Babies

Lea just caught a glimpse of this mother deer and her 2 babies this morning in the backyard. This is the first fawn we've seen.

What Goes Around .... Comes Around

This is a very interesting story, at least to us it is and we thought it worth sharing.

In the spring of 2007 we traded our Xterra 4Wheel Drive, which we loved, for a more practical minivan .... damn ... I hate losing personality. The only reason we did that was because we decided to start storing our motorhome in Lake Tahoe and drive back and forth each summer. The Xterra wouldn't work because there just wasn't enough room for all our stuff and the dogs, cat and parrot. We pulled the seats out of the van and put in a platform (with the help of Ree), so we had tons of room for everything except …. our beloved kayaks. We ordered a Yakima roof rack system to put on the van but it was on backorder and we couldn't get it in time before leaving for Tahoe for the summer. We really hated to just leave our kayaks in Arizona to dry up and blow away so we did the unthinkable …. we put them up for sale. Diana and Nancy were the buyers and that made us happy. They already had kayaks but wanted a couple more for their Arkansas lake home …. that also made us happy but we still hated to see them go. So that was that and time passed. 2010 has been a year of many changes for Lea and I. Lea's mother passed away, we quit our job of 18 years as Jeep photographers, we gave away our motorhome and most of it's contents (we lived in it for 7 years and every summer for many years so it had a lot of "us" in it), Lea quit her driving job, I quit my job at SMR, we sold our place at SMR, we bought a home in Arkansas (wasn't figuring on that when we sold the kayaks) and we're preparing to start earning our income through our art, …. wow! BUT …. while all this was happening …. I gave Diana the iMac that I had in the motorhome….. and….. she gave us our kayaks back!!!! How did that all happen???? They came full circle back to us! We loved those kayaks and now here we are …. living in Arkansas with the kayaks that we sold in Arizona. Thank you Diana and Nancy for both giving us our kayaks back and leading us to the most beautiful and peaceful place to live that we ever could have imagined. So many things had to happen for this to have happened. Think about it ….. just one little hiccup like …. not meeting Diana and everything in our lives would now be very different. How thankful we are to have met Diana and Nancy.

So here's a longer than normal video of our first day with the kayaks that we bought in the year 2000 in Arizona, sold in 2007 in Arizona and got back in 2010 in Arkansas ..... gotta love it!



But ... to start the morning off .... before going kayaking .... I did some weed eating and the little fox came along when I was done to check it out ....

Sunset to Sunrise

6pm last night ....

6am this morning ....


So here's a few of the things that's going on ....

Lea has finally gotten to the point of organizing her shop so that she's able to start pulling her wood out of the boxes and get them on shelves ....



Here's what the big 18 wheeler freight truck brought us a week or so ago .... we had to meet him in the Walmart parking lot because the streets to our place are too small .... but here it is all put together ....



Oh .... it's a dust collector .... and here's Lea making some wood dust. She can move the big catching end of the collector to whatever wood dust making equipment she's using. She had a smaller Jet dust collector in the shed at SMR and it took up about 25% of the available space so this is a dream come true for Lea. Pretty soon she'll be back at her lathe turning beautiful stuff



Meanwhile, I miter cut a bunch of wood and made some new sizes of stretcher frames for silk, since we got several new sizes. One of the new sizes I'll be dying today is 30"x30" .... I'm excited about that size .... it's the biggest square you see in the photo



And here they are hanging up on a wall in the "dirt basement" ....



So my river floating tube just doesn't want to hold air in it for very long and I can't find the leak so today we'll go to the river rafting outfitters place in Hardy and get more durable tubes .... ones with covers over the rubber so they're less apt to puncture. Of course if I could avoid those occasional rocks in the river maybe it would save the tube as well as my butt.

One last photo for this morning. I was mowing the front lawn Sunday and it occurred to me that I haven't shot a street view picture of our house since the day we bought it .... being freshly mowed and all it seemed like a good time to do it

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Watered the "rubbermaid" garden, mowed the lawn, rescreened the basement porch screendoor, made a poached egg brunch and then walked down the hill to spend a lazy afternoon in the river ....

