Everyday Mountain Chores

When I was at the cabin last weekend, I tried to remember to take some photos of just the everyday chores one does in this rustic environment.  If you've followed my blog for some time, much of this will not be new.  

One of the first things I did was make up a pan of sugar syrup for the hummingbirds.  It took them a couple of days to realize the feeder was full again.  I really hate the fact that I'm not there full time now to keep it filled consistently.

I took these through the screen.  This is old screen wire and I can still capture an image through it.  I've noticed that the new screens prevent this.  There only seemed to be a couple of hummingbirds feeding.  I know it's recommended that we stop feeding on Labor Day to encourage them to move on so they don't get caught in an early freak storm.

I drove to the spring to fill the water jugs on Friday afternoon late...

...I didn't want to wait until Saturday and get caught in the bicycle race traffic.  Stage 6 of the 2012 USA Pro Challenge had invaded both Boulder and Nederland and it was one reason I decided to just get out of Boulder as it appeared the race would have the town in lockdown for much of Saturday and I knew the road through Nederland would be totally blocked for whatever period of time it would take the racers to clear the town.  In addition, Nederland was having a music festival, which would have made traffic bad enough.

I put off doing dishes until Monday, the day before I left, because I was busy doing other, more fun, things.  Luckily it was a nice day, not raining, so I was able to move the entire operation out on the picnic table where I had plenty of space and could wash, rinse, drain and splash at will...

It was a lovely setting...the ox-eye daisies, which I've discovered are considered a noxious weed!, were still beautiful although I could see they were starting to fade and probably would be gone the next time I came up...

I also took the time to thoroughly clean this little electric hot plate...

(Note the animal path in the grass)

I needed all my tools, an old toothbrush, SOS pad and a cleaning rag and hot soapy water, to get this job accomplished and I thought I'd been pretty good about wiping it off every time I did dishes.  If we ever need to replace this I'm going to see if they make them so you can remove the heating elements.  It would sure make the task easier.

Also had a brief visit from Dixie, but didn't get her photo before her owner's boyfriend came in search of her.  They had promised not to let her run loose, since he was openly resentful about having to pick her up every evening during the winter.  I guess they hadn't realized I was in residence.  Anyway it was good to see her, and Jimmy came shortly thereafter and had some kibble...

I had got brown paint on this little stool when I was painting the inside of the cabin so took the time to sand the top down and spray it white...

...I've discovered that if I put the small items I'm painting inside a cardboard box I don't have to put down a tarp or drop cloth or a plastic bag to protect the surrounding area.

And I hung this little plaque, which I'd found thrifting at some point, above the south window...

It's made of plaster, so I hope I got it up there securely enough that when the cabin starts shifting in the winter winds, it stays put.

That's about it.  I did capture one dramatic western sky at sunset...

So, goodbye for now, little cabin...

I'm sorry to leave you alone.  Teddee

Late August in the Rockies

I promised yesterday to post some of the photos I took while I was at the cabin in Eldora last weekend.  It's starting to look a little like fall...

I know this is Oregon Grape.  The leaves look like holly...

I've spent an  inordinate amount of time on line trying to determine what this plant, the leaves of which are turning such a bright yellow, is and haven't been able to find anything about it.  In the process, however, I've come to the conclusion that there are way too many sites that purport to provide information on Rocky Mountain plants, weeds, flowers that are totally useless since they don't provide photos!...

 

Even the creek has that autumn look....

This is the seed head produced by the plant that's turning bright yellow...

Not sure what this is either.  I need a Rocky Mountain "what is it" plant book...

Love this melange of colors and textures...

This huge clump of moss changes with the seasons...

 

More Oregon Grape...

More of the mystery plant...

 

This little ground cover always interests me.  It is so stalwart.  And I think about it hunkering down under feet of snow each winter...

 a

Did you ever see the movie Raintree County with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift?  When I came upon this I was reminded of that...

Is that aspen in the center below turning already?...

I also promised an update on the foxes.  I'm not sure what is going on, but none of them came to eat during the day until the last morning.  I had two the first night and I think one of them might have been Vixen, but they didn't come until nightfall and it was so dark, even with the porch light on, I couldn't be sure.  Although when I went out to put more kibble out, one of them kind of danced up onto the deck and toward the cabin door and that sounds like Vixen and I thought when the light got behind her that I could see that split in her ear. If it was her, her coat had improved greatly so that was good news, but they were both very nervous and I never saw her again.  

