Took a trip back up to Longmont this morning in order to clean out and straighten up the trailer for the long rest she'll have until the next time she has to go back out on the road. Most of what this entailed was cleaning out the refrigerator and freezer and turning off the propane and battery power. Turns out that it was good that I went up today as the fridge had already shut down, probably because the propane tank I had left on ran out of gas. So it was all off, but when I got there but everything was still cold, and in the freezer, mostly still frozen, so it hadn't shut off very long before I got there.
   It only took about two hours to get everything done and the trailer buttoned back up before it was time to head out and find some lunch. Ended up over at the Longmont Chipotle where I had a very nice chicken burrito with brown rice and both black and pinto beans. Along with a nice cold beverage and a good book it was easy to sit inside the air conditioned restaurant and read for about an hour before heading back.
   The trip back down to George and Marge's took just as long as it did to drive up there. Because of extensive construction on I-25 through Denver I took the I-470 bypass around the west side of the city. Then because it was still clogged up between the intersection of I-470 and I-25 and the 80th avenue exit to the north, I ended up circling around and driving north on Pecos and Huron streets as far north as 120th street. So a little slower over all, but at least I was moving. Did the whole thing in reverse on the way back so I was back in town by 4:00.
    Had told Marge and George that I would take them out to dinner around 5:15 and then promptly fell asleep on the couch reading my book. They are so polite that they didn't even wake me up, waiting instead until nearly 6:00 when I woke myself up, probably snoring. We went over to Los Delicious for a dinner of Mexican food. They had assorted classics such as tacos, enchilada's etc. while I had the tamale plate. Two pork tamale's smothered in green chili with a side of refried beans and rice. It was delicious!
   We got home a little late, but part of what I brought down from the trailer was what was in the fridge and freezer, which included a package of frozen strawberries and one of blueberries as well as a couple uncooked pie crusts. I had promised to make them a pie for eating with their normal evening ice cream, so I got busy with that. Put all the ingredients from my basic pie recipe together and popped it in the oven. About an hour later we had it out of the oven and dished it up in a bowl for everyone. Add in a scoop of vanilla ice cream and you have a pretty good desert. Not sure you can really call it a pie, it was pretty soupy, but then, how can baked fruit, rolled in sugar with cinnamon and nutmeg be bad?   ..... well actually.... it can't!
   Looks like the weather around here is going to be wetter over then next week which will mean cooler temperatures for a few days. Looking forward to being cooler during the day.
   Below are the rest of the photo's from the couple of day's spent fixing Rima's wood shed.

Fixing Rima's Woodshed #2 - May 2014 

The rear sheathing has been put on and the shed is nearly done at this point. I used pressure treated 1"x6"x 8' long fencing slats for the exterior because it will match the existing once it has faded, and it is fairly cheap, and it should last for quite a few years.

Looking at the finished west side of the shed.

The back side of the shed showing the new 1"x6" sheathing we used. The wood comes from the building center still pretty wet from the pressure kilns. It also has a tendency to twist but Rima and I worked together at putting them on. I did most of the holding and de-twisting as she put a couple 6d nails into them at each framing member. She's pretty darn good at using a nail gun.

Just one of the stacks of wood to be cut up and put into the new shed once it is done.

Another pile of wood ready to be cut up and stored away. All of these trees are ones that I have cut down over the last couple of months. All are hardwoods that I thinned from around the house and barns. It won't be enough for the whole winter, but it will be a good start.

The first batch is cut and now stacked in the shed.

Some of the pieces are to big to put directly into her furnace so she borrowed a log splitter from a friend and we split all of those pieces up over an afternoon. I was off cutting up more trees at this point and she didn't wait until I was finished to start the machine up and get started.

She's pretty good at this kind of thing. The log splitter has more than 34,000 psi, which was actually needed on some of the bigger pieces of black walnut.

Success!

A last view of the wood pile as it is growing. Rima actually cuts most of it as I hold the log and feed it into her. By the time we were finished cutting up all the trees we had down, there were nearly 6 full columns in the shed. Each one is about 8' long by 24" wide and nearly 7' high. So each column had nearly 1 actual cord in each stack.

p.s. Just a couple of final thoughts. I now have people from 67 countries who have seen this blog at least once. In most cases I think there must be people who actual look at it more than once, but I can't be for sure because I have no way of knowing who sees this Blog. That being said; I'm a little surprised that after more than 16,000 views, there have only been a handful of comments logged. It may be that there is a problem with actually doing a comment, but I have had several friends send me a practice one just to make sure, and they all seem to come through with no problem. There does seem to be one type of viewer that sends comments, but it turns out that my software sends all of those directly to my spam folder, because that is what they actually are. All of those are written and sent under an 'anonymous' name and they all, after making some generic comment that lets you know that no one actually read the blog, then goes on to invite you to read their blog. Maybe if they actually showed some real interest...... but most are pretty badly written.... more so than even my own writing. Plus they are all to sites that advertise for divorce  counseling or welding or some such commercial venture. So just saying, if anyone out there wants to comment, as long as you keep it on point and reasonably clean, I wouldn't mind hearing from some of you.   


Brian




*