The O-Zone

What does four cords of firewood look like, besides a lot of work?

This is about half and half, Douglas Fir and Larch.

The Larch is the best for mid winter, holding a fire overnight, and producing the most amount of heat.  The fir is prettier to burn, very frisky and lots of snap, crackle, and pop.  It sounds really cheerful.  And produces almost the same heat as the larch.  Plus it makes better kindling to get fires started.

We spent a couple of hours making a path between the garage and the pile of firewood.

That way we can move split firewood from the woodshed to the rack on the porch off the sun room.  We’ll spend an hour or two a day splitting and stacking the firewood until the shed is completely full, and cover the rest of the wood that won’t fit under a tarp.

We've been using the wood in the shed for the last couple of months, so there are lots of new holes to fill in.

The woodshed holds eight cords of firewood, roughly, and we just had five cords delivered (one cord is in the carport up the driveway).  We also have a couple of cords of firewood up the hill from the thinning we had done this summer.   We are now definitely ready for winter, which is coming our way on Tuesday, courtesy of that big storm that just hit Alaska.

The end of September and all of October were sort of a blur.  The house didn’t get painted and we’ll have to wait for favorable weather next year, May, June, July.  Somewhere in there it should stop raining with warm enough nights that we can get that project finished.

Now we’re waiting for snow to start falling, and the rest of our firewood to be delivered.  Hopefully soon on one, and not on the other!

This morning as the sun was coming up, a full moon was setting.

The valley below us was shrouded in fog.  No snow on the ground or mountains is sort of weird on mornings like this.  Very cold weather is coming on Tuesday, so we’ll have to harvest the herbs from the greenhouse and dig up the rest of the carrots in the garden.

The house improvement is moving along well.  It’s sounded like living inside of a thunderstorm, with a few earthquakes thrown in for good measure.  It hasn’t been particularly restful but for the most part the work has been outside of the house.

The old siding all stripped off and piled on the grass.

The original plan was to saw up all the old siding and use it for firewood, but then we heard about somebody who is building a garage and has pretty much no money for building materials.  So he came and hauled all this away and will recycle it for siding on his building.   The main thing is it is gone and we didn’t need to anything further with it.

This is what it looks like with the old siding. The sun room has the same cement board siding we're installing now, as well as one original wall on the sun room deck.

And this is what it looks like now.

No, it isn't foggy. That's dust from sawing one of the long cement boards lengthwise for the starting row.

And this is Dan wondering why he's outside breathing that stuff.

Then through the magic of time and a bunch of guys who have been here off and one for the last 3 weeks.

The little roof overhang on the second story is gone, and a new sliding window has been installed.

We discovered why that little roof had been put in place.  The guy who installed the first window did it wrong, and it ended up below the roof line for what was the original porch.  Planning!!!  So some interior remodeling was required and re-framing needed to be accomplished before the new window could be installed.  Now that upstairs bedroom has much needed cross-ventilation.

Soffits have been created, boxing in the ends of the rafters.

And the framing around all the windows is now consistent on the entire building.

Windows in the bird's room were very exciting for the parrots. For some reason they adore hullabaloo.

Well most of them do.  Opal objected so we moved her away from the windows, and dropped the shades so she didn’t see strange heads popping up.    Mishkin shared her dismay with having people around the house trying to tear it down around his head.  He is so happy today that there’s nobody here but us chickens.  He’s snuggled in a blanket on the chair next to my computer chair.

There’s still quite a bit of work left to do before painting can be done.  The siding isn’t completely installed and several more soffits on the back of the house need to be built. And then all the seams have to be caulked to seal up the outside of the house.  But it’s coming along.  This next week should be the end of the construction.

We are going to paint the entire building to match what we had done on the sun room and bedroom additions we made.  Hopefully the weather will cooperate.  It can’t get below 50 degrees when the paint is wet.

