It seems that there are degrees to the old "if a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound" thought experiment. We had quite a snow-followed-by-wind storm from Sunday night all through Monday afternoon. There were times when I looked out the window to see nothing by white, almost like the windows were frosted, because the wind was blowing the snow off all the trees and roofs. Interestingly, not so much off/around the ground and hardly any off the truck. But what I didn't notice was any out-of place noises, so you can imagine my surprise when I went out the back door to start plowing our driveway around 2:00 p.m. to this sight.
I believe the exact words I said out loud to the forest were, "Oh, shit." Because, as I mentioned, I didn't hear anything particularly loud or unusual from inside the house, which is probably about twelve yards from the fence (to the left).
Speaking of the fence, it got in the way of this dead Ponderosa Pine tree from the National Forest falling over! Luckily, the tree was not that large and it was apparently plenty-dead, so it doesn't seemed to have hurt the fence at all.
You'll notice in this last photo, that the branches are going the opposite direction of the branches on the trunk on the forest side of the fence. That has got to mean that when the trunk broke on our fence rail, that the broken-off top must have flipped over in the air before landing, right? SO now the top of the tree is pointed at the center of the case of the tree! WHOA.
And look just how close this is to the only power pole on our property! And the wires are not that high, by the way. There is not a mark on the power pole and we had no interruption of power to the house, nary a flicker.
All in all, we got pretty lucky. As did anyone whose power is tied to those lines on that pole, of course. Delia is feeling pretty lucky, too! It's a Stick Bonanza!
Trees, especially the dead ones, are made entirely of sticks, ya' know!
NOTICE: I don't know why the body text is highlighted. Well, I have an idea why, but my attempt to fix it failed and I don't want to put any more work into it, so I guess we can all just be glad that this post is mostly photos of a dog in her funny outfit and focus on that. When life hands you lemons in the form of an ice rink driveway, you make lemonade in the form of a figure skater outfit for your dog! And my "you" and I mean "me/I."
I dug through all my fabrics & trims bins looking for remnants and leftovers to cobble this majestic outfit together and came up with a variety of golden treasures!
Ruffles!
Sequins!
Please note the flutter sleeves.
The whole thing is lined with polar fleece remnants.
It's been awhile since I felt compelled to post here. Probably because the last few months have been pretty much routine, which I guess means we're settling into routines as we enter our 6th year here in the woods on the side of our mountain in Montana. I know I "promised" a post about dealing with the wildfire threat, evacuations, etc., but I just can't seem to want to sit down and focus on gathering the photos together and writing about them. It was frightening, sort of surreal, and, let's face it, damn inconvenient. THAT part of 2017 was anything but routine. Here's hoping it stays anything-but-routine.
It seemed to take a long time for the snow to come and stay. A couple times we got some inches, then a week or so later it would be gone. Then we also had some freezing fog which wasn't too bad for road conditions that we noticed, but was very pretty to look at for a few days.
We learned a new word! Pogonip: a meteorlogical term used to describe the uncommon occurrence of frozen fog. It was coined by Native Americans to describe the frozen fogs of fine ice needles that occur in the mountain valleys of the western US in December.
December 24-25 brought us up to a good foot of snow in some places. It was very pretty and also pretty powdery, so not that challenging to plow and shovel.
The first week of January decided to warm up: rain, freezing rain, sleet, melt-and-refreeze, wintry mix, you name it. If my Facebook feed is any indication, I'm about the only one I know who wants it to stay below freezing! Like, until sometime in March or April. Snow is one thing, but ice is a whole other hassle. A dangerous, dangerous hassle.
Plus, you know, we need that snow pack for water next fire season.
I'm having a hard time finding the enthusiasm to put together that promised post on our experience with the Lolo Peak Fire, but I will get to it. In all likelihood.
IN THE MEANTIME, here's what's been going on around here in regards to Eric's second novel's release earlier this month*: fan crafting!**
The Trials of Solomon Parker has a cyclical plot, rotating between Butte, Montana during the copper wars years, and Stevensville, Montana around 1900. So this year, I got the bug to participate in Stevensville's annual Scarecrow Festival (Oct 6-7) with a TToSP-themed scarecrow!
On Saturday, Oct 7, Eric set up at the Blacksmith Brewing Co. tasting room to talk with folks and hopefully sell some books, which he did.
This was the perfect opportunity to play the awesome book trailer his friend, Patrick of Afflux Films, made:
And of course, this kind of event inspired me to make another book display piece, this time a miniature mine car.
One thing I noticed about the set up at the Blacksmith Brewery tasting room is that it was kind of hard to tell exactly what was going on with that-guy-sitting-there-with-some-books-in-front-of-him. This is especially the case once friends started showing up and visiting. I decided a little backdrop would help make it obvious that Eric was there with a purpose other than drinking and that this could be useful for other only-semi-official-events.
