Fall Pictures

Ahoy!
Rather busy with school and I should really be studying for a math quiz this morning, but whatever. Thought I'd take a minute or two to chuck a few pictures up.

 Welcome to Hobbitvale in autumn! :) I'm a little suprised the marigolds aren't toast yet - we've had a few frosts already. This also presents a good picture of my 'walls' - they can be furled up during the day to let the sun and breeze in, and let down overnight to keep - well, I'm not really sure what they do during the night, but I put them down anyway. It feels just a bit more secure having something between me and the woods even if it's only a bedsheet.

So I'm not a particularly tidy housekeeper, as you can see. Fortunately I don't have enough stuff down there to make it really messy, but there's enough to clutter up the table. There's a jug of clean water, a soap dish, a metal can which holds my night light candle (I keep it lit mostly so there's fire between me and the doorway overnight - and it makes the roof look sooo cool at twilight!), a candle with a glass case that you can walk around with, sort of like a lantern, an anti-bear weapon, and a few books.  I've found that the rafters above my bed make a good place to store books too.

I've slept down there for six nights - all in one stretch about two weeks ago. Hopefully I'll get out there again tonight - it's only supposed to go down to about 10C so I can't use the excuse of 'too cold'. :P Besides, I'm going to start using a big sleeping bag rather than just blankets - they always fall off at 4am anyway.

One last picture of the hobbit house from behind. Yeah, I know it stands out like a sore thumb, but... well, it will be perfect in winter. :) No time to put dirt on the roof now anyway.

Well, I'd better go!

->cousins:   Beautiful pictures, Mike! lol good word choice on 'the golden hour'. It looks like Rivendell at sunset. :) And congratulations on the running, Wendy! When do you start marathons?

cheers!

 Oh-Kay. Time for the monthly post.

First, the good news... The frame got finished about two weeks ago. :) Here's a picture. It impressed many people, including my father, who was extremely surprised at his own reaction. He wasn't the only one - Benita was excited when she saw it too, and said she 'never thought it would look this cool'.I took them both as compliments to keep peace in the family. Anyway, this is what the completed frame looks like:

Now, the not-so-good news: the hobbit house has been doomed to gazebo-ship. I am extremely unimpressed. Thanks to those lovely floods out westward this spring, nobody produced any straw, so the price of it here went through the roof. I'm not sure what it costs for a little rectangular bale out there (14'' x 18'' x 36'') but what I found here was $2.85 per bale and an extra dollar per bale for delivery (last year's stock, no less.) And I needed around 270 to insulate walls, floor, and roof. And seeing as our super-compassionate tuition prices already put me underwater, I didn't think an extra $1000 below was going to help me out any. So, no straw. I'm still not sure if I made the right choice. :(
I have since discovered that straw is the backbone of a hobbit house. I tried quite a few workarounds, which all led to frustration and happy mosquitoes. My backup plan was to use chicken wire, and then use that as a form to build adobe-style walls from clay and sand (originally this would have been a plaster/render to be stuck on the straw bales). The chicken wire had the texture, but the clay mixture was so heavy the wire just bent and dropped it off. This is about the most mind-blowingly frustrating thing - except for the wire itself, which goes everywhere you don't want it to and stabs you in the fingers. Long story short, I have about one square foot of properly hardened wall. The rest is just chicken wire, so for a while it looked kind of like a big cage.

In the end, I gave up on winterizing it. That was really disappointing, but at least it makes an awesome summer house sort of thing.I intend to spend a lot of time in there this fall. I built a bench/seat/low shelf thing into the north wall, and I'm confident it would support as many people as you could physically get standing on it at one time. This is what it looked like halfway through construction:

