Fires to the Right of Us...

No matter where you live, you no doubt are getting some news coverage now of Colorado's numerous wildfires.  So far, we are OK here in Eldora and, in fact, had just a bit of rain late yesterday and last night.  Things don't look or feel quite as crispy as they did yesterday morning.


Although the fire in Colorado Springs seems to be the worst right now, there was a fire in Estes Park on Saturday...that's about 46 miles north of the cabin...and there is one in south Boulder as well.


Because I left my camera power cord at the apartment, I am still unable to post any photos, but just wanted my few (buy loyal) readers apprised of the situation here.


I have had a very productive few days here at the cabin and will just wait until I can post photos to provide any detail.  The high point was that I was able to get the glass out of the hutch doors so was able to rectify my painting error and the secretary is all assembled and fully stocked.  I did many other chores here and, although it appears my sister and her husband are not coming to vacation in the cabin in July, may not come at all or may not come until August, if they walked in today, they would be able to deal with the current situation nicely.  There are still a number of things I'd like to do before they come, but the weather has cooled off just a little...it's only going to be 94F degrees in Boulder today...and I'm going to take another load of things down to the apartment and then try to make myself go to the storage and bring out at least one more load to sort through.  What fun.  At least my erratic energy level seems to be way up so I'm striking while the iron is hot.


I'll leave you with this photo from last June...

Think cool and wet.  More later, Teddee

Home Again

Yes, this little cabin still feels like home.  I spent all of the past week at the apartment in Boulder during some of the hottest weather the city had suffered through so far this summer.  And I thought I'd seen the last of triple digit temps when I happily departed Phoenix!  Unfortunately, the apartments are very hot.  They only have one unit air conditioner in the bedroom and there is absolutely no air circulation out into the living room and kitchen.  I looked for a fan at the thrift stores last week but, of course, in the midst of a heat wave, found none.  The unit a/c does keep the bedroom cool enough for sleeping, but is totally insufficient for cooling the rest of the apartment.  Other residents have told me that until a year ago they had no a/c unless they purchased a window unit and installed it themselves!  I don't know how they managed.

I made one trip to my storage unit on Sunday and two on Monday and I think one on Tuesday.  I've lost track.  I did finally remember to take some photos after taking out the first--and worst--load, but just realized this morning I'd left the power cord for my camera at the apartment so am unable to post any of the photos I've taken since I left here last week.  Just to break the monotony, I'll post a few shots I took here in Eldora last June...

It is quite hot and dry here in the mountains as well, and as I reviewed and edited these photos from a year ago, I'm impressed with how much further along all the blooming flowers are this year as a result.  The wild roses are in full bloom already, something I missed last year when I spent July in Tacoma.  The high in Eldora today is predicted to be 84F degrees.  I'm showing about 82F degrees at 2:30 p.m.  My neighbor said Eldora had received no rain during the days I was in Boulder and the grasses in the meadow are sounding crunchy.  One can only keep one's fingers crossed that no one thoughtlessly drops a cigarette.  It's predicted to be 102F degrees in Boulder today, tapering off to 96F degrees by Wednesday.  The high here in Eldora on Wednesday will be 77F degrees.

I think I have possibly five or six more carloads of stuff to remove from my storage unit.  I have until July 14 and have already alerted management that I'm vacating.  Once I got the first (or last) layer out of the front of the unit, I found I actually did have things stored in pretty good order in behind that.  

Loading the car at the storage unit is easy.  I can park right by the unit.  But at the apartment I have to take things up to the third floor using the grocery carts available and that usually takes three trips.  

I've been pleasantly surprised at how the ample kitchen cupboard space in the apartment...

as well as the small storage room...

...which is actually about twice as big as this photo reveals...have easily swallowed up a great quantity of dishes, decorative items, craft materials and the few pots and pans I had purchased after I moved into the cabin.