The next three nights only one fox came and I think it was Valentino.  He was super vigilant that last night, kept looking out south toward the road in between bites of food.  Then the last morning, I was having my coffee at the picnic table and when I got up and came around the corner to come back into the cabin, there was Valentino sitting in the meadow looking just ghastly.  He had been badly injured...

You can see the wound on his left shoulder and neck and his eyes and eyebrows look like he is in so much pain...

He did eat, but I think his jaw on the left even looks swollen and he was limping.  I left a bowl of kibble hoping it would provide at least one more meal, but, of course, I couldn't be sure the magpies or another animal wouldn't get to it first and I won't be back for some time, so I hope he's able to hunt.  

Here's a close-up of that wound on his neck...

...it looks as if whatever attacked him almost cut his jugular.  I hope he survives.

Not to end on such a somber note, here is a shot of my mountain neighbor's gorgeous poppies...

More later, Teddee

Back to Unreality

I spent a long weekend at the cabin....from Friday afternoon through Tuesday morning...but am now back at the apartment in Boulder and 94F degree temps!  

I had to drive to Longmont yesterday afternoon to the chiropractor.  The chiropractor's office is about a block from the Longmont Goodwill so, although I avoided last Saturday's 50% off sale by driving to the mountains, I just had to stop by the Longmont store after my appointment to see what they had.  

Actually I am quite practical these days and, because of the temperatures, purchased this cute little fan and some interesting ice cube trays...

I only had two ice cube trays and thought long rectangular fingers of ice might be a fun addition to my lemonade.  Hey, it's the little things that make life bearable and I got both of these for 99 cents less my senior discount.  

The fan sort of has that "in" industrial look and I've been wanting another fan to supplement the box fan I bought from my friend Olive earlier in the summer, something I could actually have blowing right on me at night that wouldn't be as forceful as either the box fan or the fan on the window A/C unit but would still lull me into thinking there was some air circulating in the bedroom.  

Why I didn't plug the fan in at the store, I don't know, but I got it home, plugged it in and saw the blades turning so thought everything was a go.  Later in the evening I went back in the bedroom, put my hand in front of it and there was no air movement being generated at all.  I even put my hand behind the fan thinking maybe they had the blades in backward!  A rodent on a treadmill could have moved more air.  

I thought the clerk at Goodwill might have had a little smirk when she told me to leave the tag on anything marked E&M (electrical and mechanical?) until I was sure it worked.  I wonder how many times this thing has been purchased and returned.  It was only $3.99 and I got my everyday senior discount, so it wasn't a huge expense, but I'll return it and get a toaster instead, which was something else I was looking at and they had several that were this same price.  I'd rather have a more versatile toaster oven, but haven't seen one of those at a thrift shop recently.

I had hoped these temps in the 90s were over for the summer and I was spoiled because the temperatures at the cabin are about 20 degrees cooler.  It was in the 70s during the day and the 40s at night the entire time I was there.  

It seems as if the temperature on what is called the Diagonal Highway between Boulder and Longmont...you see the start of it here in the upper right hand corner of this map...
 
Map courtesy of AaccessMaps.com

...is at least ten degrees hotter than either Boulder or Longmont, both of which are old towns with lots of big shade trees. 

This highway, which follows a busy railroad track, cuts through prairie that looks like the prairie in every Western movie you've ever seen.  Think Cheyenne in a wool cavalry uniform.  And, of course, I have no air conditioning in my car. 

Inevitably, on my return from these afternoon chiropractic appointments, I hit Boulder and every red light just at rush hour, my car starts overheating and I have to turn on the heater to bleed off some of the heat.  I was really glad to get back to the apartment.  Even though it wasn't that cool, it was a lot better than a car with the heater blasting in an ambient temperature of 94F degrees.

