The Eye of the Beholder

We had the most beautiful snow in Boulder day before yesterday.  It was very wet, so clung to the tree branches and shrubbery.  If it was this pretty here, it must have been beautiful at the cabin.  But we had no wind in Boulder and it remained overcast, so the beauty stayed with us for two perfect days.  When I pulled the drapes, the view was breathtaking.  This was a photo, taken through the screen door, from my balcony looking north...

These look like black and white photos, but aren't.  Wouldn't this make a challenging jig-saw puzzle?

I took these from my friend Olive's balcony looking south and west.  The Flatirons are lost in the clouds...

Here's a bit of color...
We had a little more snow the second night.  I wasn't able to figure out why, when it appeared there was only an inch or so of snow on each tree branch, that at least three to four had accumulated on our cars...

The red berries on this tree contrasted beautifully with the snow...

My friend Olive and her Pomeranian Kooky, who ate and bull-dozed his way through the snow, loving every minute.  We had taken him to the groomer a couple of days earlier.  He looks so cute!

 Cold marigolds...

These pine boughs laden with snow look like big bear claws to me...

 

I'm not sure what this red-leafed shrub is.  Barberry?

Yesterday afternoon the sun came out and the snow quickly started disintegrating.  At one point the tree right outside the balcony looked as if it had little white birds roosting in it...

A beautiful ending to a beautiful interlude.  Teddee

Happy Feet

I've been trying to determine why I'm particularly happy when I'm at the cabin.  Some of my friends think I should be happier in the apartment in Boulder where I have ample hot running water at the twist of a faucet, a flush toilet, room heat at the touch of a thermostat and a maintenance staff on call to handle any repair.  And when I read the foregoing sentence, their opinion seems sensible.

So what's behind my preference?  I know I enjoy being closer to the elements, even though I could and did get very tired of the high and incessant winds in Eldora that blow down the chimney of the wood stove and spread ashes over the cook top even with the draft closed.  This is what the stove top looked like after I'd been away for several weeks...

But I love the vistas that allow me to keep an eye on the clouds building up on the Great Divide, wondering what they hold in store...

It looks like snow...

It smells like snow...



The crows agree...

And what do I need to do to prepare for a possible storm and colder temperatures?

I also love the solitude and not having the neurotic resident who lives below me calling up indicating she's analyzed a sound she's been hearing in the night and she has definitely identified it as being a humidifier...yes, a humidifier...in my apartment (don't have a humidifier...or any other appliance running at night)...and would I please put something under it to buffer the noise it's making, and, oh, by the way, a digital alarm clock went off at 5 a.m. and continued to beep for a long period of time and woke her up and undoubtedly I've gone off to the cabin and left it on (no, I hadn't and no, I didn't) and would I please make sure it's turned off, etc., etc.  This is the same resident who knocked on my door a couple of months ago holding a bowl and spoon and said another resident had suggested she should come and look at the way I'd decorated my apartment and when I shrugged and said, "Come on in and knock your socks off," she proceeded to wander around, with bowl and spoon, as if she were begging rice in an art gallery, ending up in the bathroom where she decided a mirror wasn't hanging straight and spent about ten minutes putting at least five nail holes in the space of a pencil eraser trying to right this wrong.  So, yes, I prefer being buffered from the neurotics who, unlike those residents who are actually on meds, should be.

Whatever the reasons, I found myself lighthearted enough during my last visit to the cabin that I was taking breaks from my chores while I was as the cabin earlier in the week to....dance.  

There is a section of floor about three feet by three feet with no rug..

In between stuffing these plastic bags (back) in around the windows...

Trying, unsuccessfully, to make the front door air tight with weather stripping...

...ah, monkey do, monkey see it's on the wrong surface!  Good thing it's not sticking...

...transferring all of the tools and DYI stuff from two smaller plastic storage boxes into one larger storage box that my sister and I had managed to empty of useless items we donated to Savers in September...

...and storing it back under the bunk...

...cleaning fall flies off the windows, Windexing the mirrors and dusting, I intermittently stopped to dance to the music on an old The Big Band Era tape, The Passing of an Era, I was playing on an equally old clock radio tape deck...

I fox trotted to Count Basie playing Fiesta in Blue and members of the Les Brown Orchestra playing I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, soft shoed to Lawrence Welk playing Chasing Rainbows...

...and quick stepped (sort of) to members of the Benny Goodman Orchestra playing I Found a New Baby and After You've Gone.  Next time I'll remember to pack the stillettos and stockings (with seams).  And, guys, if that and Dancing With the Stars isn't enough to get you into dance class, let me tell you, a little chocolate and Glenn Miller playing Blue Champagne or Dick Haymes (Much better than Sinatra.  Wonder why he didn't endure?) singing This Time the Dream's on Me...mmm!  mmm!

I had a blast.  Dancing on the cabin floor is like dancing on a snare drum.  I felt like Ann Miller on the soup can.  And if you're too young to remember those T.V. commercials, ask your mother.  And if she's too young to remember Ann Miller, ask your grandmother...or just watch this...

