Wildlife in the backyard (photo replaced)

Earlier this week, it was Lightning Bugs. This morning I saw something new. I opened this bathroom window this morning and saw a critter about the size of a raccoon but definitely not a raccoon. It had brown coarse fur and a small head like a rabbit but no rabbit ears. When it scurried away it revealed a thick round tail about 8" long.

It occurred to me it might be a Porcupine. The drawing in the dictionary seemed to confirm this hunch - if we imagined that his quills were relaxed and laying flat on his body. After Carl and Karen left for home this morning, I looked online to confirm it. The photos online showed quills being quite obvious. It also said that Porcupines are in the West part of the US and the Northeast, but not the Southeast. There went my theory.

So I did some more research for mammals in our area. Carl and Karen were right! It was a Groundhog- or often called a Woodchuck. In my mind, Groundhogs and Prairie Dogs are the same thing. My mind is wrong!!

This photo is of a baby Groundhog in the neighbor's yard. There were 2 or 3 babies running around quite boldly for a week or so but now I haven't seen them for over a week.

It just keeps getting more interesting here all the time.

Lightning Bugs

Guess what we have in our front yard!!! Yes! Fireflies - or Lightning Bugs as the locals call them. We saw them last night when arriving home at dusk. Larry and I are so excited that we're like little kids. We can hardly wait until dusk tonight to see them again.

Our friends, Carl and Karen stopped by today for a visit and they think we're silly to be so excited; perhaps you think so too. But, considering there were no Fire..., uh' em, I mean, Lightning Bugs where we grew up, we think this is pretty cool.

The only other time we've seen them like this was outside Chicago while camping at a state park near Algonguin. It was cool then too.

Larry was saying that it's the little things like Lightning Bugs, the many songbirds and the Dogwoods in our neighborhood that make this such a very nice place to live. He is so right! We feel blessed.

Kentucky Derby

This is old news now but I wanted to share some photos from the Kentucky Derby. Since Laura & I went there to volunteer we were limited in our sight seeing opportunities. We had to go out of our way to see horses and then they were a ways off. However, we did get to see lots of hats! It was fun. Enjoy.

First, just to prove we were really there, here are some horses.

And now for some hats!

Lots going on - photos added

The length of time between the last entry and this is contributed to two reasons. One - lots has been happening. Two - I'm not using my computer and haven't downloaded photos to include. So, once I explain what all has been going on, check this entry again later for photos.

The last entry was on April 15th. Five days after that, Ben and Laura arrived. Yes, they left Las Vegas and have moved here! We expected to have them as guests for a few days until our renter vacated (the next day) and their possessions arrived (just 3 days later).

Plans changed dramatically when we finally had access to the rental and got a really good look. What we found was not a happy site. Let me start by saying that this little house is old. The wiring is what really scared us. We found the breaker box in one of only 3 upper kitchen cabinets. It was propped up in there with wires coming from the top of it, all taped up to wires coming from the top of the cabinet. The tape was roughly done and some wires were exposed. When we took into consideration the fact that outlets were in funky places and in funky heights, it made us quite uncomfortable about the safety of the wiring. Now, add to this fact that the kitchen looks about 75 years old (kitchen door hanging by one hinge, etc) and the floor plan is lousy... we decided to do a major overhaul. Here are some before pics.

Ben & Laura agreed to put up with us and stay in the guest room while we all went straight to work on this rental. In the last two weeks we have completely gutted the place. The kitchen and bath and all interior walls are gone. At this point I should explain that we found the house was originally even smaller than it is now. It was a little square concrete block structure with no plumbing and, I suspect, no electrical when it was built. The plumbing was added to the exterior and entered the house where it was needed. It did have windows so I do believe it was a dwelling originally. I have no idea when the wiring was added but it wasn't recent! The bedroom was added on at some point. So, when I say all interior walls are gone, that includes the original block wall. Many thanks to Ben for breaking that out!

So in the past two weeks, we have ripped out carpet, pad, sheet rock (or fiber board as the case may be), insulation (the older side has fluffy wool stuff - yuk)... everything! Larry and Ben replaced the ceiling rafters in the bedroom because the closet wall had been a weight bearing wall. Last night, the guys rented a concrete saw and cut a groove in the floor to add new plumbing in new places. You should have seen the cloud of dust coming from inside the house! Larry and Ben would say, you should have seen the dust in the house!!

