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

Eclipsed

Do you live in an area where the solar eclipse was supposed to be visible this evening?  Did you get your eclipse glasses?  I did last week when I stopped at McGuckin Hardware, a famous independent Boulder hardware store....

They were selling them for $2 a pop at all their cash registers.  I wonder how much money they made?  Especially because it appears it is going to be so overcast the eclipse is not going to be visible.  There are a couple of hours to go.  It has been cloudy most of the day.  This is what the western sky looks like right now...

That's gray with clouds, not blue with clouds.  The sun bursts forth every once in awhile, but I just heard thunder.  I think it may be coming from the east, though.  This is what the sky looks like over the plains...

...so we wait.  And while I'm waiting I decided to do a little light sanding on some rough areas on the secretary I brought home a week ago from the Longmont Goodwill, remove the hardware, tape off the glass in the doors...

...and settle on a paint color.  I had considered selecting something really splashy since I'd gone so dark with the interior cabin paint.  Shades of marigold are one of the "in" colors right now and I thought about a very dark hue of this color palette...

...but I kept wondering how I'd feel waking up being slammed with what would have been a very eye-catching object in this small space.  Might have been a brave choice, but I backed off and selected this shade of palomino yellow that I still like...

I have an entire shelf unit painted in a similar color in storage in Missouri.  It had been that color for almost two decades and I'd never tired of it.  This thrift store metal basket served as another "inspiration piece."  I have some dark colored paste wax (my purchase at McGuckin last week along with the eclipse shades) and I'll attempt to use that over the painted surface to get a similar antiqued effect.  The long-range forecast is either showers or breezy for all of next week, so I don't know whether I'll be able to even get the primer applied.


And the fox came to eat for the second time today but her little body is still looking the worse for wear...

She gets a cup of kibble and, most recently, after she finishes that she's helping me get rid of an entire package of pork chops that had gone off in the cooler despite the fact that I still have part of a chunk of ice in there.   

She had finished her kibble and come up on the deck for her treat here.  She really was that close...and with her eyes on the prize...what a sweet little face...

In the interim, we got a little rain shower while the sun was shining.  I thought there might be a rainbow...solar eclipse and rainbow...get out the goat entrails...but no rainbow.  So, it's 6 p.m.  According to an "eclipse calculator" I pulled off the internet, the eclipse is supposed to start a 6:22 p.m.  Right now it's hazy, but sunny, so I don't know what we might be seeing.  I'm going to try to take a photo without blinding myself.  Just point and shoot I guess or put on my eclipse glasses and see if I see anything in the viewfinder.

Well, I needn't have worried about sun blindness.  Somewhere behind this veil of clouds miracles were occurring...

I had to settle for this "painterly" shot of a smaller miracle closer to earth...

Have a wonderful week!  Teddee

To the Salon

No, I'm not having my hair done although, since I'm growing it out, it is driving me crazy and I'd love to.  I'm on my way to a free Literary Salon, hosted by the Boulder Writers' Workshop.  I'm attending to see if I can get some guidance on publishing a children's book I wrote years ago and was never able to figure out how to publish since it needed to be an e-book, and I think I was a little ahead of the curve, and it involves some additional merchandise that purchasers could also buy.  I just had to complicate things!  A young woman I met at that dinner of Eldora residents I attended the first Friday of May suggested this, and since it costs nothing, I'm going to give it a whirl.


We did not get snow last night, but I did have ice on my windshield and in places on the deck this morning...

 I thought this section was so pretty...

And this really is ice on the deck...take my word for it....it's slick...

At least one hummingbird made it through the night.  This little guy...or gal...is so cagey that I've been trying all morning to get a photo, but the least little movement inside the cabin and off it goes, except some of the time it's showing curiosity and actually looking in the window, but I haven't been able to capture that, of course.  I'll get my camera set up, then by the time the bird returns, the camera has gone into repose again and by the time I get it turned on, off the bird flies.  Or I get the camera tethered to the computer and the hummingbird flits in for a drink then flies off again so quickly there is no way to get the photo.  This is as good as it's going to get this morning...

