House Projects #1

Bob and I are starting a series of on-going House Projects. This serves double-duty in terms of simply sprucing up the house and yard, but it also establishes our entire property as an art project. I am thinking of places like the fabulous Watts Towers or the place in France that a former postal worker spent years creating a fantasy environment. (Does anyone out there happen to remember who or where this was?)
So in keeping with this theme, here is an inaugural project- mulching the strip of ground along side the house and driveway (where a few daffodils are appearing) with white quartz rocks. I collect these stones, both large and small, while on walks with Jules or at the horse farm where Crisco the Stallion lives. Bob uses the quartz in his sculpture and this provides him with an overflow bed of available stones. It will also serve to brighten that side of the house as the outdoor light is out and we're unsure of where exactly the switch for it is. But at least the door works better thanks to Bob's intervention!

Another Cute Gratuitous Dog Posting and a Prayer

Does this look comfortable?

Jules seems to think so. He likes to sleep on the bottom step, with his face all mashed up against the wall, and his right side legs collapsed onto the stair and his left legs dangling. To each his or her own! (Notice attractive stain to carpet above Jules' midsection. Additional note: Jules' nose is really black but he'd been digging a furious hole before nap time).
However, the real intention of this posting wasn't simply the charming shot of our sleeping prince.  It is to sneakily deliver my version of a prayer to the Gods/Goddesses/Powers/Spirits/Forces/Resident Deities- Whatever of New Neighbors:

Please be benevolent, oh Gods, Goddesses/Powers/Spirits/Forces/Resident Deities/Whatevers.
Grant us New Neighbors who are neither Intolerant
Nor Bigoted. Let them neither flyeth the flag of Confederacy nor Don't Tread on Me.
Leadeth them not down the path of Republicanism nor Tea Party affiliation.
Let them not belongeth to Religious Cults or Peculiar Engines of Proselytization.
Let them not spreadeth toxic Lawn Chemistry.
Let them not use an excess of Power Equipment in the form of humongous Lawn Tractors and
Blowers of Leaves, especially on a Saturday morning.
Keep them indoors, away from mine eyes until our Fence is constructed.
So be it.

Manure and Me

Here I am with our first deposit for the compost pile. The horse farm where Crisco the Stallion* lives has manure heaps to rival the mighty Himalayas. Trust me, I was told that horses produce something on the order of fifty pounds of manure a day so there's plenty to go around. (The horse farm has somewhere around fifty horse. Do the math!)

This pile is located directly next to where the vegetable garden is going. We've gotten smarter: we used to place things like wood piles and then move them eight or nine times. When the horse comes home to live (after we put up a fence) the manure situation will be that much easier. Shoveling shit is hard work and composting is a fine art.

*No, Crisco is not a stallion (he's a gelding) and his name is actually Crispin. But my mother (aka Mommy) couldn't remember his name but knew he was white (like shortening, I guess!) and told her neighbor that his name was Crisco. The neighbor inquired as to whether he was a stallion, so the name fit!

An Artist's Garden of Gas Cans

Along with all manner of junk, we also inherited many useful items, too. But where one might suffice, we now have five, six, seven or even ten. So it is that we now have numerous gas cans in all sizes and colors. There are several more available because we're considering offering them as hostess gifts and door prizes. There's one to match your mood or wardrobe!

Studio Time

I am finally getting some time in my studio. What with moving and re-moving and not being able to locate anything (including both art materials and my art-making brain) there has been no time for Bob or me to actually make art. I suppose the irony here is that I've always maintained that if I never made another piece of art, I'd have plenty to show for the next hundred years. Ha! I had the opportunity to show four times this winter thereby proved my point... but it didn't make not producing any new work any easier. And exactly why is it that the very things we love to do and NEED to do (for mental and spiritual hygiene) are always the things that get shunted to the side in favor of questionable activities like paying bills and going to work?
So it is with trembling hands and twitching facial features (and what the hell! throw in the occasional bead of spittle flying from my lips) that I try and martial my spiritual forces, line all my muses up in a row and get to work. Looks awful, feels great.
How's that for an unappealing portrait of the artist as as middle-aged crank?

What Is It? (Number Four)

Okay... what is it?