This week-end Larry and Ben will install the new plumbing. Then, we have to have an electrical contractor do the wiring. Next we'll do something to level out the concrete slab floor, add partition walls for the bath and kitchen which will share one side of the building, sheetrock and tape, put in bathroom fixtures, kitchen cabinets, counters, sink, appliances, and paint.

All this work is done in our off hours. Larry continues to be out of town about 3 days a week, but works 5 days of course. Ben has been spending his days job shopping and Laura and I go to work. As a side note, Laura transferred to a new Starbucks here that opened about a week after their arrival. What timing!

While Ben and Larry do plumbing this week-end, Laura and I are working in another way. We're going to Louisville, KY to work in a Kentucky Derby merchandise booth. We're driving there today and working 12 hours tomorrow and coming home Sunday. We're doing this for a ministry called GO Ministries. Laura has a friend going to Dominican Republic / Haiti soon and is living in Louisville right now. GO Ministries will get $20,000 for manning the booth for this event. I have no idea if we'll see any horses but I know we'll see people. Apparently, people love to dress up for the races. I've been told of the fancy hats that I should expect to see. Like I said earlier - check back for photos. It should be fun!

Retaining walls steps are done

With working on the wall a couple hours here and a couple hours there, we've made good progress. The steps are in now and the wall is mostly done. The original plan was to make the entry to the walk much wider but the slope of the yard dictated where they had to go and how wide the could be. Even so, we rather like the result. This week I'll go get a ton or so of mulch and create the walk from the steps to the porch.

Much progress has been made on the garden too. Remember all those roots? Well... I have a confession to make. Now that the stump of the fig tree is out I've come to the conclusion that those giant roots did not come from the fig but from the stump of a big tree in the neighbor's yard. One of those roots went right under the fig, giving the impression that it was a fig tree root. That fig tree could have been gone weeks ago. The good news is all those roots needed to come out anyway if I was going to be able to garden worth a toot. I wasn't planning to bore you with the garden details but since I've gotten this far... yesterday, I brought in a load of compost and spread it across the garden. Thankfully, it started raining before I could turn in under because I was out of energy anyway. We got a much needed rain yesterday so it may be several days before it dries out enough to turn.

News

Three blog entries in one day. Is this a record?
There are two bits of news I would like to share.

One... Larry got a new job. He is now District Manager for an insurance company. His territory is the state of Tennessee. He'll be driving all over the state (in the company car) meeting with insurance agents, taking them to lunch and, in general, drumming up business. They give him a weekly budget and encourage him to use it to get to know the agents! You know... lunch, golf, sporting events. What a life.

Two... (and this is most exciting)... Ben and Laura are moving here!!!!!!!!!!!! They've been packing and planning for a few weeks now. This week, they're visiting friends and family in CA. In about a week, they will be leaving Las Vegas and arriving here about a week after that!! They're going to rent our little rental house in the beginning. Laura is being transferred to a brand new Starbucks here in town and Ben will be job shopping. Their house in Las Vegas is still for sale if you know anyone moving to Las Vegas. Don't laugh, apx. 5,000 people move there every month! (At least, I think that's still true.) If they knew any better, they'd move here instead!

A Rotten Retaining Wall

As you can see, the existing retaining wall along the driveway is in need of repair. The railroad ties are leaning away. What you can't see is one of them is visibly rotten.


Work has begun! We've taken all the railroad ties out and found many rotten ones. This job needed doing even more than we first realized!


Since we're pulling out the wall anyway, we've also decided to add a walkway to the front door. It's rather odd that there wasn't one before. Like Larry says, we live in the South and we out to be hospitable. What a house without a walk up to it?


Now. What materials do we use to rebuild the wall? Railroad ties? No way!! We talked about a concrete wall but didn't think that would be very attractive. We finally decided upon the landscape bricks that are so popular these days.


We have made progress. Larry has done most of the work; I help where I can, moving the truck up and down the driveway and bringing bricks to him for placement. He has shoveled two tons of rock from the bed of the pick-up to the wall.



