14 May 2012 - Exploring 13th West

What a glorious day! 84 degrees, sunny, perfect blue skies.


We spent the weekend, with major help from David (thank God for brothers), finishing the raised beds and installing a seven foot high deer fence around the beds. Jack is determined that we will get veggies, and that the deer will not. Stay tuned. 

So, after work today we went out to pick up a couple tomato plants and assorted seeds. The nursery was on the other side of the valley, which was conducive to exploring on our way home.

The first thing that caused me to hit the brakes, perform a u-turn and pull over, was a pasture with Highland cattle and babies! I had not realized how small Highlands are. A pony is taller than these cattle, although not even close to as heavy.  Their hairy faces give them such a sweet look--deceptively sweet-- I might add. One of the mothers charged the fence when she thought I was too close to her baby. 

The babies were about the size of Labrador retrievers. They were racing around the pasture, bumping heads and having a wonderful time. Truly, they made you want to hop the fence and hug them.

 The mothers were not having any of me. They were watching their little ones very closely. You can see the fence looks more than a bit on the rickety side, so I stayed further away than I wanted. 

Don't they look so very picturesque with the mountains in the background? 

Upon arriving home, I checked to make sure they really were Highlands (yep, they were) and also discovered that a group of Highland cattle is not called a herd, but a fold. So a Scottish Fold is a breed of cat, but a fold of cattle are Scottish cows. It is a weird and wonderful world we live in.

Back on the road, we had scarcely made it a mile down the road when we saw a big sign for a Conservation Garden Park. A what? Naturally we turned in to check it out. What a surprise! The modern building houses the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District offices, but they have an education center with classes, seminars, plant sales plus acres and acres of beautiful gardens that illustrate how to plant in a desert and use water wisely. What a delight! 

We took the self-guided tour which walks you through areas that emphasize design, irrigation, planting and maintenance. It was beautiful. Fabulous specimen trees and so many ideas that my head was spinning. We would have stayed a lot longer if the tomatoes were not getting heat stroke in the back of the car. We will be going back, you can bet on that. And I'll have a notebook and pencil. 

The gates were all different: huge slabs of quarter inch plate steel with cut-out designs of gardeners doing things. Fun!

 There were many paths through the gardens: concrete sidewalks, stepping stone paths, and mulched woodland paths.


Best part? All the plants were labeled. 

The paths led in and out of seating areas, including wood pergolas or through metal arched walkways or more formal poured concrete benches. 

 Here's an example of a hot, dry setting with a stone riverbed. Big flat boulders double as seating. 

The garden designers somehow made ordinary plants look exotic in these combination plantings.

Tall purple smoke trees, spiky clumps of blue-gray ornamental grasses, rounded flowering shrubs... all combine into a landscape that is so much more than a sum of its parts.

Here in a more wooded area, the garden is about to explode into color with peonies, iris, poppies and  penstemon.    Mental note: I want to go back and see that! It should be absolutely spectacular.  The purple flowers in this picture are globe alliums.

It was a lovely day out, and we were teased by so many possibilities.

13 May 2012 - Appreciating my brother

Have I mentioned how much I adore my brother? The best thing about being back in Utah is the close proximity to David. He amazes me daily. Not only is he funny, but so smart! He can do anything, fix anything and I would kill to have his brain function. He remembers every thing he reads. He would probably argue with that, but the amount of knowledge and odd little facts which turn out to be useful, tucked away in all the nooks and crannies of his head continually astonish me. I think some of his DNA comes from the sponge family. If you want an example ask him about the alkali bees and the bomber flies in Lovelock, Nevada. Funny. 

David works four ten hours days then has three off. Since we came back, at least one of those three days off has been spent helping us. He shows up and works. Instead of veni, vidi vici, I keep thinking I should find the latin for he came, he fixed, he left. It seems to fit. Since he has taken care of this house for many years he just knows what and when to do it.

He also comes with surprises. After we decided to move back,  D2 and I had a conversation about weather vanes. Pop had made a wonderful horse weather vane that topped the house for years. It had fallen apart some time back.  When we arrived in SLC in December after selling our house, the first thing I saw was a new weather vane gracing the roof line. Perfect!

Last Saturday, Jack and I were sitting on the porch, reading the paper, sipping coffee, soaking up the warm sun when David comes sneaking into the yard. I think he was shocked to find us up and mobile. 

He made a birdhouse out of a log and I think he planned to hang it in a tree, then wait to see how long it took us to notice. Foiled! But it is a great birdhouse. It may be a bit late for this season, but someone will find it. I'm hoping it will be a flicker or perhaps a woodpecker.

