Let It Snow!

January 22, 2023

Howdy folks,

Boy, we got a bunch of precipitation this week.  I guess not oodles and oodles like we used to back East(40" annually in PA, compared to 14" here!), but for four or five days this week it was sprinkling, drizzling, flurrying, squalling, snowing and then back again.  It never washes you away or anything, but on days like these there's just a constant little bit of spitting coming out of the leaden skies.  We're used to this big mesa towering over us here, 1600' higher than we are, but it's pretty cool when you look in that direction and all you can see is a hazy, cloudy, mysterious sky that doesn't seem to want to give up any secrets.  We've never had much of any trouble walking or driving though any of this, and even when we get a couple of inches of snow, it usually doesn't make it til lunchtime, unless it's in the shade, but it is an aberration to the near-constant clear, blue skies!  Work for me is slowly wrapping up and I've been spending days and days installing backer rod around all the windows from the outside and filling nail and screw holes with wood putty on the inside.  I'm pretty much done with all the stone work, but will still have to help my friend, Valentin, do a few more small concrete pads and then mortar all the remaining stones into place.  The last big patio is probably 80% done and just needs the edge stones mortared into place.  Then, we have five smaller stoops that come off of doors that need done, too.  The concrete is already poured and Valentin has been working on cutting everything down to size and placing it; we'll just need to mortar all of those stones into place once we get a few warm days again.  The sun always adds a few degrees to the mix, but the wind can take just as many away, so each day can be an adventure.  One morning recently I was trying to remove the residue from a plastic, self-adhesive threshold barrier on the outside of the doorway, but was not having much luck.  I had the inside done and only needed this last part, but it was about 15 degrees outside with a stiff wind hitting me.  Needless to say, the gunk wasn't coming up very easily, and, after erecting a makeshift wind barrier out of a wheelbarrow and some boards, the foreman finally switched me back to doing something inside once he caught me coming in to warm up for the third time in the first hour of the day.  The afternoon after that, it was nice enough to pour concrete again!  Everything's still up in the air about when this house will be done, but it's starting to look like it might actually be coming up on us in the next month or two.  We shall see, we have been a month away from being done for almost two years now!

The kittens are doing well and we keep having tiny, little adventures outside for a half-hour or so.  I have to make sure that the boss's dogs are inside(or out in their 2.5 acre yard...dog paradise!) and then I will let the older batch of five kittens out with the the two sister-mamas.  If it's windy at all, they're not very interested, but otherwise they hardly want to come back in.  When they do, though, they sleep for a few hours almost immediately.  Slowly, but surely, we're working our way up the hill to the barn.  The dogs still walk around like in a trance, never sleeping because they're always watching the kittens' antics.  Even better is when we walk up the hill(the dogs and I) and end up near the horse pasture and see the horses.  These guys have become quite the buddies now and all the horses will come trotting over to see what the dogs are doing.  Willow's the boldest and tries to lick each and every horse's nose; Ela is more looking for horse poop to eat, but will go under the fence and freely walk around the horses, sniffing their tails and legs, etc., like it's no big deal; Rui gets really excited, but becomes rooted to the ground about five feet from the fence and won't get any closer.  It seems to make the horses' day, too, as they are a bunch of smart and social animals that have nothing to do all day but wander around and eat grass and hay.  It's taken a while to get to this point...at first, the horses would all line up along the fence in a defensive line, with half of them hitting one of their hoofs against the fence, showing their plans for the dogs' heads.  Little by little, they saw that they weren't a threat and I finally got the dogs to calm down a little more and not be so herky jerky around them.  Now, you'd think that they were fast friends going way back, having seen each other since birth.  It's not how the horses react to other dogs, that's for sure!  Once again, they line up shoulder to shoulder and put their heads down and move as one against them, swinging hoofs, if need be.  Yikes!

Now, here are this week's pictures.  First, a shot of Bootsie and one of her babies in the hay barn.  Then, two shots of the kittens chasing the fish on our TV screensaver late one night.  Next, a series of five shots from one of the horse-dog encounters out in the middle of the pasture the other day.  Then, two shots from the front of the house that we're building, showing how different the mornings can look!  Next, two shots of the sky glowing right at sunset, caught between a cloudy sky and the snowy ground below.  Then, a series of six shots during one of the snow squalls that we had this week, showing the purple garden shed where Bootsie likes to have her babies, among other things, like one of the horse gates and one of my cars, with snow stuck all over them.  Next, a big cholla right behind our house all covered in snow.  And, finally, a gloomy, frozen evening sky hanging over the river valley one night while I was out running the dogs.

That's it for this time.  Be good!