The first
Written by karen on April 29th, 2012New beds
Written by karen on April 27th, 2012We’ve spent a lot of time over the last two weeks on gardening. We dug two new beds and expanded the one in front of the greenhouse. This involves not only digging but filtering all the dirt (we estimate the soil here is about 25% rock) and enriching it with compost.
These beds have been planted with edamame, anaheim chiles, beans, and cucumbers. (This is in front of the two allumium beds.)
This bed (covered with a garden blanket) is half tat soi and half lettuce.
Brad also made these ingenious little circles for planting squash and melons. Half have been planted and half are still to be done. Drip irrigation all around.
This area is behind the batteryhouse by the solar panels. We've christened it "squashville."
In the greenhouse, I still have greens growing, which we have an overabundance of right now. We also have herbs and green onions there, and the first of the tomatoes have been transplanted from the house. I hope to have them all moved in the next two weeks.
The first baby tomatoes in the greenhouse
All in all, we now have about 375 square feet under cultivation, up from under 200 last year.
And the cactuses? Well, we’re still waiting eagerly.
With eager anticipation
Written by karen on April 17th, 2012We have many cactuses with large buds on them right now and are waiting for the flowers to burst forth. I thought I’d share some pictures so that you can look forward to the blooms along with us!
This is a cholla, and we have many on our property. The blooms are beautiful purple.
This is a cactus very near our house that was just a small single paddle when we moved in. Last year, it added the two bigger paddles you see here. It is also growing 3 or 4 new paddles. This will be the first year it’s bloomed, and we can’t wait to see what color the flowers will be.
Enjoying spring
Written by karen on April 9th, 2012We’ve had a nice visit with my Dad this month. In addition to some old favorites like Bisbee and the local canyons, we did some new things on this trip.
First, we visited the San Pedro Riparian area. This is a lovely river near Sierra Vista that is known for its beauty and wildlife (especially birds). We’ve driven by it a million times and always said we wanted to stop and see it so we finally did. It was beautiful, and we will definitely be returning to do some longer hikes.
We also visited the Pima Air and Space Museum and AMARG (aka the Boneyard) in Tucson. My dad is an aviation history aficionado, and coming from Dayton, home of Wright-Pat AFB and the world’s largest military aviation museum, we wanted to see how this compared. It was impressive. I have to say that all the military aspects of it were pretty depressing. I don’t remember that from all the hours of my childhood spent looking at military planes.
My favorite part was an art exhibit of paintings made on old planes.
I’ve driven by AMARG, the “boneyard” for military planes, a ton of times and always wanted to see it from the inside. Unfortunately, the tour we went on didn’t let us get out of the bus, but we did see a huge number of out-of-service planes. They are used for parts and also sold off to “friendly” governments.
After that, we took a quick trip to Saguaro National Park. It was beautiful and is another place we’ll be back to for some hiking.
We also finally made it to the Shakespeare ghost town near Lordsburg. More pics here.
Poppies
Written by karen on March 14th, 2012Here is a shot of the mountains right now. The rusty yellow toward the bottom is poppies.
And close up:
What is this?!?
Written by karen on March 10th, 2012I’ve been gone for most of this week for work. On Friday, we hit the stucco hard again though. It was cold and windy.
Then this morning, we woke up to this.
Seriously?!? Snow?!? I thought it was spring.
Tomorrow it’s supposed to be back up to 70. We hope it is.
To stain or not to stain?
Written by karen on February 27th, 2012It is finally spring here! There are lots of baby cows and poppies this spring. We have had several days of warm weather and are stucco’ing madly. Not too much fun in the 40 mph wind gusts we had today, but that is a part of spring here.
Each evening after stucco’ing, I’m working on finishing the big timbers that will go up around the doors and windows where there is adobe. The color is the hardest part to me — to stain or not to stain? I’m leaning toward leaving the vigas (round timbers that are already up) and the glulam with a natural finish and doing the rough timbers and ceiling boards with a light stain like we have for the ceiling in the guesthouse.
The first step was to trim the timbers. Then for the finish. I don’t have much experience with finishing rough wood, so any advice is welcomed.
Here’s my process so far.
- Belt sand the ends of the timbers.
- Wirebrush all the wood, removing as much dirt as possible. (There are some grey marks on some of the wood, but not everywhere. At the beginning, I didn’t know how much the varnish would cover that, but it seems to be covering fine.) It’s weird to be not to be doing round and rounds of sanding.
- Use compressed air to clean any miscellaneous dust, etc. off the surface.
This is the wood before any finish.
- Apply Minwax pre-stain wood conditioner. (These timbers are ponderosa pine, a soft wood. Conditioner is supposed to help the stain take better.)
- Apply Minwax stain. I used a 50/50 mix of oak and natural, the same as we used for the ceiling boards in the guest house.
This is after staining.
- Apply two coats of Waterlox Marine Sealer. (This is a pretty expensive tung oil finish system designed for extreme weather. Some of these beams will be outside, and the other finishes I’ve tried for outdoor wood haven’t lasted. I’m hoping to use this on the new outside doors as well.)
- Apply two coats of Waterlox Marine Finish.
With drying time and two sides for each board, the whole process takes about 14 days. This will take awhile, but so far, the results look good.
And with the final coats of sealer and finish
Stucco has commenced
Written by karen on February 23rd, 2012I’m too exhausted to write any more right now.
Lights, cowyboy poetry, and lots of dishes
Written by karen on February 17th, 2012It’s been a busy week here.
We’ve made some progress on electrical in the new house, which necessitated making some decisions about where lights will go and in some cases, what kind of lights we will get. For me, that meant really thinking through interior design. I don’t really enjoy the beginning stages of this — too much “blank canvas” and not enough imagination on my part. Still, it has to be done so we took a trip into town and began making some choices.
Last weekend, we went to the 19th Annual Bootheel Cowboy Poetry Fiesta in Lordsburg. We enjoyed the poetry and music, and it was also a good chance to see the Lordsburg-Hidalgo County Museum, where the event was held.
On the left, is Hook Hill, the event organizer. He's 91 years old.
This week was also Portal Rescue’s annual “Soup Kitchen” fundraiser. For three days, community members make soup, bread, and desserts, and everyone gets together to eat. This year my soups were Smashed Potato Cheese, Creamy Roasted Garlic, and White Bean Green Chile stew. Brad and I were also the dishwashers. With hundreds attending, that’s a lot of dishes!
New arch
Written by karen on February 5th, 2012We’ve been working on the new arch over the main entrance to the new house.
As you might remember, this kind of “architectural detail” is added by nailing thick styrofoam down on the exterior wall before stucco.
Last time, Brad did a great job of basically freehanding the design. This time with a wider door, we were having a harder time with it, so we decided to apply technology.
First I found an arch we liked on the computer.
Then we projected it onto the stryrofoam piece. Lots of trick size matching to do here.
Then Brad did the tracing.
And here’s the final result. Well, not quite final, but you get the idea.