...I'm going to make myself late to the "salon"!  Teddee

I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar!

Yesterday started out so petite and fragile...

It had frosted overnight and everything was coated with this crystal rime...

The frost was so light it melted immediately when hit with sunlight.  At left below is a design in frost left by the picnic table and southwest corner of the cabin shading the deck...

Then I was motivated to get the ugly black Naugahyde hide-a-bed out of the cabin.  In fact, I felt rather obsessed with getting it accomplished ASAP.  I knew I'd better strike while the iron was hot.  My energy level is inconsistent. 

It was a beautiful day, sunny, not too hot, only a little breeze and this is what I needed because I had to move almost everything out of the cabin onto the deck in order to manipulate the two hide-a-beds around each other and get the black one out the door.  I knew it wasn't going to be fun, so I guess that's why I had procrastinated.  I'm not sure what time it was when I started.  Around 10 a.m. I think.

The first thing that happened was that when I opened the hide-a-bed to remove a piece of foam my sister had deliberately closed into it, the mechanism that is supposed to hook the seat to the back, so that when you push the seat down, the back comes up, would no longer work.  So after several attempts, I was able to strong-arm the back and seat together and force the thing into couch mode. 

Then I discovered when I tried to scoot the hide-a-bed out the door that it was, of course, too wide...

I don't know how whoever brought it into the cabin did it unless they took the legs off and turned it sideways, but I decided to take the door off ...

I first tried to take the door off the hinges, but didn't seem to be able to get those screws to move, so took the hinges off the door frame.  I got the couch part way out and it got stuck and, for a while, I couldn't move it forward or backward even when I tried to squeeze the back forward and lift the couch up and over the threshold.  Thank goodness this hide-a-bed is not the really heavy kind.  It was heavy and awkward, but not outside my capabilities.  Still, at this point I decided I'd have to remove the weather stripping that the carpenter I'd hired last fall had installed in an attempt to make the door airtight...

 I think I counted seventeen tiny screws that had to be removed...

The couch still wouldn't go through...

 
...so then I had to remove the wood trim.  This was nailed in, so I had to use the pry bar, but had difficulty getting a space started into which to place the pry bar and I ruined another screw driver in the process.  I removed the trim on one side, thinking that would be adequate, but no, the couch got stuck again and this time, it was really stuck and I couldn't get all of the nails out of the trim on the north side because they were wedged in by the couch...

So I just broke off the trim and kept raising the couch up and over the remaining piece of trim.  I would work from the deck side, then clamber over the couch and work from inside the cabin.  Finally, I got enough of it outside that I could raise it up on end.  I really wish someone had been around to take a photo of that!  I even had myself caught at one point between the upended hide-a-bed and the southwest corner of the cabin, but finally horsed the end around so I could lower it with some control so I didn't drop it on my foot or damage the deck. 

Afterward I just collapsed onto the couch and tried to recover.  My muscles were quivering.   But the sun was starting to go down and the mosquitoes were starting to come out and they are terrible this year.  Huge and quiet and poison.  One feasted on the side of my face during the night last week and the bites still itch and are slow to heal.  I knew I needed to get the door back on.  Well, of course, the holes in the hinges wouldn't align with the screw holes and I had to shim up the door to get it the right height and broke a screw off in one hole in the process.  I finally got the hinges screwed more or less back in place so at least the door would close.  But, with the trim removed, I had to tape around the door last night to keep the mosquitoes out.

Then I decided as long as I had everything out of the cabin I might as well take down these two shelves that had been bugging me because of their placement.  In addition, this is where I wanted to put the secretary I had bought at Goodwill last weekend which was still in the car.  I was able to get the lower shelf off, although someone had screwed the screws in at an angle and they were hard to remove. 

When I tried to remove the top shelf, one of the screws just screwed around and around without coming out.  I think you have to put some tension on the screw when this happens, but I couldn't get a screw driver or a pry bar under the shelf and was too exhausted to pursue options.

I was afraid it might rain overnight so I had to bring everything back into the cabin.  That probably took another 45 minutes and I was so fatigued I didn't take much care in where I put anything so I can hardly move in here.  And this was supposed to make things better! 

