Before & After - Some Of What We've Accomplished In The Past 9 Days...

Peggy and I have really been enjoying the past nine days of labor intensive outdoor work cleaning up mom's overgrown acreage under these big beautiful Utah skies.

The four photos below are before and after pictures of the orchard and a large fenced area at the back of her property which could be divided up between vegetable gardens and the raising of farm animals such as chickens & goats.

Much of this area was 4 to 6 feet deep in a thick nasty tangle of weeds, brush, & cockleburs, and quite a challenge to deal with, but we're getting there!

I must say here that, if this were my place, I'd have a herd of goats to manage the weed problems, to help fertilize the gardens, and to provide milk for drinking and the making of goat yogurt and cheese, and, that being said, we'll move on to the reality of the present circumstances.

Click on all photos to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

Weed Management With Infernal Combustion Machines!
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

Yes, we accomplished a lot in a very short period of time mainly because my mother has this little John Deere tractor mower that rose way beyond the task it was designed for, which is basically to mow big lawns, which is why mom bought it.
We were in dire straits here with too many chores to do and not nearly enough time to address them all in some sort of sustainable way before winter sets in.
So, I'm certainly not proud of the fact that we converted about 7 more gallons of fossil fuel (on top of what we blew through the U-Haul truck) into the C02 which is every day rendering our planet less habitable for humans.
But we came here to help my mother, and, at this point in time, I have to do that partly within the context which she lives, and, as I said above, if this was our place things would be done in a different way.

Weeds Ready For the Chipper/Shredder

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

Peggy and I brought our electric chipper/shredder with us because we knew there was going to be a mountain of stuff we could use for mulch and compost and we're just getting started with that.

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

This little pile is just the first trailer full of chipped and shredded weeds headed for the compost heap. The horse manure in the corral will be another essential ingredient.

Note the empty bottle of Negra Modelo in the John Deere's beer holder, sometimes it's so obvious that I'm just a redneck farmer at heart.

The above photos show only a part of the many problems we've had to address in these 9 days, from a huge overgrown lawn to runaway shrubbery and weeds in the flower beds around the house, to broken door latches, lost keys for important locks, automatic sprinkler malfunctions, a broken fitting in the plumbing for the well, and so many other things I've already forgotten.

But the three of us are having a lot of fun together and that's what's important.

A Drizzly Fall Morning...

...brings beauty to the eyes of beholders

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

Our morning trek began later than usual today because we needed to go to the bank and Post Office after they opened at 9 A.M. It rained lightly yesterday afternoon, and all through the night, letting up this morning as we made our way into town under a sky of broken clouds and rainbows.

As we walked along the sidewalk, approaching the signal light at the entrance to the Interlaken Shopping Center, where the bank, the Post Office, and Von's Supermarket are located, I happened to notice this leaf lying on the concrete.

Yes, it's just one fallen leaf clothed in raindrops, but it's the one, of thousands, that caught my eye and the diffused light made for a very nice image.

Shot with our Canon S10IS in Manual/SuperMacro mode, ISO 80, f 8, at 125th second. As recorded by the camera - not cropped.

Peggy's Leaf...

Picture Of The Day

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

Peggy found this leaf with an interesting pattern to the colors, and I thought it was pretty photogenic, so I stuck it in a gap in the porch railing and gave it a close-up.

I'm still working on the two lengthy posts I've been mentioning but here's some color to look at in the meantime...

Have you noticed that I seem to spend a lot of time looking at leaves and windows?

Color Of The Season...

...a Fall moment

Click on image to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

I took this picture of a landscape tree last Monday at a shopping center along Big Bear Boulevard while Dallas and I were out walking. The gray background is actually the white stucco wall of a supermarket with the sun peaking over the roof. The wind was quite strong that morning, making it difficult to focus on the fluttering leaves, so I took about twenty shots before coming up with a good one. The picture was perfectly fine as taken but I really liked the way it looked after a little bit of manipulation in Photoshop. I applied brushstrokes/accented edges and slightly increased the color saturation which created a rich even-toned graphic image.