Oh, and I finished the floor too, by the way. It's not an insulated one, of course - it's only about an inch off the ground, just enough for water to pass through. I expect it to be wet during the spring melt - it's more of a deck floor than a house floor now and the adapted plan for water is that it will flow down the walls, under the floor, and out. I don't know if that's sound reasoning but it's done, good or not.
The roof is waterproof to the point that it sends water down to the outside walls and keeps the main floor dry. As long as we don't get a driving storm that will be good enough. The skylight is made of vapour barrier and has a space for smoke to escape without letting water in. And the reason for this is a 'removable' fire pit I have made. :)It's a chunk of removable flooring with a clay basin scooped out beneath, complete with bricks to form an edge for it and a wire dome to catch sparks. When not in use, everything goes in the pit, and the bricks standing on end support the floor over it. I'm quite pleased with that. With the furniture I have in there (the shelf and an awesome twisty log bench), I could seat five people comfortably, and there is plenty of room to bring in more chairs and such. That's another benefit of not having solid walls - a lot more roomy inside, and a Very open-concept sort of feel. :)

Besides that, there is also a hammock and a homemade table for furniture, and some me-style home decorating - a shield and machete, a bow with no-nonsense arrows in case I get an unwelcome visitor, an inuksuk that has an unfortunate habit of collapsing, a wood flute, a basket of stones and shells, and a scroll of birch bark that I haven't quite decided what to do with yet.

So this is what my hobbit gazebo looks like now. I'm actually pretty pleased with the way it turned out, in spite of what it was originally intended to become.

The gate even kind of works - the hinges are string and a couple of nails. You have to pick up the gate to move it, but at least it doesn't fall over when you put it down.

I know I've missed some stuff in here. I don't have an up-to-date picture of the interior, so I'll try and get one or two of those up. This is probably the last full entry I'll post regarding the blog, seeing as school starts on monday and my writing ethic wasn't that awesome when I didn't have anything bookish to do all summer. So, that being said, anything that you're curious about (this also includes random passers-by, not just my cousins), post a question or comment and I'll try to answer it in timely fashion!

*If you're desperate to know about the hobbit house, scroll down until you see pictures - I like to prattle on for a while first.

Ahoy!
Life hath been busy. Summer tends to do that to me. There's so much I simply have to do in addition to my regular duties - take walks, go to the park to sword fight, eat ice cream... even mow the lawn once in a while.
Be that as it may, I have finally managed to reach the 'new post' button. It was an amazing feat of endurance and valour. But I achieved it.

*applause*

Anyway.
I've got a couple of pictures today. There won't be much of a story, I'm afraid - if you really want the story, basically July was still full time at work and I was too wimpy to deal with the hordes of vampire bugs that haunt the hobbit house in the evenings. Fortunately, they're starting to dope up again, although they are getting more desperate - the result is kamikaze mosquitos who draw blood and then go shmuck. A lose-lose situation all around.
So now that I'm back from chuckleberry town (which was awesome!) and hours at work have finally dropped, I'll really be able to get down to work. I had the last three days off and put in about seven hours for the last two (the first one was mostly spent making a sword and a back shield for Belegarth. Behold! This is what I have accomplished:

As you can not quite see, the posts and beams are all finished. I started work on the roof today. Very annoying to have to work out all the angles and math and stuff - I've been using the pythagorean theorem and stuff too (which was one of the only things in math past grade 8 that I ever thought I would use. The other was basic slope formulae, which I've also been using in this.)
That big post thing in the middle is my leaning post. The idea is to lean the first rafter on this, and the second one on the first, etc., and slip the last one in under the first one. Then comes the moment of truth where you kick the leaning post out, and if you did it right, the whole roof creaks and sinks an inch or two and catches itself. If you didn't, you've got a big mess to clean up, or somebody else does if you were under it.
The roof will take a little longer than I thought (story of my hobbit house). I've discovered that the poles I was planning on using for rafters aren't quite strong enough - at 14 feet long they can't take my weight standing in the middle. That might seem a little harsh, seeing as none of them will be longer than about 10, but I figure that once I've got soil and straw bales and everything else on the roof, I won't be able to walk on it for fear of collapsing it.
So I've started harvesting some bigger trees - 5'' to 6'' in diameter as opposed to 4'', and I think they'll do the job. They feel good and strong. I guess we'll see.