The new bat house arrived on Friday and I’ve decided to name it “The Belfry.”  I was gonna name it the “Bat Hilton” or “Bat Regency” but didn’t want to be hassled about copy right infringement.  Besides, this way if somebody tell us we have bats in our belfry, we can just say, “Why, yes we do.”

I have to go find some fancy lettering at the DIY store to add the name to the exterior of the box, on the board below the bat insignia.

It’s very nice, made of cedar with some spaces for ventilation and nylon wire mesh for little bats to clean their claws on before climbing inside.

Three floors to choose from, but no elevators. There will be a concierge bat to make sure everybody is comfy.

The instructions say to hang it 12 feet off the ground, facing south east, and none of our buildings have that orientation, so we’re going to hang it south west instead, on the back of the garage up near the peak of the room.  We also need to find some screws with which to fasten it to the wall.

While I was taking bat house pictures, Mish was following me around, yelling at me and trying to get me to play with him. He finally resorted to playing with his scratching post instead.

While Mish was doing that, Terry was sitting on the arm of the chair, showing off her wings.

She’s at least as good as flirting as the cat is, but less likely to trip me!

Dan picked jalapeno peppers and then sliced them into rings.

We got about 20 peppers.  Dan just pulled the four eight-ounce jars out of the hot water bath and they are now cooling on the counter.  Another first, I haven’t tried making pickled jalapeno rings before.

The last of the sweet basil ready to be pureed and frozen.

Our contractor friend came this morning to begin the project of replacing all the original wood siding which had been improperly installed and was unpainted and had no finish at all to protect it from warping or weathering.  Like Dan says whenever we started doing a project like this, “It’s never too late to build it correctly.”

He pulled off boards on one section of the house and discovered two of the residents we knew were living under the siding, and that we didn’t want living under the siding.

The second of two bats that we found.

The first time we saw this bat, he was sitting on the end of a pry bar with his mouth wide open, looking perturbed.  Such sharp little teeth he had!  Jack put him into a bush and we were standing on the front porch talking about the work to be done when this little guy returned and landed briefly on my shoulder before heading back to his former home on the side of the house, which is now missing all the lovely (from a bat point of view) wood siding just perfect for keeping him snug as a bug.

Sorry about that batty buddy!  But you and your bee and wasp friends are going to have to go elsewhere.

Shivering, and looking for a hidey hole. Poor little thing. We do feel sorry for them, but not sorry enough to stop working on fixing the house problem.

So we ordered a bat house, which should be here on Friday, and we’ll put it up somewhere and give them a proper place to call home.  This one, his friend who is in another bush, and the multitudes of other bats that are no doubt under the siding which hasn’t be removed as of yet, will fit right into the bat house, and can cuddle up and stay warm this coming winter.

Never too late to do it right.  Just keep saying that….

Pickled beans. Haven’t ever tried to make this before.

We planted green beans and yellow wax beans, so I combined them for this recipe.

Each jar gets a dill flower head, and a hot pepper, both of which are from our garden.  The yellow pepper is a yellow cayenne.  We’re hoping this isn’t too much hot peppers but we’ll find out in a few weeks.

Out of the hot water bath and cooling on the counter.

I made three pints a few days ago, and three pints today.  That’s probably enough until I see how these turned out.

And now I have a case of pluots and a case of peaches to play with for this week.

Picked a bunch of different things today.

It's like going to the grocery store, only a lot more convenient since it's just down the hill instead of 35 miles away.

Butterhead and Romain lettuce.  Quite a few green beans.   A small bowl of strawberries, the last of the year we think.  A couple of small Walla Walla onions.  A Roma tomato.  A couple of small Anaheim peppers.  Around seven pounds of beets.  Lemon Basil, and normal Basil.  Six stalks of rainbow colored Swiss Chard, and the first potatoes of the year, mostly Yukon Golds, but one Gold Rush (a russet potato.)

