Dorothy bored on a cold day

This afternoon Jeffrey took me to a banjo concert at a library about an hour away. The weather wasn't that great and snow was coming down, very overcast and thick out. The scenery was pretty much the same the whole drive. Two lane winding county roads; up, around and over hills; snow blowing like powder over the tall snow banks lining the roads, snow covered fields with the tops of dried yellow corn stalks lined up in rows sticking out, old farm houses and barns, some falling down. Then BAM! Out of no where a giant, slow-turning blade filled the entire windshield and all of my vision. It must have been 15 stories tall and looked like it was right on us. We were passing a wind farm and the massive blades were down enough on a hill that when we were close enough to see them through the snow, they were eye level. The visibility was so bad we didn't see them till the last second. "Oh Lord!" I hollered. I told Jeffrey I thought we were about to be abducted by aliens or a plane was about to crash into us. They were so tall, looking at them made me think about dinosaurs.

Sorry, more snow photos

Sorry to post more snow pictures, I've just never seen this much snow. For perspective here is my dog Barney, though he is short and the swing set out back. The snow is level with the lowest swing and just goes forever in every direction. Notice the 3 colors of old paint on the swing seats! The creek looks like a dent in the landscape. The bent fence photo is the small raised bed garden. It looks like a snowy cemetery and some of the beds can't even be distinguished. The fence was just temporary chicken wire to keep Rufus out (he doesn't challenge fencing) and wasn't really attached to the posts in many places.

whiteness

(Can you see Dorothy kitty looking out the window at the snow?)

So there's nothing but whiteness outside. It's so white and bright that you have to sort of stare at the ground to see it 3 dimensionally. All angles are rounded and all pathways hidden again. We are above the ice line so just a lot of other types of white crunchy precip is coming down.

Movin on

(photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/tristanbrand/)
I'm not a political person, but was excited to watch the inauguration. I couldn't quite make out the words to the last speaker during the inauguration, we were getting ready to take Jeffrey to the airport and running around. The little parts I caught were beautiful I thought. I found the transcript online. There were pieces in Dr. Joseph Lowery's Benediction that just sparkled. The phrases rolled and landed perfectly. I wonder if he wrote the first part himself or if he was quoting, I thought it was the most beautiful. It hasn't mattered enough for me to research it though.

Warming up a little

This has been the season of books for me. Since I'm unemployed, my job is learning and reading. I really needed a few more books to help fill in the gaps. My sister-in-law sent me "Herbal Recipes" by Rosemary Gladstar. It had a recipe I needed at the right time and I've been using the treatment since I found it in the book. It's one of those wonderful books that stays open on the counter and lays flat. The pictures are so beautiful, the one on page 22 is what I hope my herb storage will look like and there is even a section on henna! When I saw the two page highlight on Tasha Tudor, I knew that Ms. Gladstar was OK with me.

Supposed to be working!

I've been working on the drawings we need for the house. The elevation drawings look so easy in the book, but I didn't realize how much thought had to go into them. Where is the bedroom wall in on the inside of the house so I know just where to put the windows on the outside? What pitch does the roof have to slope? If I put the root cellar right next to the house, how will I do the berm? How thick are the North and South walls so I know how long the roof will be? I spent probably 3 hours yesterday just trying to figure out the best way for the retention wall to go so that the root cellar is totally covered in Earth, but the berm doesn't stick out too far. We have limited space on the hill and still have to find room for a workshop. Every time I thought I had all the answers and started to put pencil to paper, I'd have to stop because there was some other minor detail I hadn't thought about. Plus my drawing skills are pretty lacking, I apparently didn't inherit any of my grandmother's talent.

An ode to soap

Jeffrey and I have both been reading and re-reading the books we have on home building. Our friend also loaned us some of his including his Earthship series. Wow those are great. Most of the books are geared towards green building methods. The most helpful book has been "Earth-sheltered Houses" by Rob Roy. We keep coming back to it over and over. There used to be about 2 dozen slips of paper marking important pages, but my butter fingers dropped the book and most fell out! Now I have a 3 ring binder on each house building topic and have been taking pretty good notes; writing down which book has the best instructions, photos or drawings on that topic.