I had intended to take the couch to Goodwill, but I really did a job on the vinyl and it is torn to shreds along the bottom front.

Right now, it's as far north as I could move it this morning. 

Talk about Dog Patch!  I'll have to figure out how to get it to a landfill I suppose.  I don't think they'll take it at the city dump.

At some point during all of this activity yesterday, I got THE CALL from Boulder Housing Authority indicating they had an apartment for me to look at and I made an appointment to see it today at 1 p.m.  It's a small one-bedroom, but clean, and the building itself is surrounded by trees and the unit is on the quiet side of the building. I really liked the on-site manager.  I said I'd take it.  I have to update just a few of my financial documents, which I will take down tomorrow, then I think it's a go.  This is really going to make it easier for me to make my own arrangements during the month of July when I think my sister and her husband will expect to be able to use the cabin for vacation...and, ha, ha, I'll have a shower and they won't!

Oh, and did I say I'd also finally put out the hummingbird feeders yesterday because this early bird that had been here last week was dive bombing me yesterday, making it clear in no uncertain terms, that he/she remembered being fed here last year and expected the same this year!

This has been a pretty eventful two days, and I've decided if I can move a hide-a-bed single-handedly, there "ain't" much I can't do!  Teddee

What a Crazy Day

Dixie and Jimmy, who usually don't show up until 9:30 a.m. at the earliest, were on deck at 6:30 a.m. this morning. I had semi-planned to either go to Boulder and do laundry or to Longmont to get some things on my growing shopping list, but knew it would be too hot down there to take Dixie along.  I'd checked NOAA for the Boulder high and it was predicted to be 86F degrees.

If Dixie is by herself, I often won't even know she's here until I go outside for some reason.  But Jimmy is a barker so, even though I'd just turned my electric blanket, which had automatically turned off, back on and was snuggling in for a little more sleep, I was unable to ignore them for more than 15 minutes.  

Then, Jimmy, who is usually more than happy to be on his way after a quick hand-out, wouldn't leave.  He didn't want to stay in the cabin either, but if I closed the door, he'd start barking again.  If I'd open the door, he'd sit there on one hind leg, reminiscent of a snail's foot, looking expectant, but wouldn't come back inside.  Finally, I told him, in no uncertain terms, to go home and he did.  

Dixie, too, couldn't make up her mind whether she wanted to be in or out.  First she was in but couldn't seem to find a place where she was comfortable, then she was out, then she wanted in the car, then she clambered out over the dirty laundry spilling it all over the ground.

I kept expecting the fox, waiting on tenterhooks for Dixie to start that recognizable barking, to go out and get her back in the cabin so the fox could eat unmolested.


The vixen had eaten last night then returned, making that strange little squeaking noise at the partly opened door, with a male in tow.  I guess this was the same fox that had accompanied her here after that one big snow we got in February, but it was too dark that night for me to be sure this was the same fox.  At that time I thought the larger of the two was the female.  At any rate, Vixen seemed happy and proud to be showing her date this wonderful food source.  He was much more skittish than her, keeping my car between himself and me.

I was impressed by how different their features are.  He has these wonderfully large, dark Valentino eyes.


Even though she seemed to have made an effort to bring him along, Vixen was very competitive about the food and even started eating from my  hand.  I had stopped at the grocery store and got one of the $4.99 Cheap Chickens and between the three of us we almost polished it off.  I was forced to throw Valentino's chicken to him far from her in order for him to get any and it took him a bit to realize I wasn't throwing the chicken at him.

So, this morning I thought he might come back with her.  I think either Vixen or the two of them might have come to be fed while Jimmy was still here, because I heard some barking, but didn't see any sign of foxes when I went out to check.  