I had a productive few days at the cabin.  I'm finally almost finished with all of the little decorator touches I'd wanted to make before my sister and her husband come out if they finally decide to.  They've been doing a lot of traveling since spring so aren't that anxious to leave home again I guess.  I still want to make the draperies for the bunk area and paint the floor, but both of those will take some funds I don't have available right now so I'm contenting myself with small projects that cost nothing.  

I knew when I decided to paint the interior of the cabin dark charcoal brown that the color would hide any damage from the blow-back smoke from the wood stove that's such a problem when the winds are high in the winter and would provide a great backdrop for my thrift store porcelain finds, but would also require lots of reflective surfaces to keep it from being too oppressive.  I had several mirrors in that storage unit I cleared out when I moved into the apartment and one that had been in the cabin from the beginning in 1939 I think.  I finally figured out during this last visit where I wanted all of them.  

I hung this thrift store find...

...on the east wall.  The frame is a very heavy metal and I like the oak leaf and acorn motif.

I hung this frameless, probably a five-and-dime, mirror from the 30s on the west wall next to the secretary/hutch....

There's nothing like enlarged photos to reveal every wart and pimple.  I see I need to have another go at this with the Windex.  I was going to hang the rectangular mirror here, but decided it and the hutch were too much the same shape.  Oh, and the little dials?  Well, they turned out to be kind of a fun solution to this...

...Blue Light Special that someone brought out to the cabin.  I kept trying to figure out what to do with this...no White Tails here although I did see my first Mule Deer just as I was leaving Eldora on Tuesday morning...so I popped the three dials out and hung them under the mirror sort of like miniature international clocks.  I'm saving the frame so if someone is absolutely in love with this thing, they can restore it.

The third mirror project had been hanging over my head since last fall when I bought an oval mirror on sale at Hobby Lobby, along with some black velvet ribbon with which to hang it.  I wanted it hung over the wash stand and knew it would have to hang in front of an existing shelf.  The old round mirror had been hung from the shelf and even I had to bend my knees in order to see myself in it.  Hanging the new mirror in front of the shelf would mean hanging it from a ceiling hook and I thought I'd need to drop a plumb line in order to get the hook in the right spot.  

I had purchased the ceiling hook at least two months ago...

...I got the swivel hook because it was the only black one Home Depot had...but still I procrastinated because by that time I'd hurt my arm and the thought of attempting this just seemed daunting.  

Monday I bit the bullet and got it accomplished.  I marked the middle of the shelf and then just put a yard stick flat against the shelf and ran it up to the ceiling to mark the spot for the hook rather than dropping a plumb line.  

Then I started "reading" the instructions for the hook...

...almost no actual verbiage, just illustrations and large X's indicating "do this, NOT this" and showing you how to reinsert the hook to the base, but not how to remove the hook from the base to start with.  

So I did my chimp-being-observed-and-recorded-for-science routine thinking maybe the illustrations were in French since Cobra Anchors Corp. appeared to be in Montreal as well as Temple, PA.  I finally figured out, after starting to screw the provided anchor into the ceiling (shown magically keeling over horizontally after it passes through the surface), that it only needed to be used if the hook was being inserted into dry wall.  Otherwise, the hook base could simply be screwed into "madera" which must be wood in French, something I didn't recall after three semesters of the language.  

The next big challenge was figuring out how to remove the hook from the base and this really did make me feel like a monkey with a puzzle, but I finally deduced that one side of the base was flat and that had to be turned to slide out of the slot that was the same shape.  Yep.  Sure enough, it worked.  So, I screwed the base, sans hook, into the wood ceiling and slid the hook on.  

I decided I didn't want to rely on the ribbon to hold the weight of the mirror, which is fairly heavy, so used some picture wire.   Then I decided I didn't like the look of that so set about making a sleeve for the wire...

I thought I could "turn" this ribbon tube, once I got it doubled over and sewn shut by hand, but absolutely could not get it started.  I could have taken out all the stitching and folded it with the velvet side out, but by that time I was getting pretty well burned out so decided to just leave the flat side out, fed the wire through the sleeve and re-affixed the wire to the mirror.  Then I used the rest of the ribbon and made a little rosette to cover the hook...

  Here's the finished product...

...and I can actually see myself without bending my knees.  If some day someone gets bored, they're free to remove that sleeve and sew it with the velvet side out!