In addition, he had his bag of tools with him and started pulling stuff out. Now what? One of my pieces of yard art had been bothering him. It's a lovely bird made out of tools that looks like it is saying, "Get busy! Why are you just sitting there?" Over years of being out in the weather, the bolts that were the eyes had rusted out. He drilled out the bolts and installed new eyes made out of orange cat's eye marbles. Everyone is happier now. And they eyes? They look great--nice beady bird eyes. 

After making the decision to move back, Jack and I made three trips out to SLC--two of the trips involved driving 17 foot U-Hauls packed to bulging, and the the third trip--we got smarter as we went along--we flew out and met a POD here. Still can't believe how much stuff we brought with us, and even more, how much stuff we gave away. But the point is, that in July of 2010, when we decided to make the move and Jack moved here, David would show up and help do things. 

One day he and Jack were sitting on the porch and David said, "Lauri needs a water feature." Can't argue with that! Pop had built a small wading pool for us when we were all small. Then he added an upper pond with a fountain that flowed into the wading pool. 
 
At least 15 years ago David filled in the wading pool and the fountain hadn't worked for years before that. 

He dug all the dirt out of the pool, cleaned it up and spent days getting everything working. Plus there were the requisite several trips to the hardware store and having to order a new, bigger motor before getting the fountain to work. 

After getting both pools cleaned, there were cracks in the concrete that needed to be patched, then time to dry and cure, replacing the plumbing, discovering it needed a bigger motor... all the little things that add to getting something done.
 
And of course there were many adjustments to be made. It took a long time to get the right pressure so all three pipes shot the same amount of water. One would go three feet up and another would barely dribble out the top.

All cleaned up and working. Wow. There is nothing like the sound of water splashing on a really hot day. And for the really hot nights? David installed spotlights. What a treat!  Everyone needs a water feature.

In addition to this, there were other huge projects. He and Jack decided to replace three of the concrete squares on the porch which had started to sink. This involved renting a jackhammer to break up the squares that were five to six inches thick.

Next he hauled his cement mixer over, rigged up a pulley to get it out of his truck and back in when he was finished. 
In the life and work of the Winburn clan, nothing is easy. Every project requires other projects to be started, or completed before you can get to the part you started to do. Whether it was doing massive tree trimming before starting on the fountain, or having to clear off enough area to work, it is always something.


Of course, it is fairly easy to say what the project was, but there is all the prep and cleanup. How do you get rid of that much concrete?  Little by little in the garbage cans.  

After spending a week here in August, and knocking down paper wasp nests on a daily basis, I decided that Jack should paint the ceilings blue. He got started on it, and David showed up to help. 

After renting a paint sprayer, they decided to buy a better sprayer. Sounds easy. But all the work is in the prepping. Jack spent hours hanging plastic drop cloths and wrapping beams. Then because he is who he is, David scared the bejabbers out of Jack, what you can't see is that he is hanging over the end of the balcony. For those of us (see Jack and Lauri) who have a problem with heights...even looking at this picture makes my stomach clench. 

But the results are wonderful and the blue, in addition to messing with the wasps' plans adds a lot of light to the area. 

Then there are all the little ad hoc projects. David shows up and we say something along the lines of "while you are here could you tell us ... or show us...  or help us...." And there are times he'll show up to fix something we didn't even know needed to happen, such as adding a chimney cap and making sure it is all caulked. 

Our basement was flooded when the landscapers next door blocked the street gutter during a downpour. All the water flowed down the driveway, into the window wells or under the porch and into the basement. David showed up and patched the porch steps so water could no longer go under them. He created water diversion ditches, so God forbid, something like this happens again, the water will flow into the lawn. All of this is hard physical labor. The soil is solid with rocks. After living in Michgan with mostly sandy loam, this rocky excuse for dirt is hard to deal with. 

He and Jack replaced the old, rickety fence. They had to dig out concrete footings that were huge! Another massive job that took weeks to finish.  

Then there was the day he stopped by and found Jack and me trying to get the tiller started. He got it started after a couple hours of taking the carburetor apart, putting it together, taking it part and readjusting.... When it was finally running he helped us till up the garden area. When Jack finished building the raised beds, he came back and helped us put the deer fence up.

