Almost Houseguests...

Part of the garden junk in the front yard includes a little faux-stone birdhouse, hung about a foot from our front door. It's meant to be solely decorative.

But House sparrows being how they  are, a pair of them has decided to move right in. We have to walk right under the thing every time we go out to the car, time will tell if they stick with it and actually hatch any chicks. At any rate, this particular pair seems to have an excessive fondness for dry grass.

The hen was in there and flew out as I was taking the pictures. She perched about six feet away, in my contorted redbud tree, and bitched me out something fierce.

Gonna have to have a talk with this pair about learning to work and play well with others.

Life Goes On...

 The Covid lockdown officially started yesterday here in the US.

So we've stocked up on people and animal supplies, now just to go into near-100% hermit mode. I've traded in my perfume for the oh-so-alluring scent of Lysol and Comet. Sanitized is the new sexy!

This coming Saturday I'll set eggs in the ReptiPro incubator for a planned hatch date of April 11th--because if ever the world needed Chickam, it's this year, dammit. We'll be hatching all eggs from our own flock, although I'm hoping to get a few buff Brahma eggs from a neighbor...fingers crossed!

Although given what our girls are offering us these days...

Strange days, indeed.
Rafe, my youngster Russian Orloff rooster, found the tiny egg out in the chicken yard, he called the kid over and drew her attention to it by clucking at it in a most concerned way. I'm just glad Rafe is finally getting his rooster thing goin', he was a slow starter.

We were going to run the camera on the adult flock last weekend--I had a cabbage on a string all ready to go--but the weather ruined things. We'll try again this coming weekend, because...yeah, the world needs some chicken-y distraction these days.

Meanwhile, we had about two weeks of lovely warmish spring weather, which fooled my plum tree into blooming--something it hasn't done during the last three years. Then this weekend we had a sudden, three-day snow/wind storm.

Yup. Snow on the blossoms. The ones the wind didn't just rip off the tree, that is.

Yeah...I didn't actually tear my hair out,but there was much grumbling as I stared out the window at the storm lashing my tree around.

We'll see if it fruits this year. This particular variety is a self-pollinator, and I had gone out with my dry paintbrush to play pollinator the day before the storm hit; since I have yet to see a bee or wasp so far.

The water drops do look pretty, though, I'll give it that.

Lastly, the Northern Lights afghan I was making is basically done!

Okay, so I got a little carried away on expanding the size of it, it's roughly 71 x 52. I also used a basic ripple pattern rather than the one that came with the kit, and plan on edging the long side edges with a single row of a simple shell pattern, just to give the edges a finished look.

Since I made it bigger, I ran short of yarn and had to order more, but I wanted an afghan that was both wide enough and long enough, dang it! Nothing's worse than trying to grab a couch nap and having to fuss with positioning an afghan so your toes don't stick out.

Anyway, that sucker's warm.

No, That's Not What I Meant...Aw Damn!

Look winter--I was *kidding* about the Game of Thrones thing, OK?!

Last night, after I padded through the kitchen around midnight and looked out the window...and actually yelled, 'Oh, come ON!'

I had to go outside to see if I was seeing what I *thought* I was seeing.

Yeah.

Today, and daylight isn't helping.

I'd call this 'the view from my kitchen window' BUT THERE ISN'T ANY VIEW.

 It's like being in Icicle Prison.

If you look close you can see Nora the rooster hopefully eyeing the salt on the walk I'd just shoveled, hoping for his very own Fun Trip To The Vet or alternatively, Horrible Salty Death. To be fair, the stuff is the size of chicken crumbles and glitters so prettily...
The next storm is due tomorrow and they are calling for flooding. So yeah, a whole new joy.

Oh, and husband just stalked out to glare into the closet the furnace squats in..."It's making a weird noise."

YAY.  That MFer breaks and right hand to God, I'll take my wood-chopping ax to it. And I've got a good one, too.

2/12 UPDATE: SOMEBODY GET MY AX. Furnace igniter is dead, and our next storm is due tonight.

Satan's Carpet Cleaner

One thing my father taught me was to love a good, well-made appliance. Towards that end I have no trouble whatsoever paying good money for something--but once I have, you bet that damned thing better work.

Once such item is my monster Bissell carpet cleaner. With our Nevada snowy winters, decomposed granite (DG) dirt that cheerfully sticks in the tread of your shoes until you come inside and our various animals, this thing isn't a luxury item, it's a damned necessity.