My front door - not looking so good for the round style.

This was another of my random ideas from a few days ago. I kind of regret it now - if I'd been thinking I could have come up with tons of reasons not to trash a perfectly good board. On the bright side, I've discovered that I'm fairly accurate with a throwing hatchet, although I haven't got the spin quite figured out. So if a bear comes after me, I'll probably hit him, but I have a 75% chance of just making him Really mad.
Speaking of which, I had my first visit from a bear today. He moves a lot quieter than the deer I usually see down there. I realized too late that the axe, the machete, and the sledgehammer were all closer to him that I was, but I needn't have worried. He just ducked his head like he'd just walked in on somebody in the washroom and turned around and left. It took me about a minute to really understand that I'd just seen a bear and another one to discover that I didn't actually feel scared or threatened. He was very polite - kind of like a totally ripped black lab.

Well, lots of new goodies today. For the blog, anyway - they're mostly about a week and a half old for me and the novelty is starting to wear off. Which I suppose is a good thing - it's not very becoming of a hobbit in his tweens to be running back and forth across a ten foot plank bridge and giggling madly. Just for the record, the said bridge was an unsuspecting young ladder approximately twenty minutes before it began to serve in its new role.

It fits remarkably well, actually - it took two thin planks and seven nails to transform it and it's probably had about twice as much traffic since it got there than in the whole of its existence before. For anyone who's curious, it used to be the third-string means of getting into the tree forts we built a few years ago, after the monkey bar ladder and the climbing ropes. Needless to say, it didn't get used much. The others don't either.

Most of this work took place on a very productive day known far and wide as June 2nd. The bridge was one of the morning tasks, along with finishing the garden beds.

I decided to go with the whole round hobbity architecture thing and made the beds round. In the closest one there are beans, peas, and carrots, which are all starting to come up now; in the next one over are potatoes, which have accomplished nothing remarkable just yet; and in the one hidden in the tree shadow (don't worry, this only occurs in the morning) are corn and sunflowers.

corn :)

Both of these are germinating far better than I expected, and will need to be thinned drastically before long. It must the 'grandpa' karma lingering around the place - it's been about three years since I managed to grow anything past two inches tall, and those promptly got eaten by a small furry demon commonly known as a pet rabbit. I would have exorcised the miscreant on the spot if it hadn't already cast a spell over other members of the family. As it was, he still left my room at an altitude of four feet, which had an effect on everyone in the house except the rabbit.
Which reminds me, I'd better get onto building that fence.

As to the actual hobbit house, this is what the site looks like as of an hour ago:

Hmm, that post doesn't look very straight. Maybe I'd better have another look at that. I already dug it up once cause it was a bit too wobbly. But don't worry, it's all under control...
You can't really see much of what's changed in this picture, but there's quite a bit. The planter on the left is now home to four very potent marigold plants, and there are two other planters nearby, also housing marigolds. This was in response to the not-so-sneaky ambush of a few dozen mosquitoes every time I got to work. For anyone who isn't familiar with marigolds, they are probably about the most powerful natural pesticide in existence, at least to my knowledge. They seem to work rather well on many human pests as well - Benita, for example. I quite enjoy the smell, myself.
So did they do the job? Kind of. While it's not perfect, it's a huge improvement. Mosquitoes will still come after me while I'm there, but they're never waiting around for me like before. I've also taken to rubbing my face and arms in the leaves, which deters them even more - of the ones that do land on me, only about half stick around for more than half a second. All in all, I declare myself pleased.

The other invisible project is hidden under the log that's protruding into the house. A french ditch, as Uncle Allan called it. It's essentially a trench for drainage filled with gravel. Very necessary since the whole floor is clay. After a bit of tinkering and a good rain or two, it works very well.

Taking a translation class brings up all sorts of interesting sayings between french and english. It's usually not very hard to tell they didn't like each other much - for example, the expression 'to take french leave' means to sneak away. In french, 'partir à l'anglaise' (leaving english-style) means the same thing.