That's it for today.  I took 91 photos while I was at the cabin, so will post some more tomorrow showing additional shots of cabin life and chores, some Rocky Mountains scenery in late August and an update on the foxes.  The latter not good, I'm afraid.  Teddee

Walk Around Boulder

The weather in Boulder this weekend has been my ideal.  The high yesterday, I believe, was only supposed to be 77F degrees.  NOAA is predicting a high of 84F degrees today, but it's after 2 p.m. and it's only 77F degrees so I don't think it will get that hot.  Skies yesterday and today very clear, lots of sun and just a gentle breeze.  It could stay this way year 'round and I'd be happy!  The nights are getting quite cool but it's hard to entice that wonderfully cool air into the apartment.  At any rate, after I walked with Olive and Kooky yesterday, I changed into my sneakers, grabbed my camera and took a longer walk, snapping pictures along the way.

I have discovered that this house... 

 Photo:  Courtesy of Front Range Living
 

...just a half block away that I blogged about when I first rented the apartment, is on the National Register of Historic Places.  There is a lot of information on line about it, but here is what Front Range Living has to say...

Nestled for 126 years on the same West End corner in Boulder, this Seventh Avenue and Pearl Street home is referred to as the gingerbread house for fanciful architecture, particularly the lacy trim. The Arnett-Fullen house remains a showcase for the gilded Victorian age. On a more personal note, it reveals the tale of a family, in fact, two families – the Arnetts and Fullens.

Williamnett Arnett was 11 years old when his father, Anthony, arrived in 1859. The senior Arnett was born in Reichstoff, a province on the Rhine River in Alsace-Lorraine, France, in 1819. Anthony started a successful freight business, carrying supplies up and down the mountains to miners between Golden and Central City. He operated the Boulder House, owned the Brainard Hotel and tinkered with several mining operations.

As he prospered, his family and his fortunes grew. He acquired real estate in Boulder, eventually donating money and land to the building of the University of Colorado.
Not as astute in business as his father, Will’s fortunes went up and mostly down. But he enjoyed displaying his wealth as he walked the dusty streets of Boulder in suits with $10 gold buttons. Why? "To show that he could," says volunteer Jo Wright.
In 1877, a year after Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, Will built a house that was considered lavish, costing twice as much, $4,000, as surrounding cottages.
He hired twenty-seven year old British architect George E. King, who was working in Leadville. A Londoner by birth, George immigrated to America and originally lived in St. Louis. He was well traveled and, like many artists and architects, influenced by the buildings of Europe, especially the French Second Empire style. One of the first buildings he designed in Leadville was his own home at West Ninth Street in 1880, which was a simple but elegant interpretation of French design with a mansard tower.

 

I love this old mounting block...

I can just see the carriages pulling up and their passengers alighting here, or men and women in Victorian dress using this to mount or dismount their horses, the women riding sidesaddle, of course.

Here's a steed of a different sort waiting patiently by an old horse tie-up...

There's one residential block just a short distance west of the apartment in which none of the turn-of-the-century buildings have been demolished and they are reminiscent of San Francisco's "painted ladies"...

Someone was just moving into this one...

What fun.  If this isn't just a window in a stairwell, this is where I'd have my office...

This is the historic part of Boulder so all of the neighborhoods carry markers similar to this...

I don't know how old this house is, but I could see myself happily playing Scarlett in this setting...

And I walked by this cute collector car....

It's a Willys...

I was unfamiliar with the story of Willys vehicles.  Here's some of what Wikipedia has to say...

Willys (correctly pronounced "Will-is", but almost universally as "Will-eez") was the brand name used by Willys-Overland Motors, an American automobile company best known for its design and production of military Jeeps (MBs) and civilian versions (CJs) during the 20th century.

In 1908, John Willys bought the Overland Automotive Division of Standard Wheel Company and in 1912 renamed it Willys-Overland Motor Company. From 1912 to 1918, Willys was the second largest producer of automobiles in the United States after Ford Motor Company.
In 1913, Willys acquired a license to build the Charles Knight's sleeve-valve engine which it used in cars bearing the Willys-Knight nameplate. In the mid 1920s, Willys also acquired the F.B. Stearns Company of Cleveland, Ohio and assumed continued production of the Stearns-Knight luxury car as well.