My neighbor here in Eldora had to come to Boulder for a rehearsal on Thursday...he plays clarinet in a small orchestra that, among other things, accompanies silent movies presented all over the country...so he brought the adjustable table that had been sitting out on the deck for the last several weeks and the rest of the baker's rack to the apartment.  I spent the day sorting all of the things I'd brought from storage up to that point, which were all over the living room, and had space cleared for both pieces when he arrived.  I took three lots of items down to the common room and put them on the "free table" and they disappeared quickly.  I had a lot of fun staging the baker's rack that evening and will post some photos of that later.

Well, it's 4:45 p.m. and almost 90F degrees.  A breeze has just come up thankfully.  It was quite still here for much of the afternoon.  Each one of these photos has taken at least 15 minutes to upload.  I have no idea what's causing this, but while I've waited on each one I cleared off the couch, put some clean linens in the trunk we use both as storage and as a coffee table, put all my painting tools and materials in a plastic storage box I brought back up with me from the apartment and got that wall where those two shelves had been removed painted.  

Now I can move the secretary and hutch back against the wall, put the drawers back in the base, put the hardware back on and affix the drop-down desk.  I purchased a bottle of gold enamel paint at Hobby Lobby in Longmont last week with a 40% off coupon on one of two trips to the chiropractor and will attempt to obscure the back of that insert on the hutch doors.  I was going to see if the paint would release with heat so I could get the glass out, but forgot the hair dryer so think I'll just go directly to the paint fix.

Vixen came last night about dark, ate every bit of kibble and egg I put out and took off with two chicken legs back to the den.  I haven't seen her today.  She seemed very subdued and I didn't think she looked well.  I fear she may not make it through next winter.


More later...Teddee

Escape to the City

NOAA is predicting 40 mph wind gusts for Eldora, and it feels as if they are stronger than that already, so I'm taking my very loaded car to the apartment in Boulder and after unloading will plan to stay overnight.  One of the items in my car is this foam mattress...

...which is going to have to suffice for a bed at the new digs for the time being.  The original offer of a double bed from a cabin here in Eldora whose owners were replacing it with a queen evaporated when they decided to put it in their guest bedroom in their Boulder home.  So, I'm taking bed linens, pillow, etc. and will try to turn this baby into a passable bed for the near future.

Much of the rest of this is dirty laundry.  I feel like a college student in reverse.  I'd been putting off doing laundry until the good old S.S. check came through and probably have $20 worth even with the slightly less expensive coin machines at the apartment building.  It will be nice to be able to do other chores upstairs in the apartment simultaneously.

This coming week I'm going to concentrate on removing everything from the storage unit I have in Boulder.  That's going to be a challenge with this bum arm, but I'm taking a little step stool that will give me another ten inches in height, so I won't have to lift things up so high.  We'll see how it goes.  My plan to is to take boxes back to the apartment and sort through them there.  I'm going to see if the apartment management has any objections to my putting any rejects in the common room for other residents to pick over if they want.  The idea is just to get out from under the monthly rent at Boulder Bins so I can give it to Boulder Housing Partners.  The shell game.

I've got everything battened down here so it won't blow away, I've given Vixen her "last breakfast" and I'll be off line for at least a couple of days.  More later.  Teddee

Uh! Oh!

I spent much of the morning outside on the deck finishing painting the secretary and hutch.  I tackled the cubbyholes in the secretary... 

Not easy to get your hand back in these areas and I'm not totally pleased with the job I did, but I decided, once again, it wasn't anything anyone was going to notice but me.  

I'd sanded some places down on the hutch after I'd painted it the other day and wanted to give those areas another coat so did that.  Everything was looking good.  This evening I decided it was time to take the paper and tape off the glass in the doors of the hutch...

...still looking pretty good.  Tape didn't hold perfectly and I'll need to get my craft knife out and do a little scraping and there are some places on the wood that I'll need to touch up with a small paint brush.  No problem.  I was so excited I was already styling the inside of this hutch!

What I hadn't considered was that nice little arched inset...

 ...is not replicated on the inside.  So when I removed the paper and tape from the inside...

Oh, yuck!  I'm now seeing the unpainted back of said inset!  Paint has bled back underneath it and there's even a bit of blue painter's tape in between the glass and the wood!