So I have my work cut out for me.  I’ve washed a lot of things I picked, and will get it into the fridge.  I haven’t washed the lettuce yet.  The potatoes are going to be roasted.  The chard, peppers, onions and tomato will be part of breakfast tomorrow.  I’m going to make pickled beets today, and also pickled green beans.  Once I figure out how many jars I need I’ll go pick some dill flower heads for flavoring the beans.  I’ll clean the strawberries and put a little sugar on them; those will be dessert today.  And I’m going to puree the basils with olive oil and freeze the two varieties in ice cube trays.

It sounds like a lot of work but it won’t really take all that long to get most of this preserved for the coming winter.  This is exactly what makes the garden such a hoot.

I pulled all the leaves off the lemon basil plants, after I washed them, and spread them on a small dish towel to dry.

That was tedious.  The potatoes are done roasting and cooling in a dish.  That wasn’t tedious as the oven did all the work!

Then I put the dry fresh leaves into a blender and added some olive oil. And started blending.

I actually think a food processor would be easier.  So I’ll use that appliance when I do this same thing with the rest of the basil I picked today.  But not today.  The kitchen is a disaster area and I have to fix that before I make another mess.

Then I filled the ice cube maker with the basil/olive oil mixture.

Messy but it smells good.  I put the container in the freezer and ostensibly, when they are frozen, I’ll be able to remove them and put them in a freezer bag as little green cubes which can be added as is to anything that needs some basil for seasoning.  Like roast potatoes, or make some pesto for a pasta dish, or on toasted bread, or….  I hope there isn’t too much oil or this isn’t going to freeze very well.  Stay tuned.

Today we picked the first batch of Green Beans and Yellow Wax Beans. Also we picked another bowl of strawberries. Having fresh strawberries in late August is a really good reason not to replace the bed of ever-bearing strawberries with the June bearing variety. I will just freeze this batch of berries for winter.

We also picked a couple of tomatoes, some swiss chard, an onion, and a pepper, for a scramble breakfast tomorrow.

On the stove I have a pot of gooseberries which are thawing out. I’m going to start making jam and see if I can’t clear out some space in the freezer.

We need to move the jars of tomato sauce and chopped tomatoes, and jams I’ve already made, into the pantry.  This weekend we need to do some re-organizing in the pantry because soon we’ll have a whole pile of potatoes, carrots and beets that are going to need a home.

This time of year, the main problem is keeping up with things getting ripe. It’s so much trying!

This morning we had a visitor of the black bear variety.  Dan first saw him (this was a big bear, so most likely a male), walking down the path to the garden.  He put his paw on our compost bin, and then walked all the way around the garden.  Following his nose, obviously.  He didn’t attempt to tear into the fencing, which makes us very happy.  I walked around the garden, following his path, just to see what he’d done, if anything.  All I could see was his very large footprints in the bark mulch.

After his garden tour, he came back up the path to the house, so we went into the sun room to see what he would be doing.  Mishkin hadn’t been fed yet, so he was following us around, complaining about that fact, but not paying attention to what was outside.  Then, Mish saw the bear as it climbed on the porch next to the sun room door.  He growled loudly, and raced over to the chair closest to the bear, telling that bear off in no uncertain terms.   And he was very fluffed, getting as large as possible.  The bear was oblivious to his imminent demise.   So we banged on the glass window in the door, and waved our arms around, and yelled at the bear to leave.  That made an impression, and off he went down the hill at high speed.

Mishkin was all full of himself, as he had chased the bear away.  He’s been keeping an eye on the outside today, between naps, making sure that the bear he chased off hasn’t returned.  Good tough cat.

He didn’t get this big by being overly confident. He didn’t like the music, or the sidewalk.

He managed to get past the obstacles and continued up the hill.

There is a young doe (last years’ baby), that goes through our place on the same track this buck is following.  I imagine he’s following her.   Fall is coming.

Finished sewing 10 yards of lace around the bottom of my dress I started making a bit ago.

It has pockets which every dress should have. That way, if I find a rock to pick up I have a place to put it.

Our digital camera doesn’t pick up the correct color of the fabric, which is a teal green, not a teal blue.  Oh well.  Dan says I should use a different film in the camera 🙂