16 March 2014 - Butterflies

Today was amazing--60 degrees and sunny. I spent the morning puttering around the yard, cleaning up winter debris.  I was sitting on the porch in a sunny spot and on the phone with a friend when I was shocked to see a butterfly flying around the yard. March 16th. Who'd a thunk you'd see a butterfly this early?  

Granted it was a Mourning Cloak, probably the earliest of the butterflies to show up because the adults overwinter, but still!

Since our March days have  been seeing 10 degrees higher than average, I guess it makes sense that a few butterflies would venture out.  Although tomorrow we are supposed to get a front coming in from the north bringing high winds and snow. Typical March see-saw weather. 

Where I live, on the mile high mark, there are crocus and snowdrops in bloom and tiny green leaflets on the lilacs, quince and rose bushes.  I drove down into the valley today to take a birthday pie to my brother. I was happy to see spring was much further along. 

Forsythia was casting a golden glow along many streets and the ornamental plum trees were already blooming--looking much like frothy pink and white tutus. Lots of tiny green leaves were showing on shrubs and trees. Daffodils were also blooming in abundance.

After pie we checked out his yard and another butterfly flew by. This time it was a satyr anglewing (yes-angle, not angel). Two butterflies on the same day.  That was totally unexpected, but fun. 

David has a monster pussy willow growing by his pond. The little fuzzy paws are completely bloomed out and were being worked over by bees. We could tell they were not honey bees, but they were too high to see what they were. 

17 March
Funny stuff. Things usually happen to me in threes. I hear a new word--I'll hear it two more times almost immediately.  So yesterday I saw two different butterflies. 

Then today, out of the blue, this postcard from my sister showed up in my mailbox. The universe works in weird and wonderful ways. 

And yes, the  forecast was correct. After a lovely 60 degree day yesterday, today it is snowing combined with high winds. Everything is moving! Maybe even the house.

5 March 2014 - Spring, Snow and Duck Sex

Spring is almost here. Even though yesterday we had rain, snow, sleet, hail, more rain, and snow that stuck above 6000 feet, it is still feeling like spring. I have snowdrops that have been blooming for two weeks now--undeterred by the snow that piles on them. Yesterday I saw the first yellow crocus and noticed that several foxtail lilies are pushing their fat points out of the ground. 

Today I checked out the raised beds. Last fall I planted four varieties of garlic. All of them are up and are three inches tall.  My large flat-leafed parsley made it through the winter and is unfurling the first little leaves on the edges of freshly chewed middle where a deer ate it down to the nub. Grump. I spent some time reassembling the netting I use for a deer fence. The netting works in the summer just fine, but in the winter, the deer go right through it. The fluorescent orange construction tape hanging in streamers all around doesn't faze them a bit. Hunger wins out over the fence.

Next to the veggie garden there are fresh green crowns of oriental poppies. Many of these were buried under the dirt pile from the construction on the shop, but it looks like they made it through just fine. 

The tree branches are brightening up now as well. Across the street, the neighbor's magnolia has big furry buds covering the limbs. Weeping willow branches are turning bright green. The quaking aspens already have three inch long catkins glistening in the sun. This is wonderful time of year to sit back and contemplate the transformation. 

After all the rain and snow yesterday, today is dry, sunny and in the 50s. It is lulling us into complacency. Tomorrow though, more rain and snow in the forecast. 

I suppose you are wondering about the sex part. Birds are pairing up, building nests and mating.  Earlier this week while watching a pair of mallards,  I wondered what the heck was going on beforeI realizing I was seeing mating behavior. I would not want to be a female duck. 

First, he swims over and starts pecking her on the head. As he pecks her head, she leans forward and gets lower in the water.

As she gets lower he swims on top of her. 

His weight forces her even lower in the water.

He continues pecking her in the head until she is submerged. Guess who is blowing all the bubbles?

Not that I'd ever really thought about the duck procreation process before, but I was certainly bemused. 

And speaking of nesting...I have a piece of patio that cracked 30 years ago when my brother blew a willow stump and its roots out of the ground using black powder. It was an amazing thing to see, but that is a story all of its own.

However, over the years the crack has gotten wider as snow and ice get in and push. This spring I have been watching a squirrel wiggle through the crack. I will trap her soon and make her start over someplace up the canyon, but it has been pretty entertaining. She hauls huge mouthfuls of dried leaves, grass and other nesting material over to the crack and then can't get in. She works and works, rolling up the bundle of leaves, repacking her pouches and trying again. Often she resorts to making a pile of leaves beside the crack, then going down and popping up to drag the leaves or grass in after her. This keeps the cats on high alert as well. 

You can see I am easily amused.

1 March 2014 - The shop revealed

It has been a year now since we started construction on the addition to the shop. It is past time for an unveiling and a synopsis of the process.  The original shop was built by my Pop. It was 12 x 24 and stuffed to the gills. Since I brought a couple more presses and lots of type with me from Michigan, Jack was pretty adamant that the first project would be enlarging the shop. Not only for my stuff, but because Pop had stacked his type cabinets two high. Many people stack cabinets, but some of the cases are really heavy.  I couldn't lift them down from over my head. I needed enough room to have a lot of cabinets only one high, plus there was hardly room in the aisle between the cabinets to get the cases in and out.