Before I started painting this piece I noticed the little rubber stoppers and realized they were designed to secure the glass, but made the decision to leave the glass in place and tape it off thinking it would be safer than removing it.  Yes, yes, I know.  When I was prepping the inside of these doors I taped right over this, but it didn't register.  I'll blame it on my head injury!


I removed the stoppers on the left door and tried to remove the glass.  No go.  It's painted solidly in.  The one on the right has a little give. 


Here's my plan.  I'm going to go ahead and clean up the front glass using the edge of my craft knife and perhaps this will end up loosening the glass.  If it doesn't, I don't think I'm going to run my blade down between the wood and the glass for fear I'll apply too much pressure on the glass and break it.  Instead, I think I'll get some glass paint and paint around the edge of the glass on the inside of the doors to cover up the dark brown.  I wonder if heat from a hair dryer might make loosen the paint?  All suggestions welcome. 

One good thing...My neighbor was able to get this top shelf off for me today so I filled and sanded the wall behind it...

...and can now finish painting this area so when I do get the secretary finished to my satisfaction, it has a home.  Teddee

Teddee Is Tired

I thought cortisone was supposed to really rev you up.  I went for a follow-up visit yesterday for the injuries I received when I fell several weeks ago and was told, based on some simple strength tests, that I had strained my right rotator cuff.  The physician's assistant in Orthopedics, affiliated with the Urgent Care facility I had gone to the day I fell, seemed fairly certain I had not torn the rotator cuff, which is good news, and says the pain I'm experiencing has nothing to do with the chipped shoulder bone.  She prescribed a muscle relaxant, which Humana refused to cover so I didn't get it, and cortisone.  I've taken the three tablets prescribed so far for the first day and really haven't noticed any difference...and, based on the last cortisone I enjoyed several years ago, I was really hoping to feel "shot from guns."  But that was given by injection, so perhaps that's the difference.  I recall feeling the best that following week that I'd felt since I was in my twenties!  Lots of physical and mental energy.  I was unaware of what I'd been given and asked for more and was, of course, told "No way."  Too bad there isn't something legal, that's not debilitating in the long run, we could take as we age to regain that get up and go.


That said, I haven't had a bad couple of days.  I left the cabin early yesterday and drove to the apartment in Boulder.  I snapped a photo of the newly seeded grass that's coming up in the park just to the west of the building.  They are watering furiously and it's looking great.  What a delightful view of the Flatirons...

I wanted to get to the apartment early because I needed to color my hair and while that was processing I got a few things unpacked and put in the kitchen cupboards.  It was a treat to be able to step into the shower and rinse out that hair color, I'll tell you.  It is so difficult to get the product out when you're rinsing by hand in a wash pan.  Additionally, you use a lot of water...good for at least one trip to the spring!  

I just made it to my medical appointment, perhaps a mile north of the apartment.  I really liked this physician's assistant.  She seems to know her stuff, didn't keep me waiting, didn't seem rushed, and answered all my questions.  She said if the lump remaining in my eyebrow is scar tissue in the muscle it may never go completely away.  The numbness, which I also inquired about, does seem to be less today than it was even yesterday.  She said the bruise remaining under my eye may take quite some time to completely dissipate.  I was given some simple exercises to do for the next four weeks for the rotator cuff, at which time I'm to return.  

After my appointment, I returned to the apartment and applied my makeup, which I hadn't had time to do earlier, then drove to meet my friend Paula for lunch.  Yes, it was finally the second Wednesday of the month when we get our Social Security checks, but Paula agreed to go to Olive Garden again so I could use the $20 gift card I had been given by management after the restaurant charged my checking account twice for my lunch the last time.  The food was good and we had a great visit but, once again, the service was not really up to snuff.  I still have enough for another lunch on my gift card, but I'm not sure I'll ever get Paula to go back, so may have to go solo!

After lunch, I went to Walgreens to pick up my prescription, then headed back to Nederland where I stopped at Ace for the paint for the secretary (whoopee) and at B&F for Cheap Chicken and Wednesday's senior discount on a few groceries including more kibble for the foxes.


