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Posts Tagged ‘Sunset’

Annex 109

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on May 26, 2023| Leave a Comment »

This beauty was the sixth of the statues I mentioned last week; as you can see, she’s a fountain.  I had originally intended her to stand beside an ornamental pool in the atrium of the house I was building in Oklahoma, but we never got that far; unlike the others, she’s therefore never been displayed at all.  So when we started planning this addition, I knew I had to fit her in somehow; you can see I’ve already built the platform which will support her, and Jae has done the first step in the staining process.  See, the water level in the tub drops gradually due to evaporation, so every few weeks I need to pull out the hose and top it off again; that means introducing dozens of liters of 10o C water into a tub we want kept at 38o C, which is not ideal.  But now that we’ve switched the bathrooms over to the gas water heater, the electric one only feeds the sink, dishwasher and clothes washer; all I need to do is run a hot-water pipe parallel to the main water feed (which runs under the floor below the lady’s feet in this picture) and we can top off the tub with water that’s warmer than what’s already in the tub, rather than colder.  I know it’s absurd to anthropomorphize a hunk of stone, and I certainly mock others mercilessly for attributing feelings to objects fashioned to resemble the human form.  But the difference is, I know I’m being irrational, and I’m not using my feelings to drive a campaign of oppression against actual human beings; my decision to prominently display a statue in part to make up for keeping her in storage for almost two decades may be silly, but at least it’s harmless.

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Diary #673

Posted in Diary, tagged , on May 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Whenever I first close up the nursery for the year and force the new pullets to join the flock, they’re typically a bit reticent; this year was no exception.  Though I kicked them out almost two weeks ago, they spend all their time close to each other, typically hiding among the feed cans and only occasionally venturing out of the henhouse.  But this past weekend that finally changed; they’ve started to venture out to scratch in the dirt, and though they still stick close to each other (as you can see), they’re getting braver about being near the big hens.  For the most part, the hens (even the previously-troublesome blues) are leaving them alone; the only aggressive one is the oldest of the Ameraucanas, and she’s too old, fat, and slow to actually catch them.  Within a few weeks, even that will stop, and in about two more months we should start seeing some eggs from the young ‘uns.  Then next spring we’ll start the whole thing over again with three new chicks whom I’ll have to protect from the now-grown leghorns.

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Annex 108

Posted in Diary, tagged on May 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »

The area between the bathroom and Chekhov’s cottage is going to be a vestibule; we’re going to put coat hooks, a boot cleaner, etc in there, near the north door (which will soon lead into the paddock once we finish shifting the fence).  So I’ve installed this lattice; I didn’t want a solid wall, just a visual separation between that area and the greater atrium.  There’s another reason I put it here specifically:  the corner of the cottage roof is only 73″ above the floor, and while that’s above the heads of everyone who lives here, it is not above the heads of everyone who might visit.  So, a nice solid post prevents anyone from walking into that corner and getting a nasty bruise or gash in the face, and the lattice makes it much harder for anyone to collide with the post.

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Diary #672

Posted in Biography, Diary, tagged , , on May 16, 2023| 1 Comment »

After I bought my property in Oklahoma, Matt and I returned to New Orleans from 2004-2006 to work.  During that time we lived in Mid-City just a block off Bayou St. John, so we often passed by the massive necropolis at the corner of Canal Street and City Park Avenue which locals simply refer to as “The Cemeteries”.  Early in 2006, I noticed that a statuary adjacent to the cemeteries had a “Going Out of Business” sign, and stopped in to inquire; it turned out that the city had used the recent Hurricane Katrina as a pretext to steal the business’ building and land under eminent domain (with only a few weeks’ notice) to build a new 911 call center which could have been located in any of a number of other places, so the owners were trying to sell off as many statues as they could because their storage facility couldn’t hold them all while the owners figured out what they were going to do.  At the time I had just spent several months as the only escort in town, so I had the cash to buy six marble statues at fire-sale prices.  Some of y’all have probably spotted them in various pictures over the years, but for the first time I’m reaching the point where all of them will be displayed properly.  I’ve decided to place this one in honor of Venus Cloacina, the purifier of waters, in the vicinity of the septic tank; that’s north of the house, in the new paddock extension (if you look closely, you can probably just make out one of the new T-posts for the fence extension at upper right).  As you can see I need to clean her up, and I’ve asked Jae to make a rock garden around her, both for decorative purposes and to dissuade the animals from trying to scratch themselves against her and knocking her over.  And soon, you’ll see another of those statues in the atrium.

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Annex 107

Posted in Diary, tagged on May 12, 2023| Leave a Comment »

I’ve learned to trust Jae’s instincts with decorating; over the years she has learned my tastes, and I’ve only rarely disagreed with one of her suggestions.  So even though some of them regarding the bar seemed odd, I just went with the flow and, as usual, I like what she did.  The side is done in the same kind of artificial greenery as the wall behind the hot tub (which is directly across from it), so even though I was skeptical about the artificial turf on top, she promised it would be soft and not have a plasticky look.  As usual, she was right, and Lilith seems to enjoy lying up there too.  She did the bar with a Japanese-inspired technique involving splashed paint and searing with a blowtorch, and I really like it; you’re going to see another feature done the same way in the next few weeks.  Sometimes, she does something one way and then decides later that there’s a better way to do it; you can see that the bar was one such case, and she’s warned me that the ceiling lights will be another when we get around to that.  But even though that will involve my having to get up on a ladder to rearrange them, I really don’t mind (much) as long as I like the finished product.

