Summer things are funner than others

Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in four years, I have caught a fish! An actual fish with fins and scales. Not a freshwater clam, not a stick, not a shoe, and not an otter. Actually, I caught two fish! And we ate them! One teeny tiny sunfish who was almost too pretty to eat and whose meat summed up to approximately one fishstick, and one little rainbow trout with a nice pink stripe on his sides. And, they were delicious! Gavin caught some fish too, but he wasn't having a four-year dry spell, so I'm not going to crow about them. He also caught a nice tasty bass a couple days later. And some little guys yesterday. And some little guys today. I caught nothing yesterday, but I have high hopes that it won't be another four years till I catch another fish. We are in sportsmans' paradise, after all.

On with the sportsman's report... We got our hunting tag draw results back. Gavin drew a buck deer tag and I drew nothing. A couple people have told us that first-timers are supposed to be guaranteed to get their picks, but I found nothing about this in the 200-page rule book. Maybe that's how it used to be. Anyways, we get to go hunting for Gavin's buck, and then we can go for open season elk hunting. If we even bag one animal, we'll be very lucky, statistically speaking.

The last time we drove to Bend to go shopping, we got to see a group of five bull elk. They were in a pasture, running towards us along the fence by the road. It was exhilarating to see them, but also a little frightening, since they could have jumped the fence and run headlong into us. Once we passed them, we took a closer look and saw that two of the guys had really nice big antlers, and the other three had smaller, but still respectable multi-point racks. They are amazing animals. Massive, and long-legged. They can really cover some territory quickly, even when it looks like they are not moving that fast. Of course, we slowed down to get a good look at them, and I rolled down the window and said, "Hi boys, NICE RACKS!!!", because, well, when you get that kind of opportunity, you just have to take it.

So, the fact that I am at home blogging instead of in Utah potting, means that I am not at the two-week pottery workshop that I signed up for. It got cancelled. I am somewhat relieved that I don't have to go all that distance and do all that work, but I am also very disappointed! I thought I'd try to make up for it by having a two-week intensive potting experience in my workshop. I did make some tiles and formulate some glaze tests and fire them, but that's as far as I got before reality rudely intruded.
Upon retrieving the tests from the kiln, it became apparent that the lower part of the kiln is not heating up. Probably needs at least one new element, if not several. This, along with the crumbling bricks of the kiln rim, and the non-functional motor on the second switch, adds up to some down time for the kiln. So I sulked for a day and then set off to clean my workshop and get some potting done!
But, alas, plumbing has intervened in my plans. One of our hose faucets is non-functional, and dripping a little. My basement sink is leaking hot water into the crawlspace at a steady clip. The concrete block basement wall is soaked, and growing mushrooms. The second bathroom's tub is shut off because the hot water was leaking too much. And to top it off, there is an underground river in the crawlspace, because the second tub drain is apparently not really connected.

When viewed from the crawlspace, most of the house plumbing looks as though it is about to disintegrate. So, it is time to replace the plumbing. There's no point in doing half the job now, and half the job later, because it is all at the end of its useful lifespan. Besides, the system is totally lacking in shut-off valves, so it's either all on or all off. So, since copper pipe requires careful soldering, plastic pipe requires a zillion glued connections, and galvanized pipe is just archaic, we are going to put in a pex system. I'm excited about the pex part of the system, since it should save us some labor and will potentially save us many future headaches. But re-plumbing a house from a creepy, muddy, cat-crap-stinking, spider-infested crawlspace is not my idea of a fun July.

The other really sucky thing about being in the crawlspace in July is that it brings me into face-to-face contact with the bizarre structural inadequacies plaguing the center of the house, and I don't even want to think about how I'm going to figure out how to deal with those. Not to mention the washouts around the foundations.

The main beam along the center of the old part of the house supports the floor joists coming into it from both sides. This main beam sits on some dinky concrete deck footing looking things, and one end sits on the concrete block wall. The end that sits on the block wall has a huge crack in it. It is visibly sagging. It looks like a broken pencil. My best guess is that we can jack up the sagging spot, and sister up the main beam with a couple of 4x12's attached to it with lag bolts. One end of the 4x12's can bear on the block wall, and the other end... has nothing to bear on. I guess we can just follow precedent and put in some deck footings for them to bear on. Maybe involve a whole lot of Liquid Nails in there too. I love that stuff. Sigh.