Here's a hint: it's in our bedroom, across form the windows on the wall where we now have our bed (interior wall). The previous owner, who produced this fine hole, had his bed between the windows and facing this hole. I know what the hole was for, so I'm ahead of the game for a change. Many of the mystery openings throughout the house remain just that and boy there sure are a lot of them!'
Give up?
It's a TV hole. We saw it with our own eyes when we looked at the house last August. Lie in bed, watch the built- in tv... simple as that! However, we like our heads lying to the north so the tv hole is now behind us and essentially useless. I did conjure a scenario where we lie in bed, have the tv above us in the hole and cleverly place a mirror at the foot of the bed and watch television backwards. We haven't tried it yet but it's a thought for a slow evening at home.

Exciting Archaeological Discoveries

So we're walking across our lawn and we see this:

Later that day we saw this:

We got really excited. The first stone could have been the random or accidental scrawlings of nature. The second stone implied "intentional" and hinted at some dawning awareness of numerical systems and order. Obviously, some nacent intelligence had visited our property at an earlier time

The clincher came on Day Three when I stumbled on the most important discovery to date:

Here was all the empiric proof we could have desired. Put in correct sequence, we now had 40-50-60. We are hoping beyond hope that our further investigations will yield "20" and "30" or even "70" and "80". Our fingers are crossed.

Endless Potential

No, that's not our house in the picture. That's our neighbor to the north east. (We're getting new neighbors as the house just sold a week ago). In any event, this is the site of our future vegetable garden. Interestingly, we own a funny triangular piece of property in  front of this house. What looks like a big flat soccer field is actually half ours and as it recieves sun all day long, it's where we plan to plant vegeatbles.
Just watch this location change! We're putting up a fence soon but first we have to find an elusive pin or pipe that marks the edge of our property. It's all surveyed so it shouldn't be that hard.
Bob and I always maintained that we'd like a buy a property that had a good survey map as so mnay times, people contest borders or are unclear as to what's where. We're lucky that we have a map... if only we could find that pin!

And this is going to be the site of one of the flower gardens. This place really is a blank slate; no gardening to speak of and lots of open grass. It's refreshing to be looking around at unbroken ground and thinking, "Soon enough- flowers".

Welcome

I think I could have posted a picture of our entry earlier... but there was all that pesky snow and ice blocking it. On the other hand, is this the front door? Or the back door? Every face of our house has a door, and yet the orientation is subjective. This feels to me like the back door, but the doorway on the side nearest the driveway is narrow and a bit tight for a front door. The actual front door is now in the room acting as my studio and it's blocked by several cabinets... possibly a fend shui issue?
You're all perfectly welcome to come over and see which door works!

What Could Be Hom-ier?

(Above, a partial bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough. Some has been baked and some has been consumed raw. Face it: you're either a dough eater or not.*)

When Bob and I were residing in our interim house, the one thing that proved especially hard for us was that the oven didn't work. Bob breaks amazing bread (French sticks and conventional loaf-shaped loaves and the occasional boule). The only cooking I do is in the form of cookies, muffins and cakes. (I am the "entertainment director" where I work, in charge of themed cakes).

It has been especially important to our sense of rootedness to start baking again. The house smells so good and it makes it feel like "home". This is a real boon when it's been hard to feel like we're anywhere; what with moving twice and our studios both still in states of raucous confusion. And now with the troubles that have plagued Japan, it's essential to be able to enjoy creature comforts like freshly baked food.

* I am an inveterate raw dough eater. I could give a hang about bacteria; I've been consuming dough and batter of all kinds since I was young. Hasn't killed me yet. Just watch someone tell me I have a greater chance of dying from salmonella than I do from radioactive fallout!!!

A Sinking Feeling

The "sinking feeling" in my title doesn't refer to the fact that our (now former) next door neighbor informed Bob that we have quicksand on our property. I'm referring to the queasy sinking feeling that comes over me whenever I pause and consider the fallout from the situation in Japan. And how can you avoid being obsessed by what's going on there.

(This  is one of those pleasant, diversionary photos I insert when I want to cheer myself up!)

What are people like us to think; we just bought a house and land with the intentions of doing our best to garden and raise some food responsibly. We use compost and organic practices and are horrified by people who use lawn chemistry and could care less what they do to the environment. And then our government persists in the face of nuclear meltdown to say that they're still confident about providing "safe" nuclear energy! I guess they think you can will the facts away...

I realize that we're far down stream (so to speak) in terms of fallout and immediate threat, but what about the whole world as one little global community that relies on each other and one unified environment. Nothing is containable and it's all local.