I call mine the Big Beast.

I got it at the same time we bought the house 6 years ago once I saw the state of the carpets here. Based on the amount of dog hair and DG the Big Beast has pulled up out of the carpet I strongly suspect the previous tenants had simply left the window of the master bedroom open and allowed several large dogs to come and go through it as they willed, year round.

By the way, the Bissell 'Pet Urine Remover' solution in fact, looks suspiciously like...well...

The Big Beast has served me faithfully ever since. This thing could pull Satan himself up from Hell through my carpet, it's that strong.  When you turn it on you have to warn anyone else in the house that you are about to do so because this thing is mind-rattlingly LOUD. Using it gives you such a 'RAWR!' feeling that you know what Ripley must have felt when she climbed into that Cat Power Loader and battled the Alien Queen. I may have actually blown kisses at it when I do my Spring cleaning after Chickam is through and my house is a wreck. I love it.

When it works.

When it does NOT, it never fails that the thrice-accursed thing fails spectacularly, vomiting several gallons of filthy water all over my carpet or even more fun, haha, laying down scads of soapy water and then refusing to suck it back up.

And does it do this right at the outset, you ask?

Of course it bloody doesn't. It's sneaky. It waits until it's lulled you into a false sense of security and you're halfway through your whole-house cleaning job. When you've put in your earbuds and turned on your music player so you don't have to endure it's loud, throaty roar as it's foaming maw attacks your carpets. When you've fallen into the mindlessness of carpet cleaning.

Then you realize--I haven't had to empty the dirty water receptacle yet. And I should have had to empty it at least twice by now, shouldn't I...? Because that's the other fun thing about using the Big Beast--you use it so seldom that it's easy to forget the finer points.

I long ago learned the operate the Big Beast barefoot in order to make sure that 1. It's putting down soapy water and 2. That it's picking it back up again. I know by know that the carpet should have a certain degree of wetness after I've used the cleaner on it and no more.

I check with my feet. The carpet squelches, it's too wet.

Damn, damn, DAMN. I unload the two water containers--no fool I, I'm not gotta tip this thing upside down with them in place and spill them, I learn. I tip the thing over and no surprise, it's loaded to the gills with dirt and dog hair--some of it from our dog over the winter, but a lot of it still from the previous tenant's dogs, which are the gift that keeps on giving even 6 years later. Armed with several tools I pulls clots of gunk out of the machine, and the levels of nastiness they have attained are stunning.

It's clean again, huzzah. Now it should work.
Nope, the rollers won't turn. Huh. it must be that when the rollers don't turn it won't suck up water.

OK, I go in again and see that hair has lined the rollers where one of the belts goes and is obviously keeping the roller from turning. I spend another cheery half hour muttering bad language, throttling back my disgust and carefully cleaning out the hair...and try it again.

It should work.
Nope...the rollers still won't turn.

Wrestle it over on it's back again like the 600 pound Gallapagos turtle that it is and check. Oh joy, one of the belts is broken.
Who wants to bet if I can find a new belt in our small town! Anyone...?

Bingo, Amazon it is. Two days later I have my belts. Belts, I say, because I've lived with me long enough by now to know that if I only get ONE of the one that is broken either the OTHER belt will break or the new belt will snap going on. So I cut to the chase and buy two of each belt, thus ensuring that I will NEVER have to change a belt on the Big Beast again.

New belt goes on. Rollers turn. Huzzah again, this should fix the problem.
Nope. It still won't suck up that damned water.
It has more than one problem at once, I now know. Time to bust out the $2 cuss words.

By now I'm grimly stomping through the house armed with several screwdrivers, covered head to toe in disgusting dirty water and sick to death of wrestling the Big Beast. I've gone through the 6 stages of Carpet Cleaning: Shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I've seriously considering stabbing it to death with the screwdrivers I've used to take off the covers again and again, aiming for wherever the word 'easy' appears on the stupid labels. I've begged the Carpet Gods to just make it work for this last 6 foot square section so I can be done. I've threatened the thing with death by backing my '69 Plymouth over it. I've been mucking about with this hellbeast for almost 5 days now. Nothing has worked.

The Big Beast has spent most of it's time in this state:

It's taken to leaving nasty, dirty wet spots that I suspect may forever be a part of the carpet. And while we're on the subject, who the HELL lays beige carpet in a part of the country where it snows?