Parallel to the main beam, about 8 feet away, is the Mystery Beam. The MB is beefy, about 8x8. It is supported by one post that is flimsily supported by what appears to be concrete patio pavers, and shimmed by shingles or something. The Mystery Beam does not quite reach the block wall on one end, and just protrudes aimlessly into the mid-joist air on the other end. I am not sure if the MB is actually fastened to the joists or its supporting post. It has the appearance of an appendage. But, if we demolish the MB, or allow it to succumb to erosion from the underground river, perhaps whatever load it is supporting will fall onto the main beam, and it will collapse. Kind of makes me not want to be under there...

Did I mention that there are two fluorescent shop lights in the crawlspace? One of them even had bulbs in it. I guess I should be grateful for that, since I'll be spending a lot of quality time down there... but it's just weird.

In other news, there is a world outside the basement. I might just never see it again.

Our garden is doing well. It's actually organic! Which wasn't a big part of the plan when we started, but it's been easy enough to do, so why not. We had our first broccoli a couple of days ago. It was so good. Good enough to make all the fussing and coddling pretty much worthwhile. I actually didn't think that homegrown broccoli would be that much different from grocery store stuff. It's a lot sweeter and more flavorful. There's a couple more baby broccoli heads visible on the other plants. I can't wait! Next year I'm going to grow twice as many... ;-) Our snap peas are blooming, the squash leaves are the size of my head, and the corn is not quite knee high... So far no deer have nibbled. Perhaps the combination of blood meal, bone meal, fish emulsion, and neem oil does not create an inviting aroma.

Our little outdoor cat Sprite has kittens! They were born on June 4. She had four kittens, but one was stillborn. So she has three little fuzzy blue-eyed mewlers! Her sister Lucy appears to be pregnant too. And our neighbor found a kitten in her shed. Wanna free kitten???
Two of our feral cats died since last fall (Farley, and the black cat that we kept trying to chase away), so maybe we can keep one of the kittens. But no more! We are definitely rounding them all up and taking them to get fixed as soon as they are weaned.

Tomorrow is the longest day of the year. I haven't gotten up early enough to see the sunrise in awhile, but I know that it doesn't get really dark until about 9:30 pm, and there is still a glow on the western horizon at 11:00 pm. Plenty of time for fishing, hiking, floating the river, tending the garden... Now if only I wasn't going to spend July in a basement...

Home again home again jiggety-jig

May was fun. We went to Sacramento, and had visitors here for two weeks. We even had dinner guests here for the first time. Tons of fun. Now everyone is gone, the house is quiet, and the rain has stopped for now.

It's been very nice being sociable and being distracted from thinking about all the things I want to get done. Sometimes I get so focused on checking things off of The List that I forget to take a breather and appreciate what we have here. We got to do some touristy things like going to the Blue Basin and the Painted Hills. Both trips were great and I don't know why we hadn't done them before. I guess I convince myself that I should be productive almost every day, instead of really relaxing and enjoying what we have here. Which leads to me being only a tiny bit productive every day and not allowing myself to enjoy the good stuff. Hmm. Someday I will have to buckle down and get a schedule with days of being productive and days of taking it easy. That would be good. I get a reprieve from buckling down in June, since I will be at a pottery workshop for the last two weeks of the month. Maybe I'll get serious in July. Then again, maybe not. July is a great month for fishing and hiking and rafting and swimming and gardening and eating and going to the orchards and doing anything but working or remodeling.

It's been raining and raining here. We have gotten all of our plants into the garden, but we haven't really had to water, because of all the rain. The chard and the broccoli are thriving. Everything else looks a little pale, maybe from lack of sunshine and warmth. We built a tall fence for the tomatoes to climb, but they haven't grown to the bottom of the fence yet. True to form, I chose to plant a bazillion things that will need all different kinds of attention throughout the summer. Tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, chard, broccoli, herbs, peas, peppers, lettuce, flowers, etc, etc. Perhaps we have bitten off more than we can chew. Maybe we'll get lucky and be awash in vegetables.