This is my latest attempt at artwork. Although it probably doesn't look like much to my more artistically skilled cousins (ie all of them) I'm really happy with it. It's legible, the letters all line up, and the last letters aren't crammed together to make everything fit. Far above my usual ability. I did it with a hydrangea twig and acrylic paint sitting by the fire one night. It's a good thing I like the rustic style, cause that's all I'm capable of. :)

Welcome to Hobbitvale

Not too much more to say - just a few more random pictures that you might enjoy.

Most of the poplar are fully leafed out and they're hushing like water in the breeze the way I love.

Mum has taken to drying our clothes using wind power. I have absolutely no problem with this - though I might if we lived right in front of a Tim Horton's drive-thru like some poor kid in BC. I'd never seen some of the things flying on that line.

:( The pancake lichen on the stump is no longer attached. It got removed during an unfortunate wheelbarrow racing accident.

This one was a job for Mike and his pringle tube. This is about as macro as my photography gets. My one regret with the camera I have. I didn't actually notice the lily-of-the-valley under the bluebells until I looked at this picture. Erin will be pleased - it's her favourite flower, and now that I can match the leaves to the flower there are a lot of them around.

And this is just a generic picture of the ferns along my path. There's lots of them too. I've also discovered a lot of potential edibles-to-come - hazelnuts (of course), raspberries, elderberries, saskatoons, cranberries, wild strawberries, rosehips, and something else I'm forgetting. There's also a trillium or two and a few wild roses - some of which are smack in the middle of the path.

I think that's everything. Don't expect to hear too much until July - the garden center is very busy and I probably won't get much done until it slows down there a bit. I've certainly been getting my share of sunlight.

cheers :)

I haven't accomplished much this week - between work and various levels of laziness I only got the garden beds dug and one of the trees for the wall posts knocked down. Well tonight I chopped three 10' sections off it, too, and discovered that the axe needs sharpening.
I don't know how I'm going to get the poles placed, though - the logs are a lot thicker than I had planned on going for (about 10-11'') so it's probably going to be a three person job to get them set up. Maybe I should make a sign and go wave it on the side of the highway.
I've taken a lot of pictures recently, most of them irrelevant, but I'll get some of them up soon.

Well, the digging/leveling is done. *yay*  I finished it yesterday, with the help of about 2 inches of rain. As the bottom of the house foundations are made of clay, the water doesn't drain away and I had a perfect picture of exactly what parts of the house still needed to be dug level. So I spent a while on that and proclaimed myself done when everything was underwater. I celebrated with a small whoop that stopped abruptly with a nervous glance toward the neighbours. Apparently I'm very shy of making noise when I'm by myself. I hadn't realized.

Unfortunately, having a clay foundation where the water doesn't drain can also be a problem, especially for straw bales that aren't supposed to get their feet wet. I'm going to have to fix that - dig a small channel and fill it with stone or something.
The final depth of the back of the excavation is approximately 5'9'', for anyone who's interested.
The next task on the list is to dig post holes (only about 1' - 1'6'' deep, so not a huge endeavor) and cut down suitable posts. Once that is done, I can work on either putting a layer of gravel on the floor, continuing work on the frame, or building a retaining wall. It will be nice to know I have a choice instead of just shoveling. :)

This picture marks my favourite time of year - when the dandelions bloom. There isn't much prettier than a lawn sprinkled with yellow, in my books. Before they bloomed, I'd been trying to acquire the taste of dandelion leaves (makes sense to me - there's not much point trying to grow lettuce for the deer around here.) They're very bitter, but edible. After they bloomed, I decided to try the flowers. They're a mix between bitter and sweet and fuzz, and not bad once you get used to them. I'm working on that. I also found out that they turn your saliva yellow. Benita almost threw up when I made this exciting discovery.

