Entries Tagged 'Life as a Shared Adventure' ↓

In A Year in Provence Peter Mayle explained why he never has a garden:

It would be fighting nature, and nature always wins. It has more stamina and it never stops for lunch.
—Peter Mayle,

Andy, on the other hand doesn’t mind doing battle with nature, even if he often loses. In Our Garden in the Woods I explained why we had to give up on the idea of a garden — after several years of valiant effort on our part the animals convinced us we couldn’t have one out in the open, so we built a greenhouse. Then the drought came and we didn’t have enough water for both fruit trees and garden produce.

But Andy kept the fruit trees going. We harvested a couple of bowls of cherries each year, and finally in 2011, after about 30 years of effort, we were finally going to have a bumper crop of apples. Yeah, sure. We did have apples, but the fire cooked them on the trees:
 

 
Those 30 years weren’t wasted, though. Andy now has a better idea of how to protect the trees from critters. First you dig a hole about two feet deep, both for the roots and for the first layer of hardware cloth. The ground squirrels don’t usually dig down further than that.
 

 
Then he puts in the first layer of hardware cloth, two feet under ground, one foot above so it can be attached to the second layer.
 

 
Next he adds a foot of dirt to the hole, then the tree.
 

 
And some pellets of slow-release fertilizer to feed the trees for a couple of years:
 

 
Now he protects the bark with tree-guard to prevent sun scald.
 

 
Then the three feet of new hardware cloth to prevent mice and other animals from girdling the bark when there is snow:
 

 
This picture shows the chain link fence around the whole area to keep out bears, elk, etc.
 

 
And if we do manage to get some cherries, he will have to cover the trees with netting to keep the birds from getting them first.

He’s planting seven trees this year: two cherries (including the one in the pictures), two pears and three apples. We’ll have to see if his 30 years of education will be enough. Our standard family joke is, “We’ll have fruit coming out our ears in no time!” Wish us luck.

What about you? Have you gained any hard-earned knowledge in the past 30 years?

 
We got some snow Tuesday! By Wednesday it had already melted down here, but not up in the mountains:
 

 

 
Apparently it also snowed in Albuquerque — very unusual because the last snow there is usually about March 16th. But by the end of the week the temperatures there are predicted to be 5 degrees above normal. Springtime in the Rockies!

I know tammy is having rain and ice in Oklahoma. Anything unusual where you are?

 
As you can tell from the picture, there was a bit of a breeze up there when Andy was burning some slash last Monday. He had to take periodic breaks to go inside to warm up.

Also notice there’s not much snow on the ground for this time of year. We’re still in the midst of a drought.

At the moment Andy is looking through fruit tree catalogs — he plans to plant 6 or 7 trees this spring. He asked me if I wanted him to plant a Gravenstein apple, remembering that they were one of my favorites when I was a kid. I asked him how many apples we got from the one he planted years ago. He said that wasn’t a fair question. The mice almost killed it and with his nurturing it struggled its way back to health. If it hadn’t been for the fire in 2011 he would have brought home one of its apples that year. (There were three on the tree and he was sure at least one would have made it.)

Hope springs eternal in spite of a few setbacks. What about you, are you persistent too? Do you think it’s ever possible for persistence to turn into foolishness?

Let’s hope I’m not as overly optimistic as George W. Bush was when he announced Mission Accomplished!

So what has been my/our mission? To get Andy back to working on his own projects up on the land. He’s really been happy and enthusiastic the past few mornings. At the moment he’s planning a solar hot water system so we can hook up the radiant heating in our floors up there, and he and Peter will work on getting the refrigerator to work once Peter finishes his current job. He also plans to plant a few fruit trees this spring.

For me the details of his projects don’t matter–what counts is he’s back to doing things he loves. After the fire demolished the place 19 months ago we had to decide whether to rebuild or to move elsewhere. I voted for staying because it would take us a couple of years of no projects for him if we looked elsewhere. No, rebuilding was the healthier choice this time around. Although if we get wiped out again we might decide the gods are trying to tell us something!

I, of course, have plenty of my own projects down here to work on, some of which were temporarily shelved while we had the house built and worked on the insurance. What about you? What “lights your fire”? What makes you feel enthusiastic and engaged in life?

 

 
The sink continues to heal itself, and Andy is building more bookcases, but the refrigerator is an ongoing problem. The pilot light keeps going out and the refrigerator shuts itself off. It will be interesting to see if it can ever be fixed, since we think the problem is the altitude. We did install the special high-altitude orifice for altitudes of 8000-8500+ feet to control the gas going to the burner, but the cottage is at 8800 feet and it looks as if we need a separate adjustment for the pilot light.