John Willys acquired the Electric Auto-Lite Company in 1914 and in 1917 formed the Willys Corporation to act as his holding company. In 1916, they acquired the Russell Motor Car Company of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, by 1917 New Process Gear, and in 1919 acquired the Duesenberg Motors Company plant in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The New Jersey plant was replaced by a new, larger facility and was to be the site of production for a new Willys Six, but the 1920 recession brought the Willys Corporation to its knees. The bankers hired Walter P. Chrysler to sort out the mess and the first model to go was the Willys Six, deemed an engineering disaster. Chrysler had auto engineers Owen Skelton, Carl Breer and Fred Zeder begin work on a new car, the Chrysler Six.
In 1917 Ward M. Canaday who had been doing advertising for the company became a full time employee of the corporation.
In order to raise cash needed to pay off debts, all of the Willys Corporation assets were on the auction block. The Elizabeth plant and the Chrysler Six prototype were sold to William C. Durant, then in the process of building a new, third empire. The plant would build Durant's low priced Star, while the Chrysler Six prototype would be improved and modified, becoming the 1923 Flint.
Walter Chrysler moved on to Maxwell-Chalmers, where in January 1924 he launched his own version of the six-cylinder Chrysler he had been working on, one still based partially on elements originally developed at Willys. (In 1925 the Maxwell car company would become the Chrysler Corporation).

Depression Era

In 1926, production of the Overland ended and was replaced by the Whippet brand of small cars. Following the stock-market crash of 1929 and the economic depression that soon followed, a number of Willys automotive brands began to falter. Stearns-Knight was liquidated in 1929. Whippet production ended in 1931, its models replaced by the Willys Six and Eight. Production of the Willys-Knight ended in 1933.
At this point Willys decided to clear the boards and produce two new models — the 4-cylinder Willys 77 and the 6-cylinder Willys 99 — but the firm was on the verge of bankruptcy again, so only the 77 went into production. They were forced to sell their Canadian subsidiary, itself in weak financial shape, and started a massive reorganization. In it, only the main assembly plant and some smaller factories remained property of Willys-Overland. The rest were sold off to a new holding company that leased some of the properties back to W-O. The company was thus able to ride out the storm.
In 1936 the Willys-Overland Motor Company was reorganized as Willys-Overland Motors. In the 1920s and 1930s, Willys was an unremarkable automaker based in Toledo, Ohio, one of dozens in the U.S. However In 1937 Willys came out with a redesigned four which featured a semi-streamlined body with a slanted windshield, headlamps integrally embedded into the fenders and a one-piece, extremely rounded hood transversely hinged at the rear.

WWII & The Jeep

It was one of several bidders when the War Department sought an automaker who could begin rapid production of a lightweight truck based on a prototype designed by American Bantam.
In 1938 Joseph W. Frazer had joined Willys from Chrysler as chief executive. He saw a need to improve the firm's 4-cylinder engine to handle the punishment to which the Jeep would be subjected. This objective was brilliantly achieved by ex-Studebaker chief engineer Delmar "Barney" Roos, who wanted

"an engine that could develop 15 horsepower at 4,400 r.p.m. and run for 150 hours without failure. What he started with was an engine that developed 48 horsepower at 3,400 r.p.m., and could run continuously for only two to four hours. . . It took Barney Roos two years to perfect his engine, by a whole complex of revisions that included closer tolerances, tougher alloys, aluminum pistons, and a flywheel reduced in weight from fifty-seven to thirty-one pounds".^[1]

Production of the Willys MB, better known as Jeep, began in 1941, shared between Willys, Ford and American Bantam which had initiated the original Jeep body design. 8,598 units were produced that year, and 359,851 units were produced before the end of World War II. In total, 653,568 military Jeeps were eventually manufactured. The origin of the name "Jeep" has been debated for many years. Some people believe "Jeep" is a phonetic pronunciation of the abbreviation GP, from "General Purpose", that was used as part of the official Army nomenclature. The first documented use of the word "Jeep" was the name of a character Eugene the Jeep in the Popeye comic strip, known for his supernatural abilities (e.g., walking through walls). It was also the name of a small tractor made by Minneapolis-Moline^{[citation needed]} before WW2. Whatever the source, the name stuck and, after the war, Willys filed a successful trademark claim for the name.^{[citation needed]}

