Colours of summer

Posted on June 16, 2005 by Jody Fanning

Just got back from an evening walk along the road. Its still about 21 this evening and the scent of the lupins out front is very strong.

The last few week all the wild flowers have come out in bloom starting with the dandelions and then the lupins and buttercups and many more I don’t know. We were thinking about spreading some wild flowers ourselves along the road, but it looks like we don’t have to bother.

The other side of the road from our driveway is covered in lupins and they have spread alongside our driveway as well. There is plenty of other flowers sprung up in the last few days as well. Shame that some of them will probably have to go when the final landscaping is done :-(.

Still a bit rough on occasion though. We had a reasonably strong wind from the north the other day and it managed to knock one of our trees over! Even though it had come out in leaf this summer I think it was partly rotten and had probably been damaged sometime during the building. One of the small pines in the back yard we were going to keep seems to have died as well, most likely a victim of the earlier earth moving.

Tuesday, 08.06.2005

Posted on June 8, 2005 by Jody Fanning

Been doing the painting off and on for the last month now. Its a bit slow work though. Doing half of one wall (above the white stripe) takes at least three hours for one wall. Second coat is a bit quicker though, but it still takes a long time going up and down the ladder. Good news is that the back wall green paint is done now, the white trim still has to be done for part of it, although one side and the back porch is finished. The front wall has one coat of green as well.

The white trim takes a very long time, what with having to paint along the green parts. There isn’t much point masking off the edges with tape since it is so rough (and the weatherboards leave gaps) that the tape would never cover it properly. So it all has to be hand done. Same where the green wall meets the white under the eaves.

Once the front and back walls are done the ends are next. Unfortunately our ladder (which someone kindly left for us — don’t know who) isn’t tall enough to reach the highest point. We need one that extends to about 5 metres. That will be another 120 EUR by the looks of it.

Enough about painting anyway. Also in the last month our roof safety system has been installed. It is a ladder, steps, and walkway that allows access to the roof and chimney. Also our snow barriers are also in place now. They should stop the snow sliding off the roof and falling in front of the entrances to the front and back. Next is the rain guttering. There are a few problems with that the moment, but the installer would like to do it quite soon, so hopefully that is in the next week.

In other news we had to get our septic tank emptied for the first time too. By luck we managed to notice before it overflowed too :-). I was a bit worried about the bill (I had visions of 100’s of Euros), but actually it turned out to be just 100 EUR in total. Big surprise, but pleasant. So it looks as if we can get away with emptying it about 2 – 3 times a year.

Anyway, some pictures. First the new bits and pieces for the roof, snow barrier and ladder, etc. View of the front and back (front when only the bottom half of the wall was painted). And finally, the first of the lupins along our road-side to flower this year.

There’s a moose in my garden

Posted on May 12, 2005 by Jody Fanning

Since spring has arrived so have all the animals, and not just the bugs. Rabbits have been popping out all over the place along with squirrels, usually making a mad dash across the roads. But as well as that there are some larger wildlife wandering around out here in the countryside.

Some of the local mooses (elk actually and there was three of them) have made their spring migration across our section heading for their summer patch. We have seen signs of them around before and while building the house, so their seasonal migration path probably includes our section. Don’t know if they move far for summer and winter, but they don’t seem to be here then, only for a time in autumn and spring. Although a bit closer to town we have seen some during winter.

But anyway, going by their departing presents they must have enjoyed a snack or two while they were here 🙂

It starts to really feel like spring now too. Although it has been fine and dry for several weeks and quite warm it was quite brown and nothing really growing. After some rain last week the grass shot up everywhere, the local lupins are growing like crazy. It rained overnight a couple of days ago again and this morning suddenly all the birch trees are out in leaf, basically just in the space of 24 hours!

Thursday, 12.05.2005

Posted on May 12, 2005 by Jody Fanning

Painting season is here!

Spring is here for good now and it is dry as a bone outside. Hardly any rain for days, so a good time to start painting the house exterior.

A few bits done over the last week or so, mainly where the guttering (fascia board) and down pipes will go. But since there was some white paint left I started under the eaves on the back as well. Unfortunately that made short work of 9 litres of paint. According to my calculations that only leaves 75 litres to go to finish everything :-). Oh well. Hopefully it stays fine for a while longer!

A couple of coats of paint definitely makes a difference though.

Gallery

Posted on May 2, 2005 by Jody Fanning

Have been planning for along time to put up a gallery of some of the photos I have taken since getting my digital camera. Unfortunately (or maybe not depending on your viewpoint) the space issue keeps me from putting up more than just a small selection. Many I took mainly just to have a nice backdrop on the PC, but there are also a few others, landscapes, sunsets, or whatever else looked nice.

This first version of the gallery I put together in Picasa, a free photo organiser and editor now owned by Google. A very nice tool although a little limited sometimes. Very well done user interface and some very cool effects. The photo touch up tools rate a mention, especially the “I feel lucky” button. Sometimes it makes a mess, sometimes it works minor miracles! Anyway, one of the tools is to produce a web gallery, which it does a very nice basic one.

Sometime (one day) I hope to redo it with a proper gallery tool using my own template. I have a few candidates in mind, but this will do until I get around to it.

So, enjoy!

Space

Posted on April 15, 2005 by Jody Fanning

Did something about the lack of space for the website the other day. Rather than paying the exorbitant fees for the extra space I reduced the size of all the images I have been using. Previously I defaulted to 800×600 for most of the large pictures I had put online, but I reduced them to 640×480 and recovered over 10MB of space! Hopefully enough to last a while longer anyway.

I guess now I don’t have any excuses for not putting up our Texas trip and the latest house stuff :-(.

Running out of space

Posted on March 10, 2005 by Jody Fanning

Our site is running out of space! We got 50MB storage with the web hosting and it is nearly full. Amazing how fast it all goes, I didn’t think we would actually use that much. And the next step is an extra 100MB, which they charge an arm and a leg for :-(. And I think our e-mail shares the hosting space, so that could cause problems as well.

Probably have to spring for it sometime or other though. I would like to add a few more things here like a photo gallery for snapshots and desktop photos. Unfortunately those tend to take up a bit of space for the larger ones. I could always find other hosting, but I’m sure that would be just as difficult. Apart from the price this place has been pretty much okay and their on-line services at least don’t suck.

Thursday, 10.03.2005

Posted on March 10, 2005 by Jody Fanning

A little bit of news after quite a long break.

Finished a few more things around the house. The fireplace room is finished now as far as painting, etc goes. Probably needs some curtains at some point, but we have blinds, so it isn’t critical at the moment. We now have the “bottom step” in the sauna. I turned the left over treated wood into a small stool that goes just behind the sauna door. Some of the bits and pieces of stuff that we don’t need is thrown out now and the rubbish skip has gone as well.

Still a couple of things to do. Rearrange the “technical” room so that it can be painted and rearrange the storage room so that everything fits there. I’m not sure how quickly those things will happen though :-).

On a slightly larger scale, the back yard has had its first landscaping done. The digger was here Tuesday night and on Wednesday the yard was flattened out. They came in the middle of winter so that the ground was hard and they don’t sink into the dirt. Sometime during spring they will return with a baby digger and a pile of dirt and fill in all the holes. I’m sure there will be a few since parts of the yard will sink when the snow melts.

The digger and a before and a couple of after shots of the yard from Wednesday.

Another day, another snowstorm

Posted on February 13, 2005 by Jody Fanning

Its snowing… again… Only this time a full snowstorm. Wind has been blowing all day and snowing for most of the afternoon and evening. Will be interesting in the morning.

Yesterday morning the snow was millions of sparkling diamonds in the sunlight.