Husband and I stare at Big Beast wondering what it wants. I wouldn't put human sacrifice beyond it at this point. Then I see it.
"Wait--" I say. "What is that?! That wasn't there before was it?"

Husband says he has no idea. I suspect the thing is spontaneously generating weird new parts just to gaslight me. Nevertheless, since it claims to be a filter we fuss the thing open and clean it (it wasn't dirty but we do it anyway because we are firmly in the 'bargaining' stage). That'll fix it!

It doesn't.
Also, the rollers have stopped turning again.

"FIRE UP THE PLYMOUTH!" I roar at my husband. I'm backing over this SOB right now and I'll bet I can sell tickets to other homeowners at this point. I'm so exhausted and permanently filthy I'm feeling positively maniacal and I swear I'm foaming at the mouth. Don't get it on the carpet, I remind myself.

Instead I take a deep breath and turn to the Internet, making sure to use the proper search parameters..

It is absolutely NO surprise to me that 'Motherfucking' and 'Bissell' work together.

I watch several official Bissell videos for 'loss of suction'. All say the same thing and address Dumbshit 101 areas such as: make sure the tanks are seated properly, make sure it's plugged in, etc. Because by the time you resort to the Internet you haven't checked those things already 900 times, haha. All the videos offer to sell you new, expensive replacement parts. More really bad language is directed at the makers of the videos.

Finally, finally...I run across a little post in an out-of-the-way forum where someone mentions the little trap door in the uptake tank...it has a filter screen behind it that can become clogged.

Away I fly to the kitchen where I've got the Big Beast apart to check...

HALLELUJAH BROTHERS, THERE'S THE PROBLEM. I swear if the person who posted that was standing before me I'd kiss them square on the mouth. The thing is gunked up. I clean it and discover, printed on the inside of the flap door, a message to clean this area regularly--printed inside the flap so that you cannot see it when the flap is closed.

Imps and demons of Hell are loudly and vocally directed at whoever designed this particular aspect of Big Beast. More abuse is heaped upon the heads of the makers of Bissell videos that never mention this little hidden filter screen.

I take the thing out to the living room to show it to my husband, shaking the thing under his nose and griping loudly the entire time. "Look at this! Why would they print that where you can't see it?!"

He doesn't know, but he does know he doesn't want me to hold it over him and let it drip on him. One filthy human at a time, please. I run off cackling with glee at the prospect of someday NOT being entrapped in the eternal chore of carpet cleaning like Prometheus having his liver pecked out by eagles for all time.

I replace all the parts to the Big Beast, mutter a serious threat at the carpet cleaning gods and flip the switch.

WE HAVE ROLLERS TURNING AND SUCTION!

I'm past crying for joy, I'm up to growling, "Damn well BETTER, too!"

Now, of course, I have to start all over from the beginning because my carpets are laden with soap.

Snow Yard Dinosaur!

We had a really nice snowstorm today, it's been snowing pretty heavily for about the last 15 hours and is still going. It's too warm for the snow to last, but for now we've got a good coating of nice, crunchy snow--perfect for making a snowman!

Or, since it's our house after all, a snow chicken.

Yeah, we slapped that baby RIGHT out front so the neighbors would know to have their kids walk on the other side of the street when they passed our house.  Avoid the crazy chicken people, little Johnny...Really does a terrific job of devaluing the neighborhood, doesn't it?

We used a couple of wooden bark chips from the garden for her eyes, and one of the kids' pink gloves for a comb. 

Her damned head kept falling off and her eyes falling out, every time I stuck them back on it became more and more misshapen and a first-class genetic horror show.

The kid went out and grabbed a hen for...you know...scientific comparison purposes...yeah, that's it, science.

Strychnine was unimpressed.

Right now it's snowing again, pretty hard.  Mother Nature doing a solid for the neighbors and trying to cover it up, I think. The wild birds do NOT care for it and are sitting in the trees bitching at the thing.

Oh well, it was fun.

Let's Go For A Drive!

So today we decided to go out and find the kid some snow to play in, since yesterday's storm kinda skunked us here on the valley floor.  We tossed the sled into the car and off we went, decided today to aim for the Pine Nut range across the valley--we hadn't been out there yet and wanted to explore anyway.

Unfortunately, the storm hadn't cooperated and there was no snow to be had.