Canon S5IS, Manual Mode, Macro Setting, f/8, 1/250 second, ISO 80

Along This Mornings' Five Mile Walk

Click on photos to enlarge

A kind of soft gray November morning defined our walk today except for a few brief moments when the sun peaked through the clouds to light up that stately old Western Juniper along the lakeshore for me.

Dallas had a great time playing in the water and shaking the evidence all over me and the camera. But his patience only goes so far as you can see in the photo where he gets between me and the tree I was photographing with his 'it's time to move along look'. He was right, of course, because around the bend the lovely female mallard was waiting to pose for us and a little bit further came the big surprise of the morning. A Great Egret (Great White Heron?) stood fishing for breakfast right before our eyes and I managed to get a couple of hasty shots before Dallas scared it off with his meanderings.

I've seen Snowy Egrets here before but can't remember ever seeing a Great Egret on the lake, what a gorgeous bird!

Addendum 12-02-06

After a question from jules on the comments page, I did a little research and have determined the large white bird is a Great Egret (Casmerodius albus), not a white morph of the Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodius). They're very similar looking but the egret has dark legs & feet, and the Great White Heron is typically found only in the Southeast U.S.

The bird was standing too deep in the water for me to get a look at the legs but I got a quick shot of it flying away and the feet are very dark.

November Gardening

Click on photo to enlarge

A row of young lettuce plants thrive in their fiberglass-covered raised-bed today, in mid-November, at 6,750' elevation. We currently have 2 beds of lettuce and 4 beds of spinach, a bed of chard, and a bed of kale in various stages. This is the largest of the lettuce from our fall planting and, in just a few weeks, could be providing us with fresh winter salad greens.

Fall Creeper...

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  Click on photo to enlarge
  
  A lone leaf, in fall color, hangs by a last thread from the Virginia Creeper on the vegetable garden fence.
  
  Somehow the fall chores are getting done, the cordwood is stacked, newly planted fall/winter greens are sprouting in the raised beds and the deck is freshly varnished, ready for snow, and lots of it I hope.
  
  I also hope to get a coat of paint on the east & north facing sides of the house during the next couple of days and then we're ready to start working on new flooring in the house.
  
  Since 1969, when it was hand built by the previous owner, our little cabin has been carpeted with ugly lime green hi/lo carpet accented with chartreuse linoleum in the kitchen, bath and entry, I mean really ugly stuff!
  
  In fact the colors were so ugly I almost passed on buying the house, which was close to ideal for us otherwise.
  
  Unfortunately, the floor coverings were like brand new when we moved in, and one of the mottos we live by around here "Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make Do, Or Do Without" requires that, when we wear something out, we wear it out all the way!
  
  Consequently, we put up with that putrid green dust magnet ugliness for 25 years, until it was so grimy and worn out that even old Bohemian types like us couldn't stand it anymore.
  
  Peggy and I always knew we preferred wood floors but didn't like the idea of using up more of the world's dwindling hardwoods just to walk on, so my first idea at floor replacement was to make a sort of mosaic patterned floor with 1 inch thick rounds cut from cords of readily available firewood, but I would've had to fill the gaps between the rounds with some sort of fiberglass or plastic resin which didn't agree with my ecological sensibilities, and I surely didn't want to use toxic substances inside our house.
  
  So we decided to install wide planks of common pine (11 1/2" wide) over the plywood subfloor and, after doing some research on the internet, I found a non-toxic adhesive (Taylor 2071 Tuff-Lok X-Link Wood Flooring Adhesive) and a non-toxic floor finish manufactured in Germany (Osmo Hardwax Oil) that we will use on our floors.
  
  We finally tore out the downstairs carpet on the weekend of Jimmy's accident (and Hurricane Katrina) and have been living on rough plywood under-flooring every since, no big deal really, but there's also the 16' long pine planks stacked in our small living room, saws, tools, buckets of glue & hardwax oil where once was a couch, coffee table and dining area, and any day now, I'm actually going to begin installing our new floor.