I've started digging a garden near where Grandpa's old one behind the garage was. Mum benefits from this more than she knows - I was wondering where the easiest place to get sod for the roof would be, and now the back lawn is no longer first choice. :)

This is a picture taken about halfway along the path to the hobbit house. I've decided to call the tree Tane Mahuta Mate. Tane Mahuta is the Maori name for the biggest tree in New Zealand, translated to 'Lord of the Forest'. 'Mate' means dead. This tree is easily the tallest one in Hobbitvale, so it seems fitting to me - the only difference is that it looks like it hasn't worn leaves in a decade or so. Oh well. It's a very interesting tree. The bark has slid off it in large sheets, something is likely living in that cave under its roots, and worms have covered the wood in runes.

And this is a picture of the little creek that wanders along in front of the hobbit house, where my bridge (two stepping stumps and a tippy log) crosses it.

I've got just time for a quick post before I go off to work. (This may mean going to Tim Horton's for lunch, but oh well.)

This is where we were at about a week ago. Lily (Brad and Rosie's dog) was on lookout, protecting me from mad squirrels and ravaging seagulls. One little chirp about a hundred yards away and she went berserk. However, she watched the deer approach to about thirty feet without making a noise (completely out of character for Lily). Maybe she's never seen a deer before and doesn't know she's supposed to bark at them.

And this one was taken yesterday. Looks kind of like a crater, I know. The bottom part (to the right) is as low as it's going. I just have to clear the rest and level it. My friend Spencer is going to come and help tomorrow, so we'll hopefully get it done. I say 'hopefully' because it's ridiculously hard clay, and it's put my goals back a week already.

Ying-yang?

Missing you guys in Saskatchewan! Wish you were here! :)

Hmm, seems this is horribly outdated. I just realized the last picture of my hobbit hole is over three weeks old. I shall take a new one as soon as possible - the hole is almost done, half the bottom floor is showing, and I'm a little euphoric. However, the prospect of hauling everything I'm going to need (gravel, sand, rock, etc.) down the trail to Hobbitvale dampens that a little bit. I'm considering skipping the retaining wall again - perhaps using chain link fence, for all the good it will do... I don't know, really. I shall write to a friend of mine who is a civil engineer - if anybody can tell me what to do, he can.
...I should have thought of that about a month ago, at least.
I have two new companions in my little valley, too. A piliated woodpecker and his mate seem to think the trees nearby are absolutely scrumptious. The deer are getting used to me now too, and it's more of a surprise than a scare when I come along. Yes, Wendy, I understand that making friends with deer is tantamount to vegicide, but have you seen their eyes?
I also saw beaver kits (pups?) for the first time tonight, down by the creek... cutest little things ever! They're like miniature beavers with skinny tails, and they swim around up and down the creek like motorboats on patrol, squeaking the whole time.

Hmm. Exactly one year ago, give or take a few hours, I was in Christchurch, New Zealand. Forgetting I was in a backpacker hostel, I sat up too fast in the middle of the night and whacked my head on the bunk above me. I must have scared the poor girl to bits. Then when I went to get a drink of water, I came back in the dark and tripped over the ladder, which probably woke everybody else up too. Good times...

Oh, and in case anyone's interested, the partridge is still on the same log doing his mating call. Moss has grown around his feet.

I'm not sure why the dodo is extinct and he isn't.

Hmm, maybe ten days wasn't that long after all. I haven't said much over the last while cause I haven't accomplished much - I managed to strain my arms and then pulled a big smart and worked on them for another week, and it took a week after that without digging to stop them from being tingly every morning. So I became a computer dwarf and sulked in the basement trying to ignore the perfect weather outside - which is a waste of good sunshine, I know, but if I go outside I'll want to go to the hobbit house, and if I go to the hobbit house I'll feel like a wimp for not doing anything, and then I'll really total my arms.

So yeah. I started doing stuff again yesterday, and apparently blew it again - more pins and needles again this morning. I'm starting to feel rebellious, though - there's not a whole lot of digging left and I've been at this a month. Kind of ridiculous. I might just do it and say oops later.