Post-War Struggles

At the end of the war, Willys did not resume production of its pre-war passenger car models, choosing instead to concentrate on Jeeps and Jeep-based vehicles. The first postwar Willys product was the CJ-2A. The CJ-2A was an MB stripped of obviously military features, particularly the blackout lighting, and with the addition of a tailgate.
Willys initially struggled to find a market for the vehicle, with early efforts to sell it primarily as an alternative to the farm tractor. Tractors were in short supply having been out of production during the war. Despite this, sales of the "Agri-Jeep" never took off, mainly because it was too light to provide adequate draft.
However, the CJ-2A was among the first civilian vehicles of any kind to be equipped with four-wheel drive from the factory, and it gained popularity among farmers, ranchers, hunters, and others who needed a lightweight vehicle for use on unimproved roads and trails.
In 1946, a year after the introduction of the CJ-2A, Willys produced the Willys "Jeep" Utility Wagon based on the same engine and transmission, with clear styling influence from the CJ-2A Jeep. The next year came a "Jeep" Utility Truck with four-wheel drive. In 1948, the wagon was available in four-wheel drive, making it the ancestor of all sport utility vehicles.
Willys planned to re-enter the passenger car market in 1947 with the Willys 6-70 sedan. Its name came from the fact it was powered by a 6-cylinder engine that produced 70 hp. The 6-70 was touted as the first stock car in America that offered independent suspension on all four wheels, but it never entered production.^[2]
In 1948 under a contract from the US Army Willys produced a small one-man four-wheeled utility vehicle called the Jungle Burden Carrier which evolved into the M274 Utility 1/2 ton vehicle.
Willys later produced the M38 Jeep for the U.S. Army, and continued the CJ series of civilian Jeeps. Another variation of the Jeep was the Jeepster. A more civilian variation, it came with either a 4-cylinder or 6-cylinder engine but came only with two-wheel drive to the rear.

The Fifties

In 1952 Willys re-entered the car market with a new compact car, the Willys Aero. At first available only as a two-door sedan, it was available with either an L-head or F-head six-cylinder engine. Export markets could get the Aero with a four-cylinder engine. A four-door sedan and a two-door hardtop were added for 1953 along with taxi models. The Aero cars were called Lark, Wing, Falcon, Ace or Eagle depending on year, engine and trim level, except for a small production run in its final year (1955) with models called Custom and Bermuda. The bodies for the Willys Aero were supplied to Willys/Kaiser by the Murray Body company, who also made the bodies for the short-lived Hudson Jet. Also in 1952, CJ3B Jeeps went into production. By 1968, over 155,000 were sold.
In 1953 Kaiser Motors purchased Willys-Overland and changed the name to Willys Motor Company. The same year, production of the Kaiser car was moved from Willow Run, Michigan to the Willys plant at Toledo, Ohio. Although Jeep production was steady, sales of the Willys and Kaiser cars continued to fall. In 1954, the CJ5 debuted at the start of its three-decade run.
After the last Willys passenger car was built in 1955, Willys shipped the tooling for the Aero to Brazil, where it was built from 1960 to 1962, almost unchanged. A 1953 Aero Lark was located in the estate of the late Howard Hughes, after he died enroute to the US from Mexico aboard a small private airplane. Brooks Stevens restyled it for 1963, and the Aero continued to be built by Ford after they purchased Willys-Overland do Brasil until the 1970s. The American company changed its name again in 1963 to Kaiser-Jeep Corporation, at which time the Willys name disappeared.

I haven't been able to determine what year the car I photographed is, but this hood ornament...

...must mean it's a six cylinder?  This is cropped strangely because I had captured my own reflection and see there's another reflection in the headlight!   Anyway, cute as a button.  I'd be glad to take it if they were giving it away.

So that was my "field trip."  I'm hoping now that it's cooling off that I can explore more of Boulder's interesting neighborhoods.  

When I returned, I stapled new fabric on the seats of my balcony furniture and my computer chair and a cute little footstool.  I'll save that for tomorrow.   Teddee