Not For the Faint of Heart

Be forewarned that this post contains graphic images of blood and gore. We were moving tremendous amounts of boxes and art materials yesterday in a push to finish (please! Oh Goddess!) complete our heroic move. I had even borrowed the van from work and all went splendidly until I somehow dropped a huge box or maybe it was a bookcase... Whatever, the outcome was that I stumbled up against a flagstone topped stonewall and gashed my shin. Boy did that hurt! Fortunately, Bob had a Bandaid ready but I was disheartened to see that I had bled all over one of my (current) favorite pair of socks and the cuff got ripped through my jeans. What a mess.

As if that weren't bad enough, I stood up prematurely in the van and gashed my head. And then, when schlepping yet another painting into the house, I managed to lose my grasp and wallop myself roundly right into the same shin, reopening my damaged leg. Sort of the insult to injury theory... any one have any salt they'd like to rub into my wounds?

Here's a close up; I took this one looking upside down at my own leg: Ouch.

Winter's Smorgasbord

Here's Bob displaying a few minutes harvest from the area around our back door. As alluded to, with the disappearing snow comes a bounty of human discard: bits of wire, selections of wood and sheetrock, cigarette butts, Mountain Dew bottles (does anyone really drink that?!), empty cans of automotive chemicals... a little bit of everything.
As you might have noticed from my last few posts, the weather has ameliorated and we are spending an increasing ammount of time out doors. I'm really excited because the property is beautiful and a big mess.

Creative Landscaping Options

Here's a swell answer to those tough ground cover dilemmas: medium blue carpet, receding snow bank...a knock out combination! I guess come summer, we won't have to waste time weeding or mowing but we may need a longer extension cord for the vacuum cleaner.

Here's another riff on carpets in nature: swaddling the base of a young maple in Berber weave. The beige carpet harmonizes nicely with the logs and leaves already in place on the ground. A bit subtler than the blue number above but lovely none the less! 

Bureaucratic Idiocy Session #2

Here's the second nature shot to peruse while reading my semi-dull tale of paperwork perversion. I'd hoped to present the sweetened condensed verison but I'm notoriously longer winded!
So I promised that I had two tales of Bureaucratic Idiocy to recount. (Believe me, if prodded, I could certainly think of a few hundred more...) The second episode centers on our electric bill. Back in January, I paid a bill that I felt was a bit high but I figured that there was some transfer of account fee or an unpaid balance on our old address. I was so busy doing all the changes involved in moving that I didn't follow up on it. But February's bill comes and it's a killer. I was seeing red and suspecting that we'd moved to some strange Bermuda trinagle where electric bills were twice as high until I re-looked at the bill more carefully. I saw that the problem was with the utility: they were charging us for electric use at both houses. I called the company and the woman who "serviced my account" (sounds sexual) assured me she saw the error and would issue a new bill. I thought that was the end of that.
How naive am I? The new "corrected" bill arrived promptly and was even less correct than the previous one. My payment was not reflected and even weirder was the fact that they dropped our new home's electric account and continued to bill us for the old address. What really took balls was there assertion that our account was now overdue. I spent another twenty miunutes on the phone today and am eagerly awaiting our latest installment of incorrect billing. What has me less than sanguine that this will be resolved soon is that the person to whom I spoke on the phone said she "had to create a whole new account" in order to rectify this msunderstanding... that doesn't bode well!

A Contemplation on Bureaucracy Idiocy Session #1

Here's a lovely and buccolic image to ponder while Your Humble Narrator relates her two most recent brushes with bureaucracies idiotic wheels. The first episode involved several days spent navigating between our former town hall and the Department of Motor Vehicles. Yes, I confess I was late registering my car. I had sworn I had paid my town taxes last fall and just couldm't figure it out. Turns out we had an outstanding tax liability of... 44 cents. I hope we made the Grand List. Anyway, after trips hither and yon procuring special stamps and badges and permissions, the car was duly registered. Even the woman who ultimately helped us at Motor Vehicles agreed that the overdue 44 cents was a bit much. We probably spent over $44 what with the paperwork and driving and time spent cooling our heels in line...