So me and Brad went to get the gravel for the retaining walls and floor base yesterday. When we came back from paying for it we found one of the tires on the trailer having a meltdown. So we went across the road to Canadian Tire and picked up an air compressor, as well as a free sample of smelly black goop from the auto shop to fix the tire on my wheelbarrow, which is also having issues. When we went through the checkout line, Brad tried to pass it off as Espresso, but the cashier didn't buy it. Good thing it was free.

Most people at work know I'm building a hobbit house too. Lots of people ask if I'm going to have a round door, and I must say I think it's a requirement for any self-respecting hobbit. I'll at least give it a try. Lots of people have also started calling me a hippie - while I wasn't particularly fond of the term to start with I'm becoming resigned to it and I may end up liking it yet. I guess it is accurate. It mostly started when I developed a fondness for bandannas - Emma (my sister's friend) laughed hysterically and told me I looked like... whatever... but when I took it off a few hours later she told me to put it back on cause 'my head looked empty without it'. I'm still trying to decide whether to be insulted or not. When I put it on at work today my boss laughed so hard he almost plowed the bobcat into a transport truck and told me I looked like Jerry Garcia. I have no idea who that is. Perhaps I should google him.

...okay. Not super flattering.

I won't bother with a picture today as it is still only a hole in the ground, and probably not much different from the last picture. I hope to be done with the digging sometime next week (although I have 40 hours at work too... we'll see). So I'll post a picture when that's done. Estimated dimensions of the finished hole are about 17' by 17' by 5' deep at the deepest point, 1'6'' at the shallowest.

I'm still alive...

Wow, I haven't written anything on here for ten days. Huh.

I guess last week I didn't have much to write about, cause we got a postmature dump of snow that took about four days to melt off again. Fortunately I was working in a greenhouse during that time. It was almost nice to be too hot again.

So, I have a few all-new pictures of dirt today! woot... :T  If you want something more inspiring I advise you to look for another blog - one, dirt is all you're likely to get here for a while, and two, I'm apparently too busy shifting the dirt to tell you much about it anyway.

That being said, this is what the hole looked like yesterday morning.

I found the pallet extremely useful once I got down far enough to hit clay (12 inches or less). The stuff probably weighs about 80-90 pounds per square foot, and it sticks to everything - your shoes, the shovel, your face, etc. The pallet has been great for keeping my shoes light enough to walk in. Unfortunately it can't do much for the shovel. Easily the most frustrating thing about digging in clay is when you go to toss your 30-pound chunk up onto the dirt pile and it decides not to let go.

People who think bears are dangerous
don't know how to throw an axe like this

Below is a picture I took while snowballing for deer. It's loads of fun - almost as fun as snowballing for partridge. This picture was taken about 3 minutes before the deer realized I was behind the chicken house. They stood there staring through me for ages - I think they could smell me but couldn't see me. I guess deer must be one of those animals who only see movement. Finally one of them raised the white flag and they all took off. I missed with my snowball anyway - they run a whole lot faster than they seem to.

The partridge, on the other hand, is a dolt. He's been sitting on the very same log for two weeks doing his mating call, and it hasn't occurred to him yet that there may not, in fact, be any females in the area. I got bored a few days ago and headed over with a couple of snowballs. I missed with both of them, but he didn't fly away, just stood there looking around in alarm, trying to figure out what was going on. I found the nearest patch of snow and made some more, and when I was done he'd given up and was staring off in the opposite direction. I knocked him off the log with the next one.
He was back a few hours later and he's been there ever since. Oh well - at least I won't get lonely.

This is what the hobbit house looks like now, from the northwest corner. This is (I hope) the full frame of what I need to dig. At this point I've probably put in about 20 hours of work total, and I'm somewhere between a quarter and halfway through the digging. I got figuring at lunch today and found that due to the way I'll have to build them (vapour barrier, gravel, retaining wall, more vapour barrier, straw) my walls are going to be about 2 1/2 feet thick. Accordingly, the hole now measures about 16' or 17' in diameter.