This morning I heated lots of water and did dishes out on the patio then decided to drag out the ugly table and try to do a better job of painting it than I'd done the other day inside the cabin when it was so windy...

I'd put the first coat on with a brush, but could see brush marks.  Today I tried a roller and now I can see roller marks!  It was really too hot, I think, and I was right in the sun.  I may have to sand this a little and try again although, based on past experience..."It will never be noticed on a galloping horse at midnight..." and it's pretty much midnight in this cabin with all this charcoal brown paint!   I noted today, according to Ace, this paint is called Prancing Pony.

I also decided to use Prancing Pony on this old cutting board that had been an atrocious 60s or 70s yellow with some equally atrocious Pennsylvania Dutch designs on the back...

Maybe eventually I'll stencil some subtle design on this so people can actually find it when it's hanging against an equally Painted Pony wall!


Then, on to what I expected to be the fun project...the secretary!  I started out with the three drawer fronts...

This paint is Chestertown Buff, one of Benjamin Moore's Historic Colors.  It's more intense than it appears in this shot.  The one below is truer.

I had moved my painting around to the shade on the west side of the cabin, but the sun soon passed over the yard arm and I had to put up the umbrella.  I had given the primer on these a light sanding, followed by a rub down with tack cloth, and the paint went on, by roller, quite smoothly.  At one point, however, the very light breeze gave a little gust and I found myself picking out dandelion fuzz, and later gnats, from the wet paint, so this was not without challenges.  I'm thinking of adding to my bucket list more creative expletives just to keep the neighbors entertained.

I went on from there to the secretary base.  This is the piece I had attempted to prime with the spray Kilz, which went on so rough.  I really had to sand it down, inside and out and clean it thoroughly with the tack cloth before I could even start to paint.  I decided to paint the inside first...

...so put it on its back.  This went quite well using a brush for the edges and corners then filling in with the roller.  It is time consuming and brought back memories of painting the shelf unit back in the 80s that's now in storage, but has been such a useful piece of furniture in every place I've made a home since my first studio apartment in Chicago in about 1968! 

It started to cloud up and I decided to call it a day, bring everything inside, clean up and drive back to Nederland and get ice--I'm starting to think this old cooler is not doing its job.  The ice doesn't last long at all--and sugar so I could make syrup for the hummingbirds which have been without any at my feeder since the bear was last here.  

One morning soon after that last night the bear managed to empty the sugar water out of the feeder, I was sitting at the picnic table having my morning coffee and a hummingbird flew close over my head...

Photo courtesy of Wild Bear Mountain Ecology Center, Nederland, Colorado

...descended toward the deck on the opposite side of the table and commenced this bizarre routine just a few inches off the deck, popping up and down very rapidly and turning figure eights in a very circumscribed area and just generally causing a stir!  Then it rose to about table height, repeated the performance and flew off.  I wasn't wearing anything colorful, so unless it was responding to the new tablecloth, I think it may have been trying to communicate that the feeder was empty!  I love animals.  Teddee 

Wildfire

The third largest wildfire in Colorado history, according to a denverpost.com article by Kieran Nicholson today, was started by a lightning strike early last Saturday.  As of yesterday evening, the fire was zero percent contained, moving at 20 to 40 feet per minute and had grown to 41,140 acres.  It is about 80 miles from the cabin, but still brings home the threat of forest fires to the Rocky Mountains. 



Yesterday, after running a load of things down to the apartment and having a shower, I returned to Nederland, dropped off a library book, went to the spring for water, picked up pine cones for kindling, stopped off at Ace and had that last gallon of interior paint put back on the shaker and stopped at B&F and got some chicken quarters to boil up for the foxes.  The smoke from the fire was obvious from Nederland so I decided to drive part way up the ski area road to see if I could get a better perspective on the fire.  This is all I could see...

That's smoke not clouds, but for something so destructive, this appears fairly benign from this distance.  One 62-year-old woman, who lived alone in what must have been a rather secluded cabin, has been killed.  The denverpost.com article, quoting the sheriff, reported she received two evacuation notifications on Saturday, but both calls went to voice mail.  If she uses a cell phone and gets the kind of reception I do here in my cabin that seems totally understandable.


