Sometimes Crazy Weather is a Good Thing

We've had a very strange Spring here.  It's been alternating between very chilly and very warm, with virtually no rain (at least until last week, when it rained two days in a row for a total, I would guess, of a little less than a centimetre).

This has, as you might imagine, wreaked havoc on the vegies. Poor things don't know if they're coming or going, and given that we're only three weeks from the start of summer I'm not holding out much hope for the cool weather crops like broccoli, cauliflower and spinach.

Having said that, this type of weather is apparently right up my mock orange's alley.  I have never seen it bloom so beautifully as it has been this past week.

I took this early this morning.  It's about a metre and a half tall, and smells absolutely divine once the sun hits it.

And because it's so pretty, I thought another photograph was called for. 

That's one of two wee baths I have for insects, and that's my dwarf culinary sage in the background, which the bees are currently swooning over.

I have been given one of the joys of gardening; something might be going pear-shaped in one spot, but there's bound to be something gorgeous somewhere else.  Too bad you can't eat mock orange!

A Weekend Away

A few weekends ago now, Daniel and I decided to take a long weekend in honour of our 18th (yes, our 18th) anniversary.

We went to a town called Hailey, about two hours eastish of Boise.  We've been there before - several times, in fact - but thought we'd visit again so we could go snowshoeing at Craters of the Moon.  It also helped that the company Daniel works for is headquartered there, and they own some townhouses for visitors that staff can also rent for very few dollars.

Hailey is in an area called Sun Valley, which is host to all sorts of fabulously wealthy people (and all the problems they bring with them).  Just to give you an indication: there are less than 10,000 people living in Hailey but not only do they have an airport, it's an airport that is always busy with private jets.  As in, these people have enough money to fly a jet into town for a visit. I think Hailey and Margaret River have a lot in common.

We started things off on Saturday by going for a drive north of Hailey to Galena Summit.  There's nothing there except a parking area, but the elevation (8,701 feet, or 2, 652 metres) offers some spectacular views across the Stanley Valley, no matter what the season:

 And although there wasn't as much snow as usual for the time of year, there was still enough to prevent one from sitting down to take in the view:

It really is a beautiful part of the world, I think.

On Sunday, we made the drive east to Craters of the Moon to go snowshoeing.  Craters of the Moon is a national monument that consists of a lava flow that occurred about 20,000 years ago.  We'd been there in the summer, and it is the most amazing landscape.  You can see how our planet formed.   Here's a link to photos that other people have taken.

And here are the photos we took.  It was unbelievable windy when we were there.  To the point that we hugged the leeward side of the hills in fear of being blown to South Africa.

Here I am grinding my way up a hill.  Although there were groomed trails (trails that have been smoothed out) for the skiers to use, we were told we could go anywhere we pleased.  That's the advantage of snow, you can't destroy anything because it's well protected with frozen water.
 

 

 

I really like the way the next photo shows the effect of wind, and some slightly warmer temperatures, on snow.  Thank you Daniel!

 

  

That black spot on the left is exposed lava rock, or, as I like to call it, "new planet":

We saw a spot where some people were going to camp for a night or two.  Sooner them than me, is all I can say.  Not only was it windy, but it was really cold, too.  I think I would have been miserable.

We also had some very nice meals while we were there, and did a fair amount of relaxing, which is only appropriate for a weekend away.  I took some knitting with me; I had been trying and trying to get a particular sock pattern to work out... that was somewhat less than relaxing.  I have since abandoned that pattern and started another, and progress is slightly better.  Let's just say I'm getting very good at unravelling!

On our way home on Monday, we stopped off at a place called Silver Creek.  It is apparently one of the world's premier fly fishing locations.  Because it is a spring fed stream, it doesn't freeze over in the winter, which I guess means the trout get big and fat.  And because so many people want to fish there, the trout have become very, very wiley.  Daniel would like to fish there, which is why we stopped for a look.  I'm glad we did:

I think I could quite happily laze a day away there while Daniel tries to outsmart the trout.

All in all, it was a lovely weekend and I came home thinking how I am still amazed that we live in such a spectacular place.  Now all I need is some more spring weather...

Introducing Dobie, the Fangless Wonder

So a few weeks ago, we took Dobie for a long overdue visit to the vet to get, we thought, a tooth removed.  As in, a singular one.