At a rough estimate, I think I'm going to need about 150 straw bales, a yard and a half of gravel, and an ugly amount of stone. I've dug up a grand total of two fist-sized rocks so far, so I think I'm going to have to find a truck or a trailer and go raid some of the blasting zones along the highway. I know I've got it pretty sweet here, but living in northwestern ontario and having no rock in your backyard is a bit ridiculous.

This... Is... Canada!!!

                              Note the hobbit feet, Mike. :P

Digging started! :D

Today was indeed productive! Well... that's the way I feel, anyway. It doesn't look that great yet - kind of like a bunch of groundhogs were looking for Blackbeard's treasure all day.

On that note, I've decided that a plain old hobbit may not be quite the vocation for me. With an eyepatch and a parrot... the possibilities are endless.

So I'm hoping for nice warm sunshine tomorrow... it's kind of like that 'Dear Liza' song. I have to shift the dirt out of the hole, but I need somewhere to put it. So I went and found a tarp, but it had dirt on it. Then I had to find a place to put the dirt, so I put in the wheelbarrow. Well, half of it - the rest is still frozen to the ground. Then I had to find Benita because it's her dirt and who knows what she wants to do with it. She didn't want it anymore - apparently four months is long enough to spend on a garden. :) So the hobbit-garden-to-be almost got a donation, but mum decided she wants it, and as the hobbit-garden-to-be is currently inaccessible by wheelbarrow, it's mum that will get it. :(
...but she can't use it until a certain somebody builds her raised beds, so...
Maybe I'd better find a new tarp.

My other productive venture today was a new glove:

The One Glove... to Rule Them All!!!

The One Glove became of paramount importance after I spent the morning using a pick with just The Other Glove.
Fortunately the blister didn't last long.

Watch out for crocs!

This beautiful little creek is over the hill and not very far away from the construction site. My four little cousins spent a good while collecting ice chunks from the creek here. After three days, nature has worked wonders - it's barely recognizable as the same place.
*Disclaimer: Special attention applied diligently by the neighbour's skidoo may or may not have contributed to said alterations.

Also three days ago, my four little cousins made their first (I think) venture into the exciting world of axemanship. They were only slightly disgruntled at not being allowed anywhere near the axe.

Well, I do need to get caught up on this, but seeing as the temperature just rose 10 degrees in the last hour and it's supposed to hit 20C today, I'll be (hopefully) putting myself even more behind today. Haven't done anything very ground-shattering just yet, but I did get two roof rafters chopped down with the help of some very strong young chaps who would pass for hobbits a lot more easily than me. Anyway, maybe I'll get that up this evening. Or maybe not.

So I acquired a new weapon of mass destruction today:

I know, the feet are too small for a real hobbit :(

The picture makes it look really small. It's not. It has a good swing to it too, which should be fairly evident from the picture below.

The weather was amazing today, 10C and sunny. It's supposed to be about the same all week, and if it keeps up I think the bulk of the snow will be gone within two weeks.
I also decided where most of the paths will be and did a little more ravaging pruning, but I'm going to leave the rest until the snow melts and I can see where the water is going to be - I'd rather not wake up one morning and find out that half of my new path is under a foot of water.

I also made the exciting discovery of why I don't like democracy, and figured out what I would like... all in about two minutes. Not bad when I've pondered it occasionally for about three years. Anyway, it's probably better I don't talk about that here, though, as it got mum in enough of a flap and she's fairly docile. :) I shall save my revolutionary ideas for the next time I'm invited to make a speech at a national parliamentary whatever-it-is-they-do.