There was a lot of haze in the air yesterday...

The road visible in the photo above leads west to Eldora and the cabin.

Below, the ski slopes in summer..

High winds have been a major factor in the fire's spreading.  They aren't bad now...NOAA is predicting winds between 7 and 11 mph, gusting up to 18 mph for Eldora, but they could pick up tomorrow to 24 mph.  I hope the firefighters..."ground crews aided by five heavy tankers, five single-engine air tankers and at least five helicopters, with more choppers on order"...according to the denverpost.com article, are able to get this under control soon.

Strange, even with the death of a human being, my thoughts go to the animals, especially the newborns and young.  How terrified they must be.  I think if we had a fire here, I'd be more worried about Vixen and any kits than the cabin.  Teddee

What to Do on a Windy Day

It did get down to 38F degrees last night and although it's sunny and exactly the 61F degrees that NOAA predicted yesterday (how do they do that?), the winds did pick up and are even higher today.  NOAA says gusts as high as 30 mph.  

Even though I abhor the wind, I spent about an hour outside this morning changing the hinges on this cabinet so it opens from the left instead of the right...

This is something I started last November!  This cabinet was one of the first things I painted when I decided to paint the interior of the cabin.  I had taken the door off, but knew I needed to get it out on the deck where I could put it on its back in order to change the hinges.  

This morning I unloaded all of the dishes and food items it was housing, cleared a path through the cabin, dragged it out onto the deck, along with its door, located the hinges and screws and then started trying to figure out how to switch the hinges.  I measured the locations of the old screw holes and marked the same holes on the opposite side, drilled pilot holes so it would be easier to screw the screws in, then started trying to determine, with my spatial limitations, which way the hinges went.  That took some time, but through trial and error--I always feel like the chimp who was failing the test--I actually got them right the first time.  Because of my arm injury I had to take the screws out three times and re-drill in order to be able to get the screws in, but I eventually prevailed.  

Once I got the cabinet out in daylight I could see that the single coat of paint I'd given it while I was listening to the football game last November needed touching up.  For some reason I'd totally skipped painting the wall behind this cabinet, so that had to be done as well.

Even though I'd wrapped my paint tray, roller and brush in plastic bags the last time I used them, it had been so long ago they had dried out.  I couldn't get the cover off the roller and have been painting with a brush.  My injured arm gets tired quickly, so part of the time I'm painting left-handed.  

I decided while I was at it to see if I wanted to paint this plywood floor the same color as the walls...

Boy, I don't know.  I'm all for cozy, but this is almost claustrophobic.  I think I'll need at a least a slightly different color just to differentiate between the walls and the floor.


I also sanded and filled in where I'd removed this one shelf right inside the cabin door where the secretary is going once I get it painted...

I think I'm going to have to ask my neighbor to help me get the top shelf off since I couldn't even do it when I had two good arms.  I think it will require the thinnest pry bar he owns in order to get under this and put some tension on that screw that's just going round and round.


I'm also making the ugly side table disappear, painting in situ because of the wind...

On the wildlife front, I haven't seen Vixen this morning, but she was here twice yesterday evening.  I'm always a little relieved she doesn't seem to be relying entirely on me for food.  

Poor old Valentino also came later, but got into a foot race with Jimmy who appeared out of nowhere.  It was nip and tuck, with Valentine leading Jimmy on a merry chase in, around and through these aspens next door...

...with me yelling at Jimmy to stop and holding my breath the fox would win.  My own Belmont Stakes.  Valentino won, but I think it was a close enough call he also wasn't saying I'll Have Another. I don't think he ever returned to eat.

I also had a visit from the bear about 11 o'clock last night.  I was just sleeping good when I heard it pulling at the firewood access door on the east side of the woodshed and pulling and pulling and pulling, then moving over to the one hummingbird feeder I still have up on the east side of the cabin and trying, unsuccessfully to pull it down.  It sounds very large when it's moving around outside and walking on the deck.  I still have never been able to see it out the window and wish I had the nerve to go out with my camera, but figure one accident per summer is probably enough and I don't need to add bear wounds to those I already have!  Teddee

Signs of Summer

My concern over a possible missing spring, as referenced in the directions accompanying the replacement spools of nylon line for my Craftsman Weedwacker, was allayed when I plugged in the battery pack this morning and the trimmer worked fine...