We are hosting a couple of horses on our property. It's really cool to wake up in the morning and see them already at work, munching away and keeping the field trimmed short. They seem to be having a good time, consulting with our neighbors' horses, eating and eating, and wandering aimlessly from end to end of the field. Of course we are collecting manure for our compost heap. [Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to put the compost heap a mere 30 feet away from our bedroom window.] I wish more of our property was fenced in, so we could get the horses to mow the lawn, too. We haven't bought a lawnmower yet, so we are paying to have it mowed by a local kid. He does a fine job, but everything that the mower doesn't reach is totally out of control. I don't think the horses would eat the thistles and mustard, though, so maybe a goat is in order. Or a weedwhacker, but I've always wanted a goat. I wonder if we could use a goat on the lawn instead of a lawnmower.

This two-week pottery workshop is looming on the horizon. Two whole weeks of throwing, wedging, carving, glazing, firing, and learning. At first I was really looking forward to it, but now I am anxious about the intensity of it. My hands are still not in the best of shape, and I am not sure that I'm up to the physical demands of throwing every day for two weeks. I might have to sit out some of the sessions. I hate the thought of having to curtail what I want to do because my stupid hands can't keep up. However, I hate the thought of having surgery on my hands even more. So I am doing stretches and exercises and trying to take it easy and rehabilitate myself. This sucks. I hate having limitations.

So, while I have been trying to take it easy, instead of pounding clay for hours on end, I have been intensely studying glaze chemistry for the last couple of months. The reference materials are boring and some contradict each other, but I am beginning to get a handle on it. My goal is to formulate a light blue-green-white mottled glaze that will look sort of dreamy and oceanic, like little whitecapped waves. I should start with something easier to formulate, but having a clear goal in mind does keep me on track and interested in learning all that I can.

I am collecting some of the native clays from around the area, to try out as clay and glaze materials. Lately when we go out for a drive, I'm intensely scanning the roadcuts for interesting soils, instead of sitting back and enjoying the scenery. We stop and take little samples from all kinds of places. I think of romantic names for the clay and glaze colors. Unluckiest Mailbox is the clear sandy root-beer glaze collected from a roadcut next to a mailbox that is riddled with bullet holes. Shooting Range Red is a deep, rusty red clay. We dug some clay near Richmond (ghost town) last week. On the same trip, we ran over a rattlesnake, and went back and picked it up. Depending on the fired color of that clay, I'll either call it Rattlesnake Red, or Ghost Town. I hope to dig some blue-green clay on Longview ranch soon. Of course, I will call it Longview.

We are awaiting hunting season with bated breath. We have applied for our deer and elk tags, and also a 'point saver' for pronghorn. If we get the tags we applied for, we can hunt during the controlled hunts, in the areas that have better odds. If not, then we can still hunt for deer and elk during the open season, but our odds probably won't be as good. All I can say is that if we get an elk, I will be thrilled beyond belief, we will have to buy a chest freezer and a smoker, and we won't ever buy beef again. It would be really cool if we got a deer too, but elk meat is just the best. We are not hunting for pronghorn this year, but someday I would like to.

We have no idea of really HOW to hunt, so our odds are probably not that good. We are not really sure how to prepare for hunting, either. I want to at least become a good enough marksman so that that won't be a factor in my hunting success. We have the shooting range for target practice. I am trying to learn how to shoot for accuracy without the bench. I don't think I can do it standing up, so I am practicing shooting while sitting down with the rifle balanced on one knee. That seems to be OK. Now if I can do that in the woods, quickly, without spooking an elk, I might have a chance. I want to do some backcountry hiking before hunting season, to see if we can figure out where the tasty guys live. So far we have been a little leery of going way out in the woods alone, because there are known to be plenty of mountain lions, feral pigs, and bears out there. I want to be the huntER, not the huntED. Various townspeople have warned us not to go out in the forest unarmed, too. So we got a little handgun, and now we feel a lot more confident that we are not defenseless against the things with big teeth and claws.
I used to worry about getting mugged or otherwise preyed upon in the city. I think of the guy who mugged me in Sacramento as kind of a wild animal. I think it takes some kind of inhuman mind to attack someone on a busy street in broad daylight. Out here, it's different, but in a way it's the same. I still carry my pepper spray. But out here, we think that the inhuman predators are easier to spot from a distance.

No more typing, it's time to do exercises.