The tallest part of the wall is done and we're just about to the point where the walkway will begin. We'll cut into the existing lawn and curve the brick into a broad approach and narrow it to match the width of the front steps - about 6' wide. If I don't get photos of the progress, I will at least show you the finished project... whenever it gets finished.

Dogwoods are in Bloom!!

Our friends from CA missed seeing the Dogwoods by about a week. What a shame. I've taken some photos of the tree outside our bedroom window over the span of a couple weeks. All 5 of our trees are white but there are pick ones around town too. Here are some photos.









Lots of our neighbors have them too. The drive up Greenleaf is so very pretty right now.

The Redbuds started blooming about the same time. Here's a good specimen I found a short distance from our house.





While these trees were blooming we were having daytime temperatures in the mid-80's. Those temperatures lasted about two weeks. Then, a few days ago it turned cold. Last night about 8:00, while Larry and I were cleaning up from the work on the retaining wall (that's another story) it started snowing!! It only lasted about 15 minutes but what a change. The plants got a shock with lows in the high 20's last night.

Spring has definitely sprung in Chattanooga.

Visitors! Some welcome and some not

It is quite possible that we've had more visitors in our 4 months here than in 4 years in Las Vegas. We love it!! Today, some "welcome" friends from Santa Rosa drove 2 hours from Nashville to visit with us for the afternoon. We meandered around the downtown area and then drove part-way up Lookout Mountain to see a view of the city. (Note - the "mountain" is probably all of 2000' high. I know our Western friends will appreciate that.)

Then, these welcome friends of ours helped us get rid of some unwelcome guests.

If you saw the post about toppling the gazebo then you may recall that it was being chewed up by Carpenter Bees. When we toppled the gazebo we left the base for another day. Larry started to demolish it over the week-end and discovered the Carpenter Bees were nesting in the base.

On Monday he tried spraying the wood with insecticide but it didn't slow them one bit. He bought wasp spray which worked, but only when he could actually spray the bee. These guys are really big bees and they fly very fast. He managed to kill two with the wasp spray but there were several more where they came from.

Then, Ken had a great idea for getting rid of these unwelcome guests. Burn them out! That seems pretty smart because it would kill any larvae and stop the cycle. Little did Ken know that Larry doesn't wait when he hears a good idea. While we were sight seeing, Larry went to the fire station to ask about permits. They said we needed a permit for a control burn but not for a campfire or to cook food. So, we had a really big campfire! You should have seen the size of those marshmellows! ;-)

Boy, did those bees get a surprise! Amazingly, some stayed quite a while before buzzing out of there. There was one bee in particular who just did not want to leave the area. It hung around for the longest time. Eventually, as it got dark it finally disappear. Our friends disappeared about this time too, going back to Nashville for a week of conference. Larry and I watched the glowing embers for a little while longer and then came inside, bringing the wasp spray and gloves in with us. But, the story doesn't stop there.

When Larry set the gloves down by the door to the garage he heard a loud buzzing sound. OH NO!! That stubborn bee had decided to bed down in Larry's glove and now it was in the house! Larry quickly stomped the gloves and silenced the buzz. This is what he found.

It looks like a bumblebee right? The only visual difference between them is Bumblebees have fuzzy abdomens and Carpenter Bees have smooth ones. This tummy is smooth. Bumblebees don't eat houses, Carpenter Bees do.

Little did I know... (a.k.a. Monster Fig)

Little did I know when I looked at that little fig tree what was hidden from view. This 4' high tree that volunteered to come up behind the shed was reported to be tough. The seller of our house said it was unstoppable. My garden book said fig trees get to be 15 - 30 ft tall and wide. It had to go. I've dug other things out by the roots before so after cutting back the twigs growing off the stump I took my shovel and started digging.

I followed one root over to the gravel where I knew it had grown into some hay bales that had been left to decompose. That went pretty well. A couple roots headed under the shed. I cut them off under the building.

Then, I follow another root that headed toward the neighbor's yard. It got bigger and bigger the further from the stump I dug. Then it split into three. Oddly though, it didn't split as it went away from the stump but rather toward the stump. It's as if the stump came from some mother tree somewhere - which makes a lot of sense - except there's no mother tree to be found. Rather than dig into the neighbor's yard we took an electric saw to the 3" root and cut it off at the property line. By then, I was six feet or so from the stump and had created quite a hole.