This really needed doing worse than I realized.  I could have baled hay...

So, I've done what passes for lawn mowing here and things do look a lot better...

I also trimmed a lot of dead out of this wild rose bush that grows at the corner of the deck...

I love what I thought were wild sweet peas, but see they are Yellow Banner Plant, Thermopsis rhombifolia, so trimmed around them.  I can't believe how quickly they've come and gone.  Everything here at this altitude has a very short lifespan to fit into the short growing season...

I made sun tea today with Celestial Seasonings Acai Mango Sweet Zinger Ice Tea...

...Isn't this a gorgeous color?  I didn't note that it was already sweetened with stevia and added more stevia when I had some for lunch.  Sweet!

When I was rummaging in the woodshed yesterday, I uncovered this wind chime I'd found at a thrift store some time last year and tucked away...

 ...It joins this bamboo chime I bought the first year I was here.  I tried dozens before I decided this one wouldn't annoy anyone.  It has a very gentle tone, but does have a tendency to get very tangled when the winds are strong.  I try to remember to just take it down during those times.

I also found my succulent wreath...artificial...that I bought at Goodwill last year for $2.99! 

 
Do you know how much each of these succulent plants costs at the thrift stores?  I was sure the person who priced this was not a craft store patron.  Some of these are taking on that strange turquoise hue some artificial greens turn when exposed to intense sunlight.  Next year, if this survives another summer, I might try to figure out a way to tone those down.  I'm not sure paint is the answer.  I'll have to experiment.  I've been looking for real hens and chicks for weeks in all of the garden centers and haven't found any.  They'll winter up here because I've seen them in plantings around some cabins.  I may have to ask for a starter plant.


It looks like summer to me, but NOAA is predicting a low of 38F degrees tonight and 35F degrees Sunday night with winds gusting between 24-26 mph.  I'll need a fire!   Teddee

Not That Again!

Yes, had to "clean out" the woodshed again this morning....

...I was looking for this...

...the Weedwacker...

...thank goodness I'd saved the instructions and hadn't yet taken them down to the apartment.  I'm now finding that's an issue.   Although my intent has been to not take anything down there I think I'll need here, I've already determined I've taken the instructions for my cordless drill down by mistake.  I purchased and used this trimmer once last August after I returned from spending July with my brother and his family in Tacoma.  The grasses were chest high when I returned, and although we'd had a much wetter winter and spring in 2011, I don't want to let them get that high again this summer.  Last year I had to assemble the thing and everything was going well until I decided the cutting string didn't look as if it were installed quite right on the spool, tried to straighten it out and ended up with this...

I did all the yard work when I was married, but don't remember ever using one of these trimmers.  I guess we didn't have one.  So I'm unfamiliar with the apparatus.  Luckily I had purchased some additional spools of line, so I think I've installed one of those correctly although the instructions on the back of the spool package include one of those "Oh, by the way" instructional phrases I just hate....

"When replacing the spool make sure that you include spool spring when resembling (I'm sure that's supposed to be reassembling since we'll hope no user, short of a Dick Tracy character, resembles this weed whacker) the new spool.  The spool spring sometimes sticks in the old spool and can be removed easily by slightly prying out with a small flat-headed screwdriver."  

Oh, no.  I have no idea what happened to the old spool.  Maybe it got spit out in the yard when the above happened.  Since the instruction booklet that came with the trimmer makes no mention of the spring, I'm going to see what happens.  Right now I'm charging the battery.


While I had everything out of the woodshed, I pulled out this awful table of which I'd hoped I'd seen the last...

I had replaced it with a cute rattan table, which, I have to admit, was too low and now has been taken to the apartment, so this is going to get the royal brown paint treatment so it disappears into the wall here at the cabin.