I looked at a few tutorials online for the frame, made size adjustments, then assembled a portable stand out of 3/4" PVC. There are about a bazillion blogs posting the same process, even calling it the same thing, so I won't go into it here. You can search "10 minute, $10 photo backdrop" to find it, but let me tell you two things: you won't get all the materials for $10 unless you find some kind of smoking deal and it will take more than 10 minutes just to clean the writing off the pipe (if you are so inclined) and of course more than 10 minutes to go buy it all. ;) Nonetheless, it is a quick and inexpensive way to make a backdrop stand that could have plenty of uses for plenty of folks. I expect we'll use it for Eric's future books' events as well as for Halloween decorating, etc.
For The Trials of Solomon Parker backdrop, I used the same techniques I used to make the Dr Potter's Medicine Showbanner:
Pre-washed & cut fabric to fit, hemmed sides, sewed rod pockets at top and bottom
Printed out an image to fit my opaque projector,
Traced that onto cloth using opaque projector,
Hand-painted where I'd drawn the projected image with acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium
HELP!
You know what really, truly, helps authors and is super easy? Rating their books on Amazon and/or GoodReads. If you think The Trials of Solomon Parker is worth 4 or 5 stars, please follow one or both of those links and click the stars! It truly only takes a few minutes, less if you already have a GoodReads account. No matter where you bought your copy, you can leave stars on Amazon.
* October 3 in US and Canada. 5 October in UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India.
** No kidding.
It's been quite awhile since I have come upon some mystery scat, but on Wednesday I did. Right in my own dang driveway!
I was heading out to round up Delia for her morning fetch sesh, but instead of finding her in the first three spots-where-chipmunks-hide where she can usually be found these days, I found this turd near the shop. It's not one of hers... she does her dog business off in the tall grass... she values her privacy.
And it certainly wasn't dropped by the same critter that sneaked in to eat EVERY LAST ONE OF THE CHERRIES on our tree within 24 hours of me even seeing that we had a tree full of cherries. Or at least it wasn't shortly after eating them... this thing is FIRM.
Yes, I went out a day or so after noticing the cherries to pick them and it took me a second to find the tree, because NO CHERRIES. NOT A ONE. It was just a green blob like all the others. Even those that had fallen on the ground were sucked right up. Sigh.
It was very stormy in our area for several days; flood warnings on Monday-Tuesday & the whole thing. When I went out to my truck to go pick up the trash can, I found this sopping wet, little white breasted nuthatch huddling in the bed by the tailgate.
Well, shoot. Now what? I went in to tell Eric and ask if he though my idea might be worth trying. So we got one of the cleaned out, old recycling cans from the garage and a smooth dish towel to make a little "nest" with. Then we scooped up the soggy little peeper and placed it inside.
At first we set it on the picnic table, but since there was also a relatively dry white breasted nuthatch cheeping and hopping about nearby my truck we moved it over to some brush nearby - on top of that dumb old rototiller that the last people left as decoration and we have yet to remove. I ended up rolling up another towel and making a U-shaped bolster of sorts around the back to hopefully trap some of it's body heat to help it warm up and dry off. There's no photo of that.
Not too awfully long after, certainly not longer than 30 minutes, Eric went out to check on it then came up to tell me, "It's like a totally different bird. All fluffy and peeping." So came right down to check and it was already hopping around on a rock outside the ad hoc shelter! And by the time I got my camera activated it was hopping up the nearest tree! Wanting nothing to do with me, of course.
Our LILACS! I sure hope we don't lose all the blossoms. Sigh.
Tulips aren't supposed to have snow!
Will we get any apples this year?
Oh, little lupine! Stay strong!
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds... because the squirrels were still raising hell.
This is part of a group of seven that I counted in a neighbor's yard as I was driving down the mountain. Of course, I stopped the vehicle to get out my phone and take a photo.
It's been awhile since I've seen anything out of the ordinary around here. There are lots of squirrels and birds, even several sightings of bald eagles and other impressive specimens. There are always white-tail deer out and about, but lately there has been a group of 7 or 8 mule deer in the neighborhood! It had been a couple of years since either of us had seen them and even then they were not just loitering around like this.
These two are harder to see. I just happened to spot them out of the upstairs window when I was changing. It's not a great photo, but it is a pretty accurate representation of deer lying in the forest - the whole reason there are still deer is because they blend in.
I can't believe how close to our fence these two were, especially for laying down instead of browsing. They didn't let me get any closer than this before bounding off. I was kind of peeking around a tree and using the truck to steady my camera which I had zoomed in a bit. If you can't see them, the are just above the fence rail and on either side of that small fir tree, but back a ways.
Also, I spotted this massive beast while I went out to cut a few daffodils for a vase a few days ago.