There were still more roots to dig out so I proceeded to dig. That was 3 days ago. I'm still digging. In the photo below you see about half of what I've dug. The stump I have referred to is way in the background. You can't even see it really. It's about 3' this side of the gravel.

What I found from this point on is even more amazing. More often than not, as I followed a root like this along thinking it would get smaller and I'd come to the end, I would find just the opposite. The more common experience is that it gets larger and goes deeper and probably crosses under another larger root. I suspect the really large root in the photo below is from a different tree that was on the neighbor's lot but had been chopped down. That stump is about 3 feet across so I know it was one huge tree. If I can get the fig root out from under it, I'll just cover up again. It's about 3' deep.

I'm now 25' or more, and around the corner, from that stump. They criss-cross all throughout the garden area. Some roots run just inches below the surface, others are deeper. Most of the shallow ones go deep at once point or another. After taking these photos, I continued to dig. The smaller root you see in these two final photos took a steep downward turn. By then, the sun was going down and I was getting tired. I wonder what I'll find tomorrow; assuming I can dig tomorrow. Possible thunderstorms are in the forecast.

Little did I know...

Timber!

Today, Larry and I got ambitious today and tore down the gazebo. It was wobbly to begin with and was being chewed up by some sort of bee (in the summer time) that bores holes.

Larry first took a circular saw to the upright 2x4's to free the roof and then he started pushing. He pushed and pushed. It wasn't until he removed some side supports that it finally came down. My cool camera has a rapid shoot feature so I got some action. It's too bad you can't watch it in quick succession because it looks pretty cool.

Oops

There are those who will get quite a kick out of this... (Rene' for one).

I spent an hour or two on this egg, only to break it when trying to seal it a new way. Usually, I take them outside and spray them but it was raining. So I sprayed sealer into a small zip-lock bag and rolled the egg around in the bag. It was working quite well until I tried to transfer it to the drying rack. That little booger was slick as snot on a door-knob. I hardly knew what happened! Crack! Oops. Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

We love visitors!

David swung by our house while on his way through with a delivery. It was great to see him for all of 10 minutes or so.

Unfortunately, Larry missed him as he was out of town at the time.








Our good friends, Carl & Karen spent the week-end with us recently. We had a lot of fun - going to lunch and then to the aquarium (someday I'll share photos from there). Later that night we went to a comedy dinner theater which was a lot of fun.

On Sunday we went for a lovely drive to through NE Georgia and visited Carl's parents. The week-end went by very fast.

We love having visitors. When are you coming? :-)

2/1/07 Snow Day

It's barely light enough outside to take a photo - at 7:45am. This is about the time of day it starts getting light here.

Oodles of school districts are closed. My employer is opening one hour later than usual. Snow is a big deal here! I like that. We don't have to deal with ice very often but we get the treat of snow from time to time. The temperatures are rising and it's suppose to rain later today so it won't last long.

Here are a couple more views.

Okay, so you think I'm too old to be making snowmen? Oh well. 50 still likes to have a little fun. Besides, snow is a novelty to me. Even after the snow turned to rain during the day, there was still enough wet snow after work to form a sorry looking snowman. This one was concocted on our deck which I believe was more wet than the snow on the lawn, however, this way it didn't have grass and dirt mixed with it. Ta da!

(If you ever want a better look at a photo you can double click on it and get a bigger version of it.)

Gatlinburg

We had heard that the lights that Gatlinburg puts up for Christmas were due to come down after this week-end so we high-tailed it up there this week-end. It's quite a tourist town and it's called the Gateway to the Great Smokey Mountains. We agreed to listen to a time share presentation in exchange for a $100 "gift".

We figured that would pay for a hotel room and food so we stayed.

This morning we woke to find it snowing!! Ordinarily I'm leery of snow but this wasn't sticking to the streets so I wasn't worried about driving in it. It turned out to be a light dusting.

We briefly set foot in the Great Smokey Mountains, enough to know we need to go back again - maybe in the Spring.