Here is the original shop, tucked into a corner of the yard. The first thing we had to do was remove the pine tree. That was really hard, as it was an old, gorgeous tree. 


Here is an inside view showing part of the heavy equipment and a bank of type cabinets at the opposite end.

Here I am working on a project.
The press I am standing beside is a Chandler and Price 10x15 made in 1909. 105 years old and still works beautifully. This is my workhorse and favorite press to use. 


But back to the addition. First the tree had to come down. On the left side of the picture you can see a green hedge. This is all pyracantha--really nasty thorns, but it makes an inpenetrable fence, especially since it's about 15 feet thick. It had to come out as well.

 Fortunately, rather than cut it, our contractor took it out with a backhoe. 

That corner of the yard has quite a rise, so the pile of dirt is a result of digging out a flat base for the floor.  In addition to pouring a floor, they built up a corner foundation. Even though they started digging this out in March, they were fighting both rain and snow. Slowed us down. Then once the floor was poured it needed time to cure, so of course we got more snow. 

After the concrete was poured, we had to build an elaborate deer fence to keep the deer from traipsing across it while it set up. The addition crossed a favorite deer path from our yard to the neighbors. The fence worked, but the deer did make a new path--just not over the concrete. They are persistent. 

 Once the framing was started, it seemed to spring up into a building very quickly.

I chose steel sheets for the siding. I love the way it looks. My original thought was to let the steel rust into the deep orange color, but I really like the way this looks now.

Here is the new space all painted, You can see the guys are getting ready to break through the wall into the old shop. They left it to do last in order to keep as much dust and construction debris out of the original shop as possible. I really appreciated this, as it made it harder for them in the building process, but it worked.

 Dave and Paul, my contractors, were absolutely amazing. In addition to figuring out ways to save money and doing a wonderful job, they went over and above and helped me move all the type into the new space.

This was not as easy as it sounds. Every case (printerese for drawer) had to be removed from the cabinet, stacked up somewhere while the cabinet was moved in, then replaced in the cabinet. A few of the cases were so heavy that it took both Dave and Paul to move them. I carried in the really light ones.This little cabinet they are moving is filled with lead spacing. I had emptied about half of the spacing out, and it still took the two of them to move it. Talk about heavy metal.

Thanks to my friend Amy, who showed up with her architectural ruler!  She drew up a floor plan and made cut-outs of every piece of equipment-- all drawn to scale. We moved stuff around on the floor plan and fussed over spacing for hours. Even though I thought we had a workable plan, in reality, it doesn't quite work that way. After everything was moved in, we ended up moving two of the double cabinets. 

This meant taking all the cases out of the cabinets again and shifting them around. Back breaking work. Dave, bless him, had the attitude of better to do it now, so we did. 

Here is part of the process-- stacks of cases waiting for the final position of the cabinets.

This became quite the family affair. Dave's dad dropped by to see how the shop was coming along. He was immediately drafted into helping haul type cases and cabinets. Luckily for us, he came bearing a box of donuts so we got a big dose of sugar--which revved us up for more hauling. 

 

These pictures only include the stuff moved out of the original shop into the new space. I had more cabinets and equipment stored on the balcony and in the basement. Dave and Paul helped me move a lot of that as well.

Now that the original shop was opened up and cleaned out, I decided to give it a new coat of paint. When my Pop built it, he painted it a dark cream color and stained all the wood and exposed beams walnut. The new part is a very bright white with teal woodwork. I painted the old part the same bright white but left the wood dark. I had to shroud all the equipment and tape off all the wood. Not quite as easy as I thought it was going to be--I had to buy a 12 foot ladder to get to the top of the ceiling. But it looks really good now!

I still have a lot of organizing to do. But it is such a joy to come out here and putter around. As you can see, I still have a lot of stuff to find places for. It will probably consume me for years to come.

Recently,  my brother helped me bring the smallest press, a Pearl No. 1 up from the basement and into the shop. He also built a new bracket for one of my slant tops that only had one bracket. 

It is good to have a brother. I couldn't remember how or where some of the parts attached when we were putting the Pearl back together. We had disassembled as much as possible to move it safely from Michigan. David took one look and started bolting the pieces back on.

When I realized I had more type than cases and cabinets, I  found someone who was selling an empty double cabinet. I had it shipped in, and David helped me haul it home from the freight company, unpack it and get it set up in the shop, which also meant moving a few other cabinets. Kind of like playing Tetris.

Thanks to my brother and a guy he works with, I was able to acquire yet another double cabinet from an old Magna newspaper.

Sometime in its life, the slant top had been painted a 1940's green. Definitely not acceptable.

I used Dave's palm sander (gotta get one of these things!) and stripped it back to the oak and refinished it. It looks great now.

And best of all?  The new shop still sits quietly in the corner of the yard. A few steps away and I'm in a whole other world.