Meanwhile he has projects galore of his own. The big one right now is restoring the log cabin so he can turn it into a blacksmith shop. He has had to replace roof beams, completely replace the roof decking, and will have to reshingle the roof, but that sort of got sidetracked because he added a skylight. He had finished installing it and was considering the next step of tar papering. But no. Jack, Robin and I bought him another skylight that was twice as big, and opens. His progress was stopped while he framed it up and got it installed. We didn't care, we were more worried about good light and ventilation.  Okay, just a little bit of guilt on my part.

This inside shot shows some of the logs he needs to replace in the corner. That is a whole other story. He has already poured a concrete cradle behind the ladder to support the bottom log on the far side of the cabin. 

Here he has the first skylight installed. It added a lot of light to the dark interior, but the second skylight really helped.

Unfortunately, before he could install the new skylight, he decided to trim the overhanging pine boughs. The thought of a limb crashing through his new skylight did not thrill him.

 

 








The ladder he is standing on is wedged on the roof of his backhoe. In the next picture you can see he is using the chain saw on a stick, which has a 15 foot pole. Scary!  Jack and I cleaned up the limbs as he sawed them off. Turn about and all that. 

On his days off, when he can't work on the cabin due to the weather, he has other projects-- rebuilding the fire pit of his forge, making special brackets for the cabin beams. Reading up on blacksmithing. Always something. 

And since we were there, he rounded up a great collection of dead yard tools for my permanent deer fence--an upcoming project. 

What I have enumerated here are just tip of the iceberg accounts. I could go on ad nauseum. After living without family for 30 years, all I can say is it is so good to be back. And David? He's not only the frosting, but the cake as well.

6 May 2012 - Birding

Early this evening Jack and I were sitting on the porch, contemplating our day, when we heard bird song--long, melodious and a bit strident. We listened but couldn't decide who it was. The leaves are big enough now that we often can't find the birds in the trees. Then, to our amazement, this beauty landed on the feeder not even 15 feet from where we sat.

Jack had his camera on his belt, so I got some good pictures. I went inside for Sibley (my favorite bird guide--introduced to me by David Swan) and we rediscovered this bird--a black headed grosbeak. After living in Michigan for 30 some odd years, it takes some reorienting to remember what the local flora and fauna are. I grew up with a grosbeak, but I sure couldn't remember this guy. 

My grandmother had a grosbeak in the house for years. She found it in the yard, can't remember if it had fallen from a nest or if her cat had presented it to her. She raised it, hand fed it (worms and bugs in the summer - seeds and meal worms in the winter) and let it fly around the house every now and then. It also had fun bathing in a pan on the kitchen floor. Even though she was a female grosbeak, her name was Junior. She looked just like this lady that has been showing up in my yard.

The hummingbirds are starting to come back. Two weeks ago when the quince began to bloom I put the first feeder out.  We saw the first male last Wednesday, then this weekend a female showed up. So I promptly filled another feeder and hung it on the backside of the house. 

I am also having fun watching a pair of Cooper's Hawks. Two years ago they nested in the yard and raised three babies. This year, I don't know where they are nesting, but they soar overhead in lazy circles, then like a flash they dive after an unsuspecting victim. I read they need to eat the equivalent of two starling-sized birds a day.  

Our yard is full of birds, mostly because we have two birdbaths, suet feeders, three thistle feeders and two sunflower feeders. The air vibrates with bird calls. When it gets quiet, I know the hawks just flew over, and the little birds are all diving for cover. 

We have many, too many, house finches, but their songs are lovely and the males are showy. We already have parents bringing babies to the feeders. 

Wonder how many broods they will have this year.

I am also loving the quail. In the winter they flocked up in big groups. We saw as many as twenty at a time under the feeders. Now they have paired off and are getting territorial about the yard. Like most birds, they have a very distinctive danger call. Their danger call sounds like they are yelling escargo! escargo! I have to laugh: what? They are afraid of snails?

29 April 2012 - Hereditary weeding

Yesterday, I was surprised to find myself channeling my Mother. She fought dandelions for years and years. I can remember that my sister and I were drafted at a very early age, to be part of her army.  As general of the forces, she would attack the weeds with her digger and throw them behind her as she progressed through the lawn. We always managed to poop out way before she did.

In my own garden, much to Jack's bemusement, I too, pitch weeds behind me as I work. Since he often ends up cleaning up behind me, he doesn't quite understand.  So today, while out digging dandelions, I realized I was in my mother's classic pose:  one knee on the ground, one knee up by my shoulder. I had to stop and laugh.