Turns out he was much more overdue than we thought.  Poor boy came home minus FIVE teeth, including his two right fangs.  How did he feel about this?  Not too happy, as it happens...

Have you ever seen such a pissed off cat?  It took me ages to get even this photo. Not only did he get swathes of his fancy fur removed (he's extremely proud of his stripes), but he had a bandage on his back foot holding on a pain relief patch, and his tongue wouldn't stay in his mouth. Poor boy!

He's doing much better now, though.  His fur is beginning to grow back, and he (mostly) has his tongue under control.  In fact, if the amount of talking he's doing is any indication, he's much, much happier.  Unfortunately, the same can not be said of our bank balance... 

A White Cabin Christmas... With Cats

Soooooo.... I am not going to offer any excuses for the lateness of this post, but I will apologise for taking so long to get around to it.  Sorry!

As most of you probably know, we spent Christmas at the cabin.  It was about the third or fourth white Christmas I've ever had, and I must say I approve of them.

We don't heat the cabin when we're away, and it can get a wee bit chilly.  When we first get there, the olive oil looks like this:

After about three hours of roaring fire, it looks like this:

And then, finally, after five or so hours, the oil is in its natural state and the cabin occupants have thawed out:

It's a good thing our guests on this trip brought their own fur!  Since we were going to be away for four days, we thought we'd try bringing Maggie and Dobie with us.  And much to our surprise, they did really well.

There was much exploratory sniffing to start with:

Maggie found the wood box absolutely fascinating,

while Dobie thought the upstairs was a bit of alright:

When they started patrolling the windowsills, I knew things were looking up:

I don't think they slept much the first night or two, but by the time Christmas day rolled around, all was definitely well:

There was some Christmas in there, too:

We cut the tree from the driveway.  I think it was bit young to be taken from its mother, but it looked just right.

We made these little guys from a kit years ago, and they were designed to wrap around candy canes.  The also work quite well with fire tools.

We had Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, as we had to go back to Boise on the Tuesday so Daniel could go to work on Wednesday (I had the week off).  We had a lovely spinach, cranberry, hazelnut and pear salad with a mustard vinaigrette, a locally raised and smoked ham with mashed potato and broccoli, and bread pudding.

All in all, it was a lovely Christmas, with the added bonus of snow!

I discovered that time behaves quite differently when you don't allow yourself to be distracted by computers and phones and housework and such.  We may only have spent four days there, but it felt like much, much longer.  Lovely and relaxing.

We  also learned that when the cabin gets warm, it gets hot.  We slept with a window open at night, and once the place was well and truly warm, we let the fire go out at night, too.

Warm cabins also lead to slipping snow, it would seem (look carefully and you'll see what I mean)...

How much snow did we have?  About this much:

 

Daniel did some hiking while we were there (I stayed in because I was still getting over the flu and the sinus infection I got as a bonus with it it).  He took some lovely photos three or four k's from the cabin, which I think speak very eloquently for themselves:

Cheers!

This Has Never Happened Before

Not ever.  Not even once in the past 15 or so years.

Over the last week or so, a certain striped guy has been dipping his furry feet into the weird and scary world of lap sitting (something Maggie figured out the day we got her).  Not sure, but I suspect he thought his stripes might fall off if he succumbed to such hedonistic temptation.

It started with a 30-second, very uncomfortable-looking four paws on Daniel's lap.  It progressed to a minute or so of slightly less uncomfortable paws on the lap, and so on until, after screwing up the last of his whiskery courage, last night we got 30 minutes of this:

  
Not sure if it was the blanket or the glass of wine (and the futile hope he might get some) that caused the change of heart, but I'm all for it!

Life in the Big Smoke

It really is the big smoke here in Boise at the moment. There are several huge bushfires burning in the region, and it seems like the smoke from all of them has decided the Treasure Valley would be a good place to settle.

Here’s what the city looked like last night (Monday our time) at sunset:

On my way to work this morning, it seemed to have cleared out a bit. I optimistically took this pic thinking I could let you all know that the smoke has cleared:

Four hours later, and this is from the same spot:

It’s been like this for what feels like years, but is really only a week or so. It’s also been very hot. I guess the upside of the crummy air quality is that the low winds are helpful to the firefighters. They certainly aren’t going to get any help from rain any time soon.

