Our pathetic girl turkey

This poor little girl turkey has been spending a lot of time around our bird feeders, eating the seeds the small birds drop. Female turkeys are almost always seen hanging out in groups and we do have a healthy group of females in our neighborhood, but this outcast has not joined the group for some reason. We almost always see her with her feathers all puffed up (like in this picture), trying to make herself look bigger - so she is probably always in fear. Don't know why she is an outcast, but its hard to not feel sorry for her.

The winter that will never end

After being in the 70s last week, winter has returned for a few days.

drainage - before and after

Water management on a slope is not always obvious. With the generous rainfall this past year, the area between our screened porch and the retaining wall had become an issue -



Our builder and landscaper had done what could be done with grading, and our landscaper determined the water was not surface water coming down from the slope, but was bubbling up from under the retaining wall. More dramatic management measures were required. A skid steer was used to hoist this trencher (seen in the background, left of center) up over the driveway retaining wall to do the bulk of the digging:

This next shot shows one of the landscapers standing on the large flat rock that normally camouflages the concrete catch basin, while the other one is down in a hole, connecting new tubing to the big basin. The photographer is standing on top of the retaining wall for this view of the slope we're dealing with. The cables - visible in the larger view - are from the satellite TV dish:

Tubing and cloth and gravel -



making progress:


Here's the after:

not quite dogwoods and redbuds

...but you do have to appreciate these native Beech trees, gleaming in the understory on a cloudy, misty day, as their leaves from last year turn very pale before falling off.

Spring

Yesterday we met with our landscaper to look over the work we would like to have his crew do in our yard this Spring. As he walked around and inspected the plants they put in for us in 2008, he pushed aside some black leaves and noted the rhubarb Dorry gave us last year as the first sign of spring he had seen in the valley -

Yesterday it looked more like the following picture - this was the rhubarb plant we purchased - different variety - that was planted at the same time. So the first one pushed up some substantial leaves in less than 24 hours. We are happy to see they are sprouting up so quickly.



Our attempts at vegetable gardening above the driveway wall last year were not very successful. There just wasn't enough sunlight. We are now contracting with the landscaper to plant some azaleas there.

finishing unfinished business

My mother didn't leave a lot of unfinished business, but next to her sewing desk were some fabrics her minister had asked her to make into "something" for him. This was natural as Mom made a lot of pillows, placemats, table runners, and napkins that were sold at fundraisers. He asked about them when he came to discuss the memorial service with us and I agreed to take on her projects. I know Mom was very fond of this minister, dating back to her service on the selection committee that hired him. So home they came with me and I am doing my best to do "something" with them. There are two projects remaining, but I've finished these in time to bring them on my next trip to Chicago.

The first was a small piece already cut into two small rectangles, so that was easy: clearly Mom was going to make and stuff a pillow, and she usually piped pillows. I made a quick stop in a local fabric store to get the materials for the trim. It looks like the fabric matches our worn out teal chair, but it's acually a blue in the floral band.


Mom probably liked that fabric a lot - florals with blue and dusty rose were her choice for decorating her own house in recent years.

Then there was a much larger piece of a pretty green brocade. The fabric was directional but I decided it could be a lined table runner if I seamed it in the center short-wise matching and mirroring the motifs. To make that look right, I also split it lengthwise . The same gold fabric that piped the pillow served me here - and I had some shiny yarns left from a decorating project of my own to make the tassels.


It's a little short for our table, but should work someplace for him. After doing that, there was enough fabric for three placemats - yes, an odd number, but the minister lives alone. I quilted the fabric for these and used the same gold accent fabric for binding:

The camera flash really accents the shiny part of the fabric background. The quilting follows the basic outline of the motifs in a matching thread.

Woody!

O.k. we're sorry this picture is blurry but we had to use the zoom lens and shoot through the window screen because this was the first time we'd seen one of these as close to the house as this one was this morning - and he* was moving very fast! The Pileated Woodpecker is the largest woodpecker found in most of North America. They are as large as crows. We usually see them up high in the trees but this one was on the ground behind the house.


The snow is all gone now, except in the shadow of the house on the north-east side.

* This is a male - distinguished by the red "whiskers" on the side of his face. The females are gray in that spot.

Only 19 days till spring

Does this look like 1-2 inches of snow to you? Thats how much the weatherman predicted we'd get today But its actually 5 inches. It was a nice wet snow that stuck to everything so we took some pictures from the house. When it 90 degrees here in August, maybe we'll look back on these pictures fondly. This winter, Asheville is now 24 inches ahead of its normal 9 inches of snowfall.

More rescue training for Norris

Norris has been taking some post-graduate classes that are a follow up to the fire academy. These classes deal with rope rigging and high angle rescues. Here are a few photos from the rigging class. In the first picture, the students has lashed the dummy into a basket and he is being lowered from the roof using a ladder to guide the basket down.

Although the ladder man is guiding the basket, the weight is actually being lowered by the team on the roof that has lashed up a descent control rigging.

In this drill, the students are lowered the dummy directly down a ladder with the roof team again provided the control of the descent.

Rime Ice

Here are couple of pictures of the rime ice that formed at the higher elevations on the mountains around our house yesterday. Rime ice occurs when freezing fog leaves a coating of ice on everything where the fog has lingered around the peaks. It creates a very dramatic line between the area of no ice and the area of heavy ice.