I also got my snow tires tucked away.  They were accumulating rainwater and were becoming a breeding ground for mosquitoes, which are bad enough with my help.  I sure wish they had bagged each tire individually instead of putting two to a bag.  With my bad arm it was a bit of a struggle to get these into the woodshed.

There were quite a few things in the woodshed that I wanted to take to down to the apartment, so those are now loaded into the car.  I don't think I'm making a run down today, though.  I didn't feel well yesterday...had another one of those days when I felt as if I were getting the flu..and was so glad I was no longer working and could just rest.  I don't know whether it was the weather...we had clouds to the right of us and clouds to the left of us...

...and it felt as if the barometer was really down.  The temperature dropped precipitously about mid-morning, I think it was, but we didn't get any rain.  I do think they have been having very unsettled weather in Denver and environs, including tornadoes.  Today I feel as if someone had been jumping up and down on my lower back.  I suppose this could all be the residual effects of turning myself into a human torpedo, but it's been three weeks.  I did make a follow-up appointment for next week, as advised by the urgent care doctor, just to see if there are any exercises I can do for this arm and I may mention the back pain.  I suppose if the rest of my injuries are keeping pace with my black eye, I'm just not quite there yet...

Well I polished off my second library book yesterday while I was being lazy, so am heading down to get a couple of replacements and some ice for the cooler.  It's almost 80F degrees today and very sunny.  More later...Teddee

Fox Tale and Museum Visit

Vixen just keeps me totally entertained.  

What a character.  This morning I was out of chicken and eggs but I gave her kibble and unsalted chicken broth I had left over from cooking some chicken legs (99 cents a pound) earlier in the week.  She kept waiting around for something she could take back to the den, so I gave her a small piece of country pork rib left over from last night's supper.  She trotted off up the road with that, but soon returned.  

I had taken my coffee and some cheese and saltines out to the picnic table for my breakfast and was reading.  She joined me on the deck and kept getting up on the opposite bench, checking out what I was eating.  I gave her some cheese and she seemed to like it, but I wasn't sure it was good for her so decided to come back in the cabin to get a can of dog food I'd tucked away just for such an emergency.  I could see she was eyeing the cheese, so brought that back in the cabin with me.  When I went back out with the dog food, there she was, trotting up the road with the entire sleeve of saltines in her mouth! 

I thought I was taking all these cute pictures of her this morning and then discovered my camera hadn't been functioning except for this very last shot.  The other day when I made the last minute decision to make a run down to the apartment hoping Dixie would be gone by the time I got back, I left my camera out on the picnic table and it rained on it.  It seems to be functioning except occasionally, when it should be in picture taking mode with the lens extended, you see nothing in the viewfinder.  If it's really bright outside you often are unaware this is occurring and that's what happened this morning.  So the only photo I have is this one...

...but it fits right in with the story....wily fox and packet of saltines in the lower right corner.

Just now, as I was preparing this blog, she hopped up on the picnic table and looked through the open south window...

...time for supper.  She's starting to come in and out of the cabin regularly if the door is open, especially when she has meat she needs to hide.  I think she may be starting to think this would make a dandy den.  Just about the right size.

Today, I did my usual chores...post office, library, spring for water, picked up pine cones and still had some time before 4 p.m. when the Cheap Wednesday Chicken in Every Pot goes on sale at B&F Market.  I've never been in the Mining Museum in Nederland...

 
...and the building housing the museum wasn't open today, but I decided I'd take some photos of the mining machinery outside.  I think they need to go for a grant.  This probably could be a very interesting museum and perhaps the displays inside the building are, but the grass is growing up through all the equipment outside...I thought it was interesting that my sister and her husband just returned from a cruise through the Panama Canal and here, in Nederland, free for all to see, is the only existing steam shovel used in the creation of the Canal...

It's huge.  This is just about half of it.  I would have had to have gone across the street to get the entire piece of machinery in my viewfinder.  Here is a close-up of some of the teeth of the scoop...

...actually they look more like fingers.  Here are some other shots of equipment and interesting close-ups of textures of aging metal...

Another day in the Rockies...Teddee