Now that would give that woman downstairs something to squawk about!  Teddee

Two Hands and a Knife

I drove to the cabin this past Monday afternoon with two primary goals:  1) To pick up my snow tires, which were stored in the woodshed....

...sure wish they'd put only one tire, instead of two, per bag, but thanks to my sister, who spends her vacations cleaning and organizing, at least these were right inside the door and not buried the way they usually are... 


 ...and 2) to stuff strips of plastic bags into the cracks between the windows and the frames to prevent drafts and moisture intrusion now that the winds are picking up at the higher elevations and some light snows have been falling in Eldora.

Now that I'm not living at the cabin full time I wanted to be sure the mattress on the bunk didn't get damp and mold like the last one.

After living in the cabin for two winters and pondering the best way to "insulate" the windows, which swing into the cabin, without covering them with semi-translucent plastic and lath either on the inside (ugly) or outside (impossible because of the shutters), I decided I'd try this solution. 

All that seemed to be required were the bags, of course, my two hands and a knife...

This reminded me of a book I loved as a pre-teen called Two Hands and a Knife.  My memory is a bit foggy about how we came to have this pulp paperback in the house.  It seems we had been given a box of paperbacks, all with a bit of a masculine bent, by someone, perhaps an uncle.  And since, even then, I read everything I could get my hands on, these were a treasure trove of escapism.  (I also loved Argosy magazine and had a collection of gorgeous nature pages published in each issue by Weyerhaeuser!)

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure the pulp fiction paperbacks got tossed at some point.  They would have been worth keeping if for no other reason than what I recall as being the typically lurid cover art of such pulp fiction of the period. 

I decided I'd see if the book was still available, so went to Amazon and discovered a mystery.  The original Two Hands and a Knife was a story of a young man (I recall he was 16) who, after being left alone, with only two hands and a knife, in Canada's Northwest Territories following a small plane crash that killed his father, must use all of his wilderness skills to return to civilization.  I still remember his frightening encounter with a wolverine! 

According to Amazon, it was written by Warren Hastings Miller and was published by Scholastic Magazine in 1956 as a mass market paperback.  "Currently unavailable," states Amazon.  "We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock."  However, there is a listing for a book by the same title, written by a Terry E. Gibson and published in 2003, which according to reviews, has basically the same plot.  Wonder if Mr. Miller failed to get a copyright?  

I thought these comments by two readers, who, like me, read the original, were interesting:

"I read this story fifty years ago when I was a teenager," says David D. Abbott. "I would strongly recommend this book to all young people as a guide for self reliance and living skills. The mental pictures I formed as I read the story are still clear and sharp in my mind. [Emphasis mine].  My life has been enhanced by this book."

"I too read a book by this title 50 years ago," says GreyDX, "but this does not seem to be the same book. Perhaps the author or publisher could post some information explaining the relationship, if any, to the earlier book by Warren Hastings Miller, with the same tile (sic) and the same plot. I would be very interested."

So, back to my wilderness experience using two hands and a knife...and some plastic bags.  I spent a couple of hours stuffing plastic bags and strips of bags into every window crack and crevice into which the knife could be inserted.  Some of the cracks were so wide I could easily stuff in an entire bag.  Other places, the cracks were smaller and I had to cut thin strips.  I was very deliberate and tidy.  I didn't want the plastic bag insulation to be obvious.  

Looking good...

Looking better...

I did all four windows and, even though it got down into the 20s,...

and the winds came up in the night, there were no drafts coming in around the windows.  

Now one wouldn't think pushing with your hand would be hard on a torn shoulder rotator cuff (yes, I finally had an MRI and the fall I had in May tore my right rotator cuff...another story), but I kept waking up in the night going, "Why didn't I remember my ibuprofen!"  My arm was killing me.  But, the job was done...or was it?

The next day, there was a red (OK, pink, and more than a little out of focus...it was early and I hadn't had my coffee) sky in the morning...

I've never been sure the old saw "Sailor take warning" only applied to sailors and bad weather or could bode ill for landlubbers, but at some point the next day I realized I hadn't removed the window screens my brother-in-law had made for the west and south windows and the hooks and eyes are on the inside!  In order to remove the screens so they could be stored out of Eldora's  horrendous winter weather I had to open the windows and, of course, all of the plastic bags and strips of plastic bags fell out. !#&*!

Before I started on Phase II, I went into Nederland and added to my "tools"...

Two Hands, a Knife and Some Ibuprofen.  Hmm.  Not quite the same. And neither was the job I did on the windows I have to admit.  I thought I was doing an adequate, if not an obsessive-compulsive, job, but I ended up with bags and strips left over!  What did I miss?

The other "monkey do, monkey (finally) see (what she should have done)" thing that happened with this project was that I had decided to close the shutter before I left just on the west window in case there were 100 mph winds coming over the Divide, like there were last Thanksgiving, that might blow something heavy enough into that window to break it.  I even told my neighbors the day before that was what I was going to do.  I'd forgotten that shutter also hooks into hooks on the inside of the window!  Whose idea was that?  I suppose having the hooks inside means anyone wanting to gain unauthorized access would have to remove the hinges?  No need for another padlock?
 