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Diary #671

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on May 9, 2023| Leave a Comment »

A few months ago, a pregnant stray cat turned up at Yellowbird’s house, and she gave her shelter until she had four kittens. Yellowbird named her Lilith, and she’s barely more than a kitten herself; in fact she and her kittens were all fixed at the same time.  There was no way she could have five cats in her small house, so she kept the two males and offered the two female kittens to Jae, who lost both of her cats to old age in the past year (the second just a week after we lost Aeryn).  That still left Lilith; Yellowbird asked if we could take her as our atrium cat, assuming she could get along with Rocky.  So I agreed, and she’s now been here just under two weeks.  She staked out her territory immediately, letting Rocky know in no uncertain terms who was Queen of the Atrium, and apparently laying a claim on me as well; whereas she seems merely tolerant of everyone else, she eagerly seeks me out for petting, even to the point of following me out into the paddock.  I’m told she’s a good mouser, so that’ll be nice too; Rocky seems to have gotten a bit lazy about it lately, so maybe this will keep him on his toes.  Anyhow, she’s been exploring the atrium and the yard, and I like her personality, so I reckon I have a cat of my own again for the first time since poor Friday passed back in 2015.  That’s how it is with me; I can’t just replace a beloved pet as some people can, but rather have to wait until it kinda happens.  It was four years from losing Sheena to getting Friday, and eight from Friday to Lilith.  And given her youth and my age, she’ll probably be the last one I call my own.

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Annex 106

Posted in Diary, tagged on May 5, 2023| Leave a Comment »

As I recently mentioned, there are several small construction tasks I’ve been putting off; one of them was the shower ceiling.  Jae brought the Tyvek panels months ago, but I found the task intimidating because I wasn’t sure exactly how to go about cutting them to size and mounting them.  So last week, I asked Jae if she was clear enough on how to go about the task that she could direct me step by step; she said she was, and it turned out to be much easier than I thought it would be.  So here’s the finished product; the material is translucent enough that we were able to mount it over the lamp rather than having to trim around it; light enough to be held in place by brads and trim; and rigid enough that fastening the edges was enough to hold it up.  I had been putting off actually using the shower until the ceiling was in place because it just didn’t feel like a proper shower, but on Saturday night I used it and I was quite pleased.  For one thing, the extra room felt luxurious, and it was such a pleasure to be able the hot and cold water separately again after years with one of those damned single-handle shower controls.  I didn’t have to get out of the shower to dry myself, and the steam warmed up the bathroom enough for me not to get a chill the instant I stepped out.  So yay for handmade showers, and another cheer for getting one of the last major functions of the annex in order.

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Diary #670

Posted in Diary, tagged , on May 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »

The last time I expanded the paddock, I thought for sure I’d at last given them enough room to have plenty of grass, but nope; within a month the new section was clipped as close as the rest. So I recently decided to expand it again, this time to the entire north lawn; in addition to the grass there being the most lush and green of any near the house, it also includes most of my apple trees so the animals will be able to enjoy fallen apples.  So on Saturday, Chekhov helped me set five new posts: two for the gate, one at the northwest corner of the house, and two more along what will be the northern fenceline.  I’ll run the bottom strands more closely together this time so I won’t need to Cicero-proof the bottom, and once the new fencing is in place we’ll move the gate from its current location to the area you can see at upper left in the picture below.  Then I’ll remove the old fence, and the paddock will stretch from the south side of the barn all the way around the house; I can recycle the current pig-panels into skirting to keep both Cicero and cold air out of the atrium basement.  So next winter it’ll be easier to keep the house and annex warm, and maybe at last the animals will finally have enough grazing area.

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Diary #669

Posted in Diary, tagged , on April 26, 2023| 4 Comments »

One thing about living on a small farm is, whenever anybody has some animal they no longer want (for whatever reason), they immediately think of giving it to me.  Now, that’s not really a problem when they take the time to ask; I like having animals around, and it gives the place character.  But sometimes they don’t bother to ask; they just find the nearest farm, ranch, or whatever and dump the animal there (which was how we ended up with Orville here and several dogs in Oklahoma).  This time, it was a goose and I was asked; last week Yellowbird texted to ask whether we could take it because the owners couldn’t protect it from coyotes which had started coming around.  So I said “sure”, and here she is.  So far she’s mostly just waddling around; she can duck under the gates (no pun intended) and spends most of her time either in the paddock or the west side of the house, hunting bugs in the grass (at least, I think that’s what she’s doing).  She seems cautious of the other animals right now, so she’s mostly keeping to herself, but yesterday I saw her pretty close to Jonathan so I guess she’s getting used to them.  Now if I can only figure out how to get her to consistently take a little poultry feed every evening, it’ll be nice to occasionally have a goose egg rather than chicken eggs with my bacon; I had one Friday and it was the size of three large hen eggs by itself, with a slightly richer flavor.

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Annex 105

Posted in Diary, tagged , on April 21, 2023| 2 Comments »

Jae has mostly been working with the bar top lately; as you can see, she’s trying out some designs for a sort of shrine to Aphrodite there, and decided to redo the bar from the way she had me do it before, in order to finish it and drop the bar surface to what she feels is a more usable height.  She’s finished the primary staining, but is also clear-coating the top to create a waterproof bar surface (with that same stuff they use when they want to decorate a restaurant bar or table surface with something like maps, pictures, or postcards).  It’s going pretty slowly right now because it’s been cold and rainy all week; next year I think I’ll leave the shutters up until May Eve because it’s not unusual for us to have this kind of weather in late April, and even though the roof keeps out the rain it’s too chilly to work comfortably.  We had one mild day this week, but the rest was just yucchy; I’m honestly trying to remember how the hell I motivated myself to build the roof in this kind of weather last year, and the only answer I can come up with is that it was just pure stubbornness. 

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