It wasn't until about 3:30 p.m. that I looked out and saw Vixen solo.  I had put out her kibble and gone to the woodshed to get an egg out of the cooler when here came Apollo, the black bulldozer, full speed ahead, around the south side of the cabin, seemingly even more motivated to kill the fox because his owner has put him on a diet and I've not been giving him hand-outs.  We'd been blessedly free of him for the most part the last couple of days.  Vixen kept ahead of him, leading him through the cabin yards and up the mountain to the north, with me yelling at him and calling him at least one foul name, only realizing I'd done it after it was out and wondering what my neighbors, if they heard me, must think about their quiet, reclusive neighbor's language.


When I came back in, Dixie had thrown up, something she's never done, about a half gallon of water in which I stepped with my bare foot.  I don't know what that was all about, and I'm still waiting, kibble and egg in hand, for Vixen to return.


While all this was going on I was:  1) Trying for the second time to get through by phone to the manager of one of my storage units in Phoenix to alert her that I'd lost my debit card a couple of weeks ago and that I'd provided my new number on line after receiving a snail mail letter indicating my payment had been rejected; 2) Making my third call to the Boulder Housing Authority, for which I had completed forms in March for possible senior housing, to try to determine why they had sent me the 17 pages of forms again, asking me complete them once more and attend a second meeting next week--during my first two calls I'd been told in recorded messages that the most recent packet of information had been sent to me by a woman who was now working part time and I should call another employee and then when I called her number I was told she was on vacation for a week; 3) Making a follow-up phone call to an e-mail I'd sent to the ecology center in Nederland yesterday, to which I'd  received no response, inquiring whether, with a 29 F degree low being predicted and a high chance of rain/snow, I should perhaps wait to put out my hummingbird feeders.  In the last case the young lady I spoke with was very encouraging about going ahead and putting out the feeders indicating, "They're here!"  I said I knew they were here, that was why I was calling, but I'd had locals tell me they'd found hummingbirds frozen in place in late fall so was she sure this was sound advice during equally changeable spring weather?  Would she please check? 4) Phoning the Denver office of Fish and Game or whatever it's called in Colorado with the same question and getting another young girl on the line who was equally enthusiastic about putting the feeders out, concurring the hummingbirds "might die" in the severe weather, but acting as if that was just the way it sometimes went. Both young women urged me to bring my sticky, dripping hummingbird feeders inside at night to discourage bears!  Right.  I finally nabbed my neighbor and he suggested that since the only thing blooming at this altitude right now is dandelions, by refraining from putting the feeders out, the birds would probably at least go down to Nederland and that might save their lives if the weather gets really bad over the weekend.  I think it was the first sensible thing that happened all day.


I'm getting too accustomed to being retired.  I felt as if I were back at work.  Teddee

What a Difference a Day Makes

By yesterday afternoon, this was all that was left of the previous day's snow...

I took these this morning, but with our overnight low, things hadn't changed that much from late yesterday afternoon.  So, it's all clear for right now.  

In fact, there isn't a cloud in the sky, the sun is shining brightly and temps should be in the low 60F degrees today.  NOAA has revised the high for tomorrow down to 66F degrees from 69F degrees, however, and a 40%-50% chance of rain/snow is being predicted for Friday and Saturday.  With a low of 29F degrees predicted for Saturday night, plain old snow is on the menu again.


I heard my first hummingbird this morning!  I've e-mailed the ecology center in Nederland to find out, based on the above weather forecast, whether I should wait to put my feeders out.  I expect the answer to be "yes," but it's tempting.


I'd been waiting for the fox and she just came to be fed.  She's starting to look a little better, I think...

Hmm! Hmm!  Kibble and egg...

Gotta clean my face...

Resting...

You can see what a chunk something has taken out of her tail about midway up.  I wonder if the fur will ever grow back?   I think the ear split is old.


I put Dixie in the cabin while the fox is here and I praise Dixie to high heaven when she comes on command to leave the fox alone and come in.  She seems to be getting it.  I tell her she's my best girl to go against her nature.  We haven't seen nearly as much of Apollo.  He came one day last week with a blue harness on and a plastic-encased note attached, "Please don't feed me. Thx."  So, he's not getting any hand-outs and I'm trying to bring the fox's food back in as soon as she's finished so he doesn't get that.  He was really packing on the weight.  Was the original Apollo Creed a heavyweight?


Teddee