Andy has spent several hours now on the Internet and on the phone searching for suggestions from the company, but the problem seems to be beyond their expertise. One fellow did suggest we take the refrigerator to the closest service center—about 80 miles away and several thousand feet lower—but that isn’t feasible. So either Andy and the plumber figure it out themselves or else we skip the idea of a propane refrigerator.

Before Andy left this morning he warned me it was going to be an expensive project. Why am I not surprised? In fact the reason we downsized so severely was we knew things wouldn’t always go smoothly.

What about you? Any interesting challenges in your life right now? Do you usually expect things to go smoothly?

 

 
Just in case it snows Andy has put the snow plow on the truck and has put heavy wood in the back for more traction.

If it does snow we don’t expect it to be more than Andy can handle. So we went to Santa Fe today to buy a card table and chairs and also a shower curtain and rod so Kaitlin, Torben and the puppies can spend Christmas night up there.

Are you getting ready for anything?

 

 
Monday Dan easily fixed the panel to give us access to the back of the refrigerator, and Peter finished the installation that afternoon. It seems to be working fine. Steve, the architect, also came up Monday morning, and he said he will deal with the problem of the sink that doesn’t completely drain. Joe, the contractor, had planned to be there too, but we haven’t seen him so far this week. Presumably in the fullness of time he and his crew will finish the remaining details, for instance installing our door handles:
 

 
We will just have to see. Is there anything going on in your life now that needs a lot of patience?

 
If you recall, Joe, the contractor, said they would be done by Thanksgiving. That’s mostly true. We now have our certificate of occupancy and have paid Joe, but there a couple of things left to do. One is they have to fix the sink or else install another one that drains properly, and that shouldn’t cost us anything more. The refrigerator is a bigger problem. We always wondered how they would install it with that side panel preventing access to the back:
 

 
Andy had mentioned it to them, but they were still thinking in terms of an electric refrigerator where you just plug in the cord and push the refrigerator towards the wall. That doesn’t work with propane. Hooking the tubes is more complicated, and, as it turns out, the refrigerator light is powered by D batteries, which are in the back. So Andy, Joe, Steve (the architect) and Dan (the cabinet fellow) are planning to meet up there Monday morning to decide how to proceed. Andy has told them we’re willing to help with the extra cost on this one, since they haven’t done this sort of thing before. I will let you know how it turns out.

At any rate we’re thankful that we’re as far along as we are. How about you? Do you celebrate Thanksgiving where you are? Is there anything in particular you’re grateful for? Whatever the answer I hope you all had a great day.

 
It was an interesting week. Andy broke in the wood stove, which meant for a few days it exuded some steam and fumes, setting off the smoke alarms. (The instruction manual said this was normal.) That’s why the ear protectors are on the ash bucket to the right of the picture. Interestingly enough, the little stove (with heat box about 18″ by 12″) gave off enough heat to pop off one side of the protectors:
 

 
Andy tried putting it back together, but about a half an hour later it fell apart again, so we ordered a new pair. That was funny, not serious. It’s our kitchen that may have a problem.
 

 
We thought it was almost done because Dan installed the knobs and handles– he’s waiting for just a few little pieces to finish his part. The trouble is the sink doesn’t drain correctly. The are indentations in the bottoms of both sides and water puddles in them:
 

 
Andy saw Joe, the contractor, at the gas station the other morning and told him about the problem, but Joe won’t go up again until the building inspector makes his final visit. Joe asked for the inspection last Friday, and as we understand it someone is supposed to come up within two days. But so far no luck. Presumably it will happen eventually.

We don’t know what will happen about the sink. It would be a major and expensive nuisance if they can’t fix it and they have to replace it. Only time will tell. It doesn’t pay to be in a rush.

As usual, life seldom goes perfectly.

What about you? Has your life been smooth or bumpy lately?

 

 
The electricity and plumbing have passed their final inspections! The bathroom is finished except for the mirror over the basin, and the kitchen is almost done–the countertops have been installed and we now have running water. It still needs the trim at the bottom of the cabinets, and the refrigerator needs to be installed.

A few other minor things need to be done but we expect to have the final inspection by the end of next week. That means hopefully we will have the Certificate of Occupancy a week or so later. We are already wrestling with the next step–replacing a lot of the contents (mostly Andy’s tools accumulated over 36 years) that burned up in the fire. That means a lot of paperwork with the insurance company. It’s a big job, but we couldn’t do much about it before we had some space to put things.

Do you have any big projects that go on and on?