Then I had the "aha" moment. I remembered that my friend, Amy, gave me a lovely turquoise trug. It is a lightweight, flexible plastic container with handles. I could drag it along with me and pitch the weeds into it as I went. It certainly eliminated a lot of clean up. 

There is a rhythm you fall into, a sort of mindless being that lets you dig, while your head is elsewhere. It is an interesting place to be. 

 Our list for this weekend was overly ambitious as usual, but we still were able to accomplish quite a bit. High on our list was one: cleaning off the porch,and two: getting David to come haul all the steel, plus assorted machinery away so we could use the covered space behind the garage for storage instead of the porch. We definitely have storage issues, especially for yard equipment, and it does look pretty trashy. Jack says the only thing that saves us is that we don't have a car on the lawn up on blocks.

Quite a bit of stuff on the porch was furniture (dressers, bookcases, computer furniture, etc) that we didn't have room for in the house. this stuff spent the winter on the porch wrapped in tarps. Today we loaded the van and made two trips down to Savers, and managed to tuck a few more things in the basement. Wow! That freed up a lot of room. 

Neither one of us thought to take a before picture, which is really too bad, because the difference is astounding. Jack took a picture about halfway through the porch project. 

So, are you wondering about the blue ceiling?  Several years ago I read a tip from Martha Stewart. She said to paint your porch ceiling blue and it will keep wasps from building nests on your ceiling. We get so many wasps,  it is always a battle to keep the ceiling free of mud dauber nests, and paper wasp nests, so we tried it. And I am here to tell you that it works! Apparently it confuses the wasps into thinking it is the sky, and they think they can't build. Ha!

David came over and we filled his pickup with metal until his tires started to flatten out. Don't have a clue where he is going to put it all, probably on his porch!  He still needs to come back and take more things: three or four grinding wheels, a very large metal clad storage box, really old machines that aren't even made anymore, or that make parts for things that aren't made anymore. Very cool stuff, mind you, but we can't/won't use it not to mention we desperately need the room. 

Between the stuff that David took, and moving a lot more around, we were able to get almost everything off the porch. Lots left to do behind the garage, but that is another day.  The next big thing on our list is to replace the porch post that is currently sitting on the jack. That will go a long way toward making this area more livable and usable. But right now, it seems like gracious living.

I love to sit out here with my first cup of coffee in the morning. Even when the temps are in the high 40s or low 50s, with the sun coming in, it is very comfortable.

18 April 2012 - The little things

Some guy wrote a book called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff...and it's all small stuff. His premise is that if you let the small stuff go, it won't take over your life and you will find inner peace.


That might work for some people, but I like the small stuff. And I must admit that the small stuff, the little things give me inner peace. And not only do I like the small stuff, it gives me great pleasure to photograph it. Spring is the perfect time of year for small stuff. Buds swell, tiny leaflets appear. If you really look, you can see miniscule flowers on some shrubs. 


I found a tiny spiderweb tucked away in a crevice. It wasn't much bigger than a silver dollar, but it had just rained, and the web had caught some rain drops. 

How gorgeous is this? 

And if you look very closely, you can see the reflection of my camera in every little drop. 

 Another one of my (many) little obsessions are lichens. Lichens can be so small and so easily overlooked, but if you look really close they are minute gardens! 

Here is a patch of lichen on a rock.  You could cover all the lichen in this picture with two fingers.  So easy to miss.

 But wait. Look at this amazing small stuff!

I have been walking every day. Granted it is only around my neighborhood, but there are all kinds of opportunities to find  wonderful little things. 

Right now the trout lilies are just starting to bloom. These little beauties are only 4 to 5 inches high at most, and I mean the entire plant.

There was no way I could walk by and not take a picture.  


Guess you would not be surprised to hear that a car pulled over and the driver asked if I was okay. 

Other small things that delight me are juxtapositions, such as these redbud blossoms pooled on an asphalt driveway after a rain. 
















 In my own yard the wind anemones are blooming. Again, they are tiny little plants whose blooms are bigger than the plant. You can see how tiny they really are next to the serendipity of the snail shell and how the quarter-sized blooms overwhelm the foliage. 

16 April 2012

It's been an emotional day. Pop died two years ago, Bennett died one year ago.

12 April 2012 - Spring snow

It is only the 12th of April, and we have already had two snowstorms. The first snow was on April Fool's Day. Fitting.  The second was today. This last week has been nothing but pure Spring.  Temps in the high 70s, warm winds that worked hard on blowing leaves and blossoms out on the trees. It worked.

The wild cherries have started to creep up the mountain and are beginning to bloom. You can see the faint tint of green beginning to show as well.


