Most of them were empty, or has moss growing in them.  Those that were not empty were filled with hardpan, weeds and mold.  This travesty could even be seen from space:

Space View

To create this abomination, someone had to take a saw and cut thirty eight circular holes in the plywood that went around the deck.  That probably took all day and burned a six pack of beer in the process.  Who would do such a thing?  What manner of madness would compel someone to construct this affront to common sense?  I have been attributed with an inhuman amount of patience, but even I would only make it to the third cut out before I said “screw this shit” and stopped doing it.

gnaws at the mindStaring at those pots day after day on our deck gnawed our minds from the inside out.  Not only did it look tasteless and tacky, but it made no logical sense.  Were we really going to put potting soil in every damn one, pay money (real money not monopoly money but legal tender for all debts public and private) for plants that for all intensive purposes is just DEER FOOD.  You may as well just fill them with kibbles and bits and let the critters go to town.

Yeah, we’d had enough.  We took the pots out, and got a bunch of slate tiles to put in their place.  I haven’t yet cut the angled ones, but as far as I’m concerned they look lovely.

Home Improvement didn’t stop there this weekend.  No sir.  We also went down to Bullock’s Nursery here on the island, which is like no nursery you’ve ever seen.  It’s basically a hippie commune and among the many things they do they sell plants.  And like a farm, they have chickens walking underfoot while you shopped.  Never been in a nursery with chickens.  Anyway, the people there were very friendly, knowledgeable and helpful.  We were quite grateful they took the time to help us out since we’re coming from a completely different climate.  We went in intending to just get some barberry and lavender; simple and deer proof.  But like kids in a candy shop, we ended up buying all sorts of fun things.  They may even be deer resistant too.

We worked pretty hard today, getting all those plants in and the rocks set down.  Our ground here is soft and digs pretty easy, but it’s very, very rocky.  Just digging a hole for one plant and you’ll pull out some rocks the size of a small head.  The plants look great, and so far the deer have sniffed them but they haven’t nibbled.  We left the underside of the deck open, for now at least.  We also left the wooden beams as a border for the planting area.  I hate them and someday they will go away, but for now they serve a purpose.  And I got a hundred and ninety things on my to do list before I go and fix something that isn’t broken.

We did keep a few pots.  If you look closely at the pic of the one with the mushrooms you’ll see the snail I found today.  He seemed pretty happy and looked right at home with the mushrooms and weeds and moss and stuff.  It’s been critter overload around here lately; bees the size of dogs, bald eagles, raccoons, turkeys, deer, you name it.

I did notice one thing – those pots were made in Italy, and they’re pretty good quality.  I actually expected them to crumble in my hands as I removed them but only one or two were even cracked.  Whatever madman came up with this idea obviously really loved it.  There’s no other possible reason.

This is snow

Yep, snow.It hasn’t snowed a millimeter on the island so far this winter, but we took a road trip that went over Snoqualmie Pass and got our snow fix for the winter.  It’s on the mainland just east of Seattle.  Everyone told us the horror stories about how bad the weather could get up near the summit.  Snow, wind, ice, slippery roads, California drivers, all of it.  But we got up there and honestly it wasn’t much different than my drive to work in Denver.

Chains were required at the summit on the eastbound trip, unless you have four wheel drive which fortunately we do.  It was a bit snowy for a stretch of about 10 miles but once we got out of that it was clear and sunny and the roads were dry.  And it was raining and wet on the west side.  So we pretty much got all kinds of weather in one day.

Landscaping ideas

We walked around town the other day looking for landscaping ideas.  It’s getting a little nicer out, the days are longer, and we’ve even heard whispered rumors that the sun has been shining here and there.

Our property doesn’t get much direct sunlight, but the plot is pretty well cleared and we get a lot of daylight.  We’re going to build a fenced courtyard between the house and garage so we can plant things that would normally be considered deer food.  I’m considering getting a large tiger to help fend them off.

The really nice thing about here is everything stays green, even through the winter.  That will be a nice change.

That compass was kind of neat.  I bet those things are cheap, too.

Rainbow

IMG_1136The sun came out the other day.  Not that we could see it.  We’re on the north face of a mountain, and the sun rises and sets behind it so we don’t get to see it directly from about October until April.  But we did see a rainbow, and we’re pretty sure it was caused by the sun.  So we know it exists somewhere.

On a clear day we can see the mountains in Canada.  Maybe one day out of a hundred.  They’re usually obscured by clouds and fog, but once in a while they reveal themselves.    These big magenta crystals rising above the mist and the water.  IMG_1143It’s pretty neat.

 

Busy Weekend

We were awoken at 8 am Saturday to a sharp tapping, as if some madman un-gently rapping, rapping at our front door.  ‘Tis some madman, we believed, and nothing more.

Thinking perhaps it was the sheriff, or some neighbor’s morning mischief, rapping at our dilapidated front door.  ‘Twas some neighbor and nothing more.

But our locale is so rural that we though it was inconceivable that a person would rap so for no reason at all.  Whoever came out here to knock on our front door, came with a purpose.

So we answered with bathrobes flowing and discovered it was no madman but instead a deliveryman who possessed our prized clothes dryer, the undamaged version to replace the damaged one that was delivered to us not six weeks ago.

Joy of joys, we unexpectedly received our undamaged dryer which now sits side by side with its matching washer.  Laundry ahoy!  The photograph beautifully captures the golden hue of the linoleum tile upon which it rests.  And if you look really close, you can see me in the reflection of the knob taking a picture of it all.

Beside that, it was a weekend of setting cement backerboard and measuring tile and stepping on carpenter ants.  Fun stuff.  We did get the tile set by the front door, at least.