But we had a nice drive anyway and got to explore a bit, which is always fun!  Down one of the roads we found a cool old barn--around here you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a cool old barn--that was tantalizingly close to the road yet fenced off.

Just as well it's fenced off since the dry stone walls were falling apart.  I *think* this was a dairy barn with animals below and hay storage above--note the hay loft carrier arm sticking out on the left side and the lack of windows in the second story.  There is also a very small house to the left of the barn, it was so overgrown with trees I couldn't get any shots of it.

But the barn was fascinating!

 There is some kind of machinery on the left, it appears to be a large green tank. The entire lower floor almost looked house-like.

On the top of the barn is this decorative vent.

Down the road a little ways and we come upon this massive old cottonwood tree.

It honest to God looks like something out of a Tim Burton movie.

Haha...naw, it doesn't have eyes.

it's got eyes it's got eyes it's got eyes--!

I think this tree had a starring role in 'Poltergeist'.

Alongside cool old tree was a nifty, but puzzling, bridge arrangement over a creek.

There are a total of THREE bridges over the creek--the wooden one, the fixed metal one and the metal two-part drawbridge. The area was fenced and posted against trespassing so I couldn't go over to get a better look, so I can't for the life of me figure out why three bridges are needed--I could see two, if you needed to lead an animal over one bridge while you used the other--but the wierd low-mounted drawbridge is perplexing.

It's actually probably gonna kinda bug the crap outta me until I get it figured out, truth be known...
Oh well.  Back down the road...

Where we suddenly come across some cool yard art!

This guy had a gigantic steel dragon, bottle trees, old farm equipment, metal sculptures...

All kinds of cool stuff!

I liked the dragon best.

The artist was smart enough to guy-wire the thing down so he wouldn't fly away in one of our epic Nevada windstorms. I can just imagine the frantic 911 calls if that happened...

I especially liked the dragon's head.

Great, now *I* need a giant dragon for *my* yard.

Despite the snow in the background of all these pictures, we couldn't get to it in the amount of time we had, so instead we stopped off at the park around the corner from our house to visit the resident ducks and the non-flying Canadian Goose (he has a wonky wing) who lives at the pond.  For some reason the goose looked like a 'George' to me, so that's what I've decided to call him.

We hadn't thought to bring any bread so they pretty much snubbed us.

After this it was time to get home and feed the chickens before they snubbed us, too.

The Progressive House!

Went back to visit a very cool little local thrift store/junk shop on the outskirts of town today on highway 395, 'The Progressive House'.

It's one of those old-school stores, a cross between grandma's attic, an eccentric yard sale and treasures found in an old barn.  The folks who run it give off a definite Hippie/Burner vibe and are very chill and fun.  When you first see the place it gets your attention right away:

 Flowers decorate the eaves all along the front...

One of the signs for the place was created using repurposed items and glass...

Another sign.

The also have 'Burma Shave' type signs all along northbound Highway 395 advertising their stuff nailed to various fenceposts.

We hauled along some outgrown clothing of the kid's to donate...

Their 'Open' sign.

One of the ladies there had painted this skateboard.

Then you get to go inside...

Cool door knocker.

And when you DO go inside...well let's just say that you can't look fast enough.

There is stuff hanging from the walls and ceilings as well as stacked on the floor and stuffed into every available nook and cranny.

Cool vintage lamps...my husband fixed me with a steely look and said, 'NO MORE FUNKY LAMPS'.

An old stump revamped into a costume jewelry rack...

Nothing is priced. When you ask how much something is, they smile pleasantly and ask you how much you think it's worth, and that's what you pay!

Someone has quite the eye for creating fun little scenes, and mixing modern with vintage.

A collection of vintage games and home movie equipment, it was like opening the hall closet door at grandma's house.

Love the Mid-Century Modern look of the logo on this projection screen.

A shirt signed & gifted to the shop by a tourist group.

The back of the store...

I struck out on what I had my eye out for--stuff for funky outdoor yard garbage--but the kid snagged herself some strange rubber duckies, and I unearthed a couple of old world atlases that will become origami and some fun chicken coop decorations...because what's the point of even having a chicken coop if you can't decorate it and make it into something silly?

More weirdness, and coolness...

Yeah, you never know what you're gonna fin--

Wait--'Leather Goddesses of Phobos'?!
While I stare goggle-eyed, husband shrugs and says, 'Oh yeah, that was a game.'

It's true, you never know WHAT you'll find in a thrift store...