There is a fire burning about seven miles (about 11 k’s) from the cabin, but so far so good. Daniel was up there over the weekend, and the air was apparently more clear there than it was here! He made sure we have enough hoses if we need them, and I told him he should probably find a spot for himself in the creek in case he needed it.  It was a bit nervewracking when we first found out about it, but as it turns out that's all it was.

The latest report as I write this shows that the fire is about 65% contained. If you’re interested, here’s a link to the fire: http://www.inciweb.org/incident/3093/ . It's called the Springs fire, and they think it may have been started by a human.

Given that the entire country is in a state of drought at the moment, it’s really no surprise that we’re having a rough fire season.   It's quite likely that a lot of the fires won't be put out until rain arrives, which will hopefully be in October.

More than half of the state’s population (which is just over 1.5 million) lives in the Treasure Valley, and so far there haven’t been any major threats to humans in our part of the state.

The smoke is supposed to clear out tonight, which is nice for us, but hopefully it doesn’t mean high winds where the fires are.

Nature has a way of making you pay attention, doesn't she?

It Goes in Fits and Starts

As we have discovered, this cabin repair and maintenance business goes slowly.  Surprisingly enough, that's the way it is when you only have a weekend here and there to commit to it. Having said that, we have made some progress, and I have some photos to share with you.  These are the result of several weekends' and weekend days' worth of work.

First up is the deck repair that needed to be done after the storm came through and bounced a pine tree off it.

That's the Culprit Tree in the background.... Grrrrrrr!

It is more than fair to say that Daniel did the lion's share of the work on this.  But, I want to point out, only after I had helped with the measurements for the spacing of the vertical railings.  He may be a very smart engineer, and he may have grown up with stupid feet and inches (metric is so much more user-friendly), but it was YOURS TRULY who helped him figure it out.  I must say, though, that I was very surprised I managed it!  I'm pretty sure I'm allergic to the whole maths thing.

Looks good, doesn't it?  It still needs some little feet under the bottom rail to stop it from sagging, but all in all I'd say it was a job well done.

And here's the nifty bit.  We had heard from our neighbours that the previous owners had issues with snowfall in the winter being heavy enough to wipe out the railings.  Huh, we wondered, how can we take care of that?

Here's how we'll take care of that:

Good old bolts and wing nuts.  We'll be able to remove each section of railing before the snow gets too bad (probably just before we come home for our visit), and store them under the cabin for winter.  Pretty good solution, I think.  Now we just have to replace another four or five sections.


Lest you think I was sitting on my bum while all this was happening, I'd like to mention that I was clearing brush.  With nothing more than secateurs and a shovel.  I managed to get from this:

To this, while Daniel was working on the deck:

I think it had actually all been cleared at one time.  There are carefully placed rocks about the edges, and it's reasonably level.  I managed to cut enough brush to fill the trailer, which Daniel took to the town dump on one of our visits.

That pile of wood resulted from Daniel's chainsaw revenge against the Culprit Tree:

I also cleared up the after-storm debris, and I found some very amazing fungus while I was at it:

Next up was the side railing of the deck, which had been split from the impact of the tree.  I'm not sure it was occupational safety approved, but here's how Daniel kept it jacked up while he was working:

And so... next up was the eaves painting.  We would rather not have to find yet another insurance company, so we got to work on covering the bare eaves with paint.


This is what we started with:

And this is what we thought we would do:

 But given that it would need two coats (on top of the undercoat), and that it would mean a considerable amount of Daniel's time spent painting (at heights that I'm too terrified to deal with):

We opted for this:

It looks pretty good, given what we had to work with, and it only needed one coat.  But what a bugger of a job.  That paint had better last until I'm in my grave, is all I can say!

I'll use the red paint to redo the screen doors.  Hopefully it will make it look like a cheerful, welcoming cabin.  Hopefully it will keep the insurance company happy, too.  There are still three sides to go, but that will have to wait until next time.

Or maybe the time after.  Daniel's Dad is coming for a visit over this weekend, so although we'll be at the cabin, I think I can guarantee no repairs or maintenance will be done.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, that's a hummingbird feeder hanging there.  You fill it with a sugar solution, and all things being equal you'll have wee winged visitors.  They're actually pretty grumpy, territorial things hummingbirds, but they're amazing, too. The first time I saw one, I honestly thought I was looking at an insect.  I still can't quite believe they're actual whole birds.

So we've made some progress.  And I think we're pretty close to finding a name for the place, too.  I'll let you know when we've got it sorted.