Well, I've got a site picked out, I think. Purely for Wendy's benefit, it's along the path back by the goat house, the one that goes down and then up the hill again, which I think was used for sledding. (Going by how close those trees are on either side of it, I think kids had a lot more guts thirty years ago than they do now.) It's about halfway up the slope on the other side, right on the left of the trail. Here's what the spot looks like:

Some specs:

exposure: southeast

sunlight: full morning sun, dappled afternoon shade thanks to two big poplars

stuff I need to clear out: mostly hazel brush, which is the recommended material for anchoring straw bale walls anyway, one young poplar, which I can use somewhere, and a couple of small dogwood clumps.Oh, and a big old hunk of log that's still standing. If it isn't as rotten as it looks I may be able to use it for a bench or something.

proximity to house: creeping distance

proximity to neighbours: screaming distance

proximity to anti-hobbit-house things: 30 feet up from the (mostly) dry stream bed, so no danger of mushy floors from that. I may temporarily forget my eco-friendly attitude if it starts breeding mosquitoes, though. Safe distance from spruce trees as well, so the roots shouldn't be too invasive.

proximity to pro-hobbit-house things: lots of poplars for building in the area, and other useful plants I've already found within about ten steps - dogwood, birch, and spruce. Lots more to come when the snow goes, I'm sure.

Not very far from Grandpa's old garden behind the garage, either - maybe 100m, tops? This is what it looks like at the moment:

Anybody know if clay is any good for making retaining walls? Or if straw is still good to use for insulation if it's sat outside all winter and is currently damp? I'll see Uncle Allan again on Friday - he's going to be a gold mine of help and advice - but brownie points if you can answer before then. Oh, and lime mortar, I need to ask about that too - ie where to buy, how expensive, how dangerous to use, how long to set, etc.

I've also made a few purchases (already). I bought a mattock yesterday (three cheers for you if you know what that is without looking it up - Uncle Allan is the only one I've found so far) but ended up taking it back after I found an old pick buried in the garage. Instead, I bought a small sheath knife, which I'm very pleased about - swiss made, fits on my belt perfectly, 12 bucks. :) Apparently the forestry students come to buy them all the time ever since they discovered they can hammer them into tree trunks and stand on them. Kind of tells you something about their work ethic. Time management and TLC must not be biggies in forestry.

Apart from that, I've started my anti-chemical-product campaign by making my own deodorant and toothpaste today (If you're curious, the deodorant recipe can be found here - essentially coconut oil, baking soda, and corn starch. The lady's website looks like it's worth exploring too). Benita gave me that look that says 'I can't believe we're related' when I told her the deodorant tasted awful. The toothpaste was worse, but I didn't think she'd appreciate hearing about it. She's kind of close-minded that way. I wonder what she'll do when she finds the deodorant in the fridge.

I'm hooome...

No moose, just a few deer, a really fat black squirrel, and something tiny that ran  in front of me and then freaked out completely. I have no idea what happened to it.

I shall miss my charming cousins...

Anwyn...

...and Leora...

...and their very hospitable cats, Merry and Pippin.

*Disclaimer*

In the case that any involved third (or second) party is concerned about possible plagiarism on this blog, it might be good to explain the noble history of the title 'doogy the grape'. It began with a renowned military strategist who was called Alexander the Great. This was adopted and altered, in more recent times, by a handsome young man, to 'Douglas the Great', which he used to sign emails. However, after a time, said young man became worried that the title of 'Douglas the Great' conveyed a good deal of hubris, and thereupon changed it to 'Douglas the Grape', as he believed this had a fine sound to it and, moreover, he was quite fond of grapes. From there, it was but a small switch to the less formal 'doogy'. This particular title was chosen from the young man's list as it seemed somewhat fitting to as nobly rustic an endeavor as hobbitism.
Contrary to possible belief, the similarity of this title to 'Captain Orange' is entirely coincidental.

:D

Last Day!

I have approximately 25 hours and 15 minutes left in Saskatoon...! Then a loooong drive. With good luck I'll be home monday night. With bad luck I'll be under a dead moose in a ditch monday night.

ugh.

Well, just got this all set up, and now my eyes are going fuzzy from staring at this screen for so long. Figuring out new internet stuff is apparently not my strong suit, but if anybody can see this I guess it paid off. But now I'm going outside because it's absolutely beautiful and I've been sitting in this cave of a basement for way too long. Perhaps I'll go climb trees in the park again and make passing university students seriously question my maturity level. I did that yesterday - it was fun.

Cheers!