A Sure Signal of Spring

Words from Bob to welcome spring:

I like to smell once

The odor of skunk cabbage

Once a years enough



Fat Tuesday

Here at the BobnRita Ranch, we get the night off for good behavior amd celebrate Fat Tuesday. (Not that we'll be giving anything up for Lent!) And yes, that's a King Cake replete with hidden baby tucked into the cake at undisclosed location.
Speaking of religious conversions not happening any time soon in this neighborhood, the doorbell rang and I thought maybe Bob had locked himself out, so I answered it. It was two conservatively dressed ladies, one of whom I immediately spied was holding a Bible. Before either one or the other could ask if I'd been saved or born again or whatever malarky they spout I chimed, "Oh you have obviously come to the wrong house as we're heathens and artists and won't be needing your ministrations!" and shut the door. i didn't know these people still marched from door to door... and in such cold weatehr. What a waste of time. Have a piece of cake, damn it!

What Is It? (Number Three I Think)

Okay... What is it?

Even Bob doesn't know what this is and it appeared outside of his studio. It had been obscured by several feet of snow, of course, and now we're wondering... What Is It?

It resembles nougat, but it's two and a half feet high and I haven't tasted it. Bob called it "The Mound of Purity". Any guesses?

Our Tiny Mississippi

That's the left bank of our tiny pond overspilling its banks and joining up with our now voluptuous stream. The sudden melting of all that snow and ice has created a spectacular increase in water volume. There's a sort of causeway between the pond and stream. Last summer when it was so dry, the stream and pond were separate entities with a neatly mowed raised strip in between. I'm sure the pond will retreat and contain itself once the exuberance of the thaw has passed.

A Poignant Revelation

This emerged from the melting snow:

A small home-made wooden cross with the handwritten inscription "Mitten". The grave is tucked into a sheltered pocket next to the lovely evergreen forest. This tiny cross made me reflect on our own pet cemetary left behind at our previous house. Archie, Charlie, Ricky and our recently departed Frank are all buried under special stones by an oak tree. I am sorry that they are not here to enjoy our new property; all were wonderful friends who throughly enjoyed life. I also wonder about Gracie the dog from across the road who came daily (for upwards of twelve years!) to accompany me and Frank on our walk. She continued  to come over after Frank died. I know our move was hard on her.

I LUV(heart shape) Our Bathroom

So in attempts to not sound as if all is woe and disaster and trevail allow me to say I am actually enjoying every minute of home ownership. It's a blast and (to reiterate) it's OURS.

For the record, I love our upstairs bathroom. I could spend all day in the shower: plenty of nice hot water and a lovely fine but focused spray on the shower head... bliss. Plus, I feel clean as the water is much softer than our previous water and the soap rinses more thouroughly. And that's not a Gene Davis painting featured above, that's our brand new shower curtain. Incredibly, it's the only real shower curtain I've ever had. We tended to cheap out and get those nasty, smelly plastic shower liners (Hell, they're only a dollar!) This feels like luxury to me.

What A Day!

So during the making of my morning oatmeal (an event not typically associated with danger) the left front burner on our already slightly skewed stove decides to go Ker-Boom! Sparks are sent flying and the hell was sincerely scared out of me, Bob and Jules (who should be used to unexpected pyrotechnics and a disaster a minute). We're still not certain as to what caused the mini explosion but it burned a hole in the bottom of a pot that I liked to use and forced the preparation of a second round of oatmeal. No further stove incident occurred but we spent the entire day attempting to re-register my car. (Don't ask but it all began with an overdue tax bill... to the tune of 44 cents. No kidding). Maybe it was a good day to spend in bed.

Forty Acres and a Mule

(In reality, it's more like 4.36 acres and a horse!)
So there I am for the umpteenth time surveying our vast, delightfully private, and environmenatlly varied (open field, stream, swamp, pond, evergreen grove etc) property and I'm shouting, "Mine! All mine!"
I know: it's politically incorrect to think of the Earth and Mother Nature (isn't she wonderful?) and in terms of ownership and possession but I've wanted land for so long that it's legend. (And yes, more accurately, I should be shouting "Ours! All ours!" but it doesn't have the same ring and I'm sure Bob will forgive my single-mindedness).
Anyway, we will be careful stewards of this corner of the universe- our corner!- as we aren't planning to erect parking garages or sign contracts to become nuclear waste storage facilities anytime soon. I'm fairly confident that 965 Jeremy Swamp is relatively clean; a happy fact of purchasing a property where there has been little or no gardening. Few if any lawn or garden chemicals have been used. I am amazed at just how many people still use bug and slug killers, pre-emergent weed herbicides, Round-Up... Americans do love their toxic products, especially if they promise miracles.