No, I didn't attempt Phase III.  I'm taking a chance and perhaps I'll think of some way to hook that shutter from the outside.  That would be a good idea anyway if a person is going to be visiting occasionally during the winter.  In fact, I think the east window shutter has an outside hasp.  I'll see what I can rig up...Two Hands and a Drill!...the next time I'm there....and I can't wait.  Boy, am I happy up there.  More on the next post!  Teddee

Missing the First Snow

Last year I missed the first snow at the cabin because I was stuck in Longmont after the Sears Automotive Center there, since closed, ruined my car then threw up their hands and said they had no idea why, after they installed a brand new thermostat, that my car blew up in the canyon on the way back up to the cabin at 9:30 at night, or why, after they installed a new radiator because the previous one ruptured when the car exploded, the car started boiling almost immediately after leaving their premises.  They couldn't run diagnostics and the diagnostic center they recommended couldn't take me until the next day so I had to cripple my way to a motel.  In the night, while this huge snow blew in from the plains, I decided I'd have my car towed back to Peak-to-Peak Motors in Nederland for the necessary repairs to the Sears repairs.  Here's a photo bringing back that entire debacle...

This was about October 26.

Here is a photo I took through the tow truck window while the driver had stopped part way up the canyon to put on chains...

And here's what the cabin looked like when I finally got home...

Well, here it is only October 5 and this is what I saw to my surprise when I opened the drapes this morning here at the apartment in Boulder...

Just the lightest dusting of snow.  My friend Olive didn't feel like walking this morning so I took Kooky the Pomeranian out for a quick walk and could tell from the cars coming down from the mountains on Canyon Boulevard that they'd had a lot more snow up there.  I thought I could almost pick out the vehicles from Eldora because some of them had as much as one to two inches of snow on the roofs and hoods and we always got more than Nederland.

So, I've missed the first snow again this year.  This web cam photo from the Eldora Mountain Resort (ski area) is as close as I'm going to get, I guess...

 

...or this NOAA on-line forecast...

I feel as if I'm missing baby's first steps.

I had planned to post some fall photos so, even though it looks as if winter is upon us, I guess I'll proceed.  Perhaps we'll have some Indian Summer after this cold snap.  That Columbus Day forecast of Sunny with a high of 55F degrees sounds likely.  

 

A chrysanthemum my sister purchased when she was visiting what, three weeks ago?  Loaded with buds that just won't flower...

I've brought this inside and will move it out on the balcony again when the night temps get above freezing to see if it will do anything else.

 

Here are some fall touches I've added to the balcony...

 

I've also been working on some Halloween crafts.  This "wreath with a story"...

I'm not exactly sure what that story is...It's up to the viewer...but I bought this skeleton arm and hand at Michael's last weekend when all their Halloween products were 40% off and I had a 25% off, including sale items, coupon....

I dug into my jewelry box and added the ring, made a sort of Victorian looking cuff out of some wonderful trim I'd bought at a Goodwill when I was still living in Phoenix, painted some cheesecloth black and made a rotting sleeve and wired in the little bell, which I'd bought at a thrift shop sometime over the past two years, reminiscent of those "grave bells" that were sometimes used to give those buried alive the ability to signal their reawakening to those above ground.  

I had one crow and purchased another at Michael's when I bought the skeleton hand.  I had the Victorian door knocker and just included it to the mix for atmosphere.  I added the cottonwood twigs because I'd thought, since I found them in a shopping cart outside the Boulder Savers last year, that they looked like finger bones, and the sueded brown leaves I'd saved from some fall stems last year.  I believe I'd found the white bleeding heart at the Golden Community Garage Sale.  The white pheasant feathers were another Michael's find when their stems were 50% off a couple of weeks ago. 

The nest was something I'd purchased back in 2010 at a shop in Blue Springs, Missouri.  Have forgotten the name.  The nest looked empty, so I decided, knowing crows have a proclivity for collecting treasures, to add this little ceramic heart box that I'd bought last year at the Golden Community Garage Sale.

After I added it, I decided to print off an on-line photo of a Victorian woman and insert it into the "locket."  

Is it the deceased?  Perhaps...

I plan on hanging this on the outside of my apartment door closer to Halloween and hope it won't be too disturbing to my neighbors.

Perhaps the crazy print below will offer some comic relief...

I had purchased, at a Goodwill in Phoenix several years ago, this already rather weird print of an oil painting of these two men in Victorian evening dress...I had been referring to them as The Twins.  Ironically, it was one of the framed prints my sister selected, sight unseen from my storage, since all were wrapped in bubble wrap, to bring out when she visited a few weeks back. In addition to sticking on the googly eyes, I painted the frame black and draped it with "mourning crepe," some black spider-web-pattern fabric, and another piece of the trim identical to that used for the cuff on the skeleton arm.  It will take its place outside on the wall next to the wreath.  Did these creepy men have something to do with the deceased's demise?  You decide! 


More later, Teddee