Welcome to 2009

Welcome to 2009. A rewrite to this page has been long overdue. So far the progress this year on the shop has been a meager, a bit of soffit over the greenhouse area as seen below, purchase of the glazing and aluminum for the greenhouse frame (see below), planting of some fruit trees near the house from Burntridge Nursery, from the state of Washington, look great. And addition of a catch basin for water off the roof of the workshop.

And we've also had the usual setbacks, a pipe froze and broke in our house, and several soffit covers blew off the house in the Spring storms (due to not enough nails!!), the soffit is fixed thanks to a local woman contractor with some amazing 60 foot ladder guys, but the bathroom remains busted (who passes a pipe over an outside vent?). and to be honest, both of those jobs cost more than this wee thing, finishing the greenhouse. Gas for heating has cost us dearly this winter due in part to the hole in the ceiling and we ran out of gas a few days ago because of the pipe breaking, it took out the ceiling above the back bath and let cold air spill into the house, no one bothered to block the air flow at the ends of the joice when they built the house. So the air comes in the soffit, through the flooring, and out the other side of the house!!. That's bad enough but if you puncture a hole in that ceiling, wow, it chills right off. So we have probably the worst energy audit in North America, a veritable carbon Bigfoot.. We need to go geothermal, tear the soffits out (uugh!!), block the joice ends, find some way to keep the roof from melting over those areas, and put the soffits back in. Pour in a bunch of insulation above the attic. Yata$$$, yata$$$, yata$$$$$.

Enjoy the pictures of the iris, trees and tank. We put fence around each tree to keep out the deer, a post for support, and chicken wire to keep the rabbits at bay. Looking to weld the g.h. together soon. But we need a water source and electricity. The tank is a stop gap to provide a limited amount of water until a more permanent solution is found. It also should provide a way to recycle some water and provide a learning tool for permanent water storage/use. Plus, for those of farm background, I'm looking forward to seeing my first crop of "mousies", those curious monster fly larva with the large swimming tails that we used to get in the horse troughs back home. They really are amazing ...and super creepy. The only thing that would make them creepier would be if they glowed in the dark, hmm, good gene transfer project :) Ha, gotcha!!

Finally got around to doing some clean up. Came up with an inexpensive idea to fasten the greenhouse together. Bobcat used to move aluminum to building site.