7:33 am - Saturday - February 1st - TWW - 36° F, humidity 40%, wind 7 mph out of the south by southeast.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 59° F. On this date in 2012 the first two solar panels were finally installed, and putting power into our house batteries....
When you get as much snow as we got (6") there is a long transition between snow covered terrain, and snow free, dry land upon which to walk, and drive motorized vehicles. Thank goodness snow is the exception, and not the rule here, because I'm pretty sure I could not tolerate living 4-6 months of each year with snow on the ground. It's just not in my DNA. The added complication to that much snow is when it melts the resultant water really soaks into the red clay here, and turns it into a gooey, sticky mess. When TLE and I took our walk on Thursday out to the main road the entry road was still covered in snow, and the ground was frozen. Thanks to my snow packing efforts with the Rhino the snow melted, but now we have the gooey, sticky red mud with which to deal. When we took our walk Friday the road was soft, and spongy, and the soggy red clay stuck to our boots. At times I felt like I was walking on platform shoes (remember those from the 80's?). I think we spent more time after the walk cleaning that sticky, gooey mess off our boots than we actually spent walking.....seriously....
.....see what I mean (above)? And that was not the worst part. Overall, the entry road is totally snow free now, so the sun can begin the drying process, and we had a lot of sun Friday.....
.....I spent most of the afternoon puttering around the property doing small tasks. I rehung the now snow free sail shade over the wood deck, this time closer to the house itself to keep direct sunlight off the front windows. Not a big deal right now, but as we edge into Spring, then Summer it will keep the living room cooler. I made sure the house, and chassis batteries were fully charged on Phyllis' sister Newell in preparation for moving it in the next couple of days. I scraped 4" of snow off our still folded artificial turf (its on the ground behind the trailer where has been since we arrived 3.5 months ago), which will finally be deployed when we move our Newell to its permanent site on Tuesday. I swept off the remaining snow on the wood deck, and opened up the umbrellas again....we'll be getting 4, or 5 days of temps in the 60's this week with lots of sun. I straightened the large, round cap which covers the air cleaner on the Ford 420 tractor so it fits more snuggly. I started up our 1969 Jeep CJ5....it fired immediately, and ran as smooth as a Swiss watch! I fired up the 1969 Chevrolet C50 (I think I've referred to it as a C90, but there is no such thing), and it fired immediately, also. I'm sure there were 5, or 6 other little things I did, but they don't come immediately to mind. Before I knew it the dinner bell was ringing, and it was time for dinner.
Thankfully, there is a lot of gravel in the areas around the house, and garage, so those areas can be driven, and walked upon mostly without threat of red clay sticking to everything, but once you get beyond the sunset fire pit area, and out towards the entrance gate it gets muddy quickly. Anyway, with things beginning to dry out and we can get another bucket of gravel on the permanent site, and begin to move heavy equipment around the areas adjacent to the house and garage once again.
Thanks for stopping by!