I'm sure these trees are the results of birds and deer, but it is nice to see something else growing on our rather bare hillside.


Most of the vegetation on this western exposure consists of scrub oak, sage brush and patches of prickly pear cactus.

Other garden plants have escaped and moved up the hill as well. The bright green under these rocks is a euphorbia, a fairly common ground cover in this area. Again, these were probably another result of the deer.


 I recently learned there are over 2000 varieties of euphorbia. The world is an amazing place.

Here in my yard, the quince is blooming, the crabapple buds are so full and ready to burst that the tree looks pink, the maples are blooming, the lilacs have purple spikes, the plums are in full bloom. It is lovely.


Last fall we planted crocuses in the lawn so we now have spots of bright color popping up.


It is such a fabulous time to be alive.

Another great thing about living here is you can see the storms moving across the valley. Depending on the direction of the accompanying wind you may get the strong, briny smell of the Great Salt Lake before the rain hits.

In this case we had a dust storm with the wind, then heavy rain before it turned to snow.  

Before the rain, as the clouds were moving down the mountain, it looked like this.


Lots of new little chartreuse leaves, but they didn't last long. Here's the same shot from inside.About 20 minutes later.

10 April 2012 - Pink Moon

In the world of full moon names, one of my favorite names for the April full moon is Pink Moon. This year, the Pink Moon coincided with Easter and Passover.  Why Pink Moon? This name came from the wild ground phlox, one of the earliest flowers of spring. Other names for April’s full moon include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn. I like Full Fish Moon, but Pink Moon fits. Here in Salt Lake City, blooming under the Pink Moon are many pink trees: Redbuds, Weeping Cherry, Ornamental Plum, Saucer Magnolias, Flowering Almond. So many! So pink!


No full moon pictures this month. We had rain, then snow, then rain mixed with snow. Fortunately the eight inches of snow we received quickly disappeared, but the clouds obscured the moon.


I now have a new philosophy for getting things done. One thing each day. I started out thinking that a whole lot of one little things will add up. That's true, but how come my one things tend to be big things?  My first one thing was to get out the patching adhesive and slather with patching compound. Day two would be sand the patches. Day three paint. But it just doesn't ever happen that way.


Last weekend? Day one, one thing: clean out the tool corner. Here's the before. Actually, I started this the previous weekend. Pulled everything out of the corner, then realized that the handles all had a lot of sun damage, they were dry and cracking, so everything came to a halt while I rubbed mineral oil into every one.


Took longer than I thought. Then I discovered the forecast was for rain and snow.  Ended up having to pile all the tools back where they had been. humph. Unsatisfactory, except the handles really look good.


In the meantime, Jack and I went to the Depot looking for more tool racks. The plan is to clean it out again, stain the siding, install more tool racks, and voila! Yep. One little thing.


 Oh yeah, need stain. In the basement I found four gallon cans of stain. Three were half full and one was unopened. Cool!

On further inspection discovered that two had gone bad, but one of the half full cans might be okay, and the full can was fine.


Back to the weekend. Saturday, I emptied out the area again, swept the walls down, and got ready to paint. By the time I was ready to do the painting it was too late, so that was going to become the Sunday one thing.


On Sunday, David showed up. The day took a different twist. He replaced the leaky valve out front so we could turn on the outside water. I worked on cutting out more elm volunteers around the meters and where he was working. After the valve was replaced, David and I pulled three tree stumps out of the front yard. That took another hour of digging, water blasting, and chains hooked up to his truck.


I went in to see what we could rummage up for dinner. David started working on the tiller. He got it started, then oiled it up and was able to get a couple of passes made in the garden before it quit.

Monday after work,  (one thing) Jack started painting the garage tool area.


I went out front and started working on the pruning pile, (second thing)  cutting the trimmings into small enough pieces to fit in the garbage can.


 Finished  the pile, but realized that the front of the garage could use another coat of stain. (Third thing).




An hour later, the front was finished, but now I need to get another shade of stain for the doors.


Guess that could be thing one for another day.


But moving on to thing four for Monday, after finishing the garage, joined Jack on the back of the garage and started working on yet more painting, starting with a very weathered beam.

The beam was so dried out that it was  practically sucking paint out of the can. I can't tell you how good it feels to be working on the house, getting it back into shape.


While there is so much to do, my one thing a day seems to be working. Even if one thing turns into way more than one.

And the tool space? It looks really good. Maybe tomorrow we can get the tools hung up. Progress!