Sunday Morning Sights & Sounds

Yesterday I unpacked my bag of mics and other cool stuff such as my field recorder. I charged it up and tested it out this morning on the deck.

So have a sip of your coffee and join me for 1 minute this morning :)



Sunday Morning by OzarkRains
(if you have a slow internet connection you may want to pause it after it starts to load and wait for it load before playing)

Tanks, Walks, Parks and Peppers

Do you think it's weird to clean your propane tank? Well I guess I don't because I really hated the black mold and green stuff growing on it. The propane guys were here the other day because we kept smelling propane and while they were fixing the leak I asked how to clean the tank ..... they said "Oh it's easy .... just spray it with some bleach and it will wash off clean in 5 minutes". Well .... they lied. The half of the tank that's clean is because I scrubbed it with a steel wool pad .... a lot! Yes .... I did finish it :) and I don't think anyone saw me doing it :) .... whew!



I don't know if every summer is like this here but I can't help but notice that almost every morning is different ..... regarding temperature and humidity :) Yesterday morning I would not have even considered walking the dogs because it was kinda hot and humid but this morning when I got up I opened all the doors and windows because it was so cool and dry. That happens a lot and I love that ... I love waking up in the morning not really knowing what the weather is going to be. So here's a short video I did with my iPhone walking the dogs in our neighborhood this morning ..... be sure and turn up your computer volume and listen to the sounds ......



Here's a few of photos of a small park just up river from us about 1/4 mile and within the golf course. I hope you can read the new bright red sign ..... in case you can't ... it says that "this spring was used by the indians of this area as a tribal meeting ground. Pleace (yes is says "pleace" but it's supposed to say "peace") existed between all tribes when camped in this spot". This "spot" is now in the middle of one of the Cherokee Village golf courses .... they built the course around it and seemed to do a good job ..... I love that!





We had 2 bell peppers growing right next to each other so I picked one to put in our pasta sauce tonight .... really .... this is the first fruits of our "rubbermaid garden" labor :)



I'll let you know how our sauce turned out.

Sunday Tubing

This morning I finished the "Gas Station" bathroom .... that's the bathroom in the basement .... it had really gross decaying carpeting in it and it was generally kinda icky. We really didn't want to spend any money on it so we didn't (other than new toilet tank insides) .... we used all the leftover pieces of wood from our living room floor, some really nice remnant carpeting I found in the dirt basement and the old baseboard from the livingroom. Anyway .... here it is in all it's "Gas Station" glory :)



Check out this shot .... that's Lea (of course) in her shop, online and ordering parts using her iPad. The internet router is upstairs but the signal is full strength in the basement .... I love that!



So .... being Sunday and all we headed down to the river for some cooling off fun. I strapped a little "GoPro" camera on my head and shot a little video of playing around in the Spring River. What I didn't include was my tube flipping over and slamming the camera and my glasses into my nose .... producing enough blood to shorten the afternoon in the river .... bummer. Anyway here's a little "retro" type video I put together ....

The Importance Of Surge Protectors

Lost our air conditioner in the thunderstorm last night, what you don't see in this photo here is the fan blower .... but we did get a new one by late afternoon ..... whew. The new fan blower now has a surge protector .... damn .... how do you know these things until they happen???? A fan blower motor with a surge protector???



Here's a photo of the Fox that found one of our rock outcroppings a comfortable place to take a rest last night. I was BBQ'ing hamburgers and talking to Ellie on the phone (before the air conditioner killing storm) last night when this fox came by and curled up on a warm rock. She's so cute and often comes by in the morning but I haven't been able to get a good shot of her .... still ... this has a lot of zoom on it so the quality isn't so great but you can still see her sweet face ....

Dog Days Of Summer

The day before yesterday Lea and I and the dogs went for a nice long hike in the morning ..... it was just about as beautiful and perfect as I can imagine it being .... it had rained all night and into the morning so the trees were all still dripping water.
The next morning it was already hot and muggy .... same today .... so we will wait for another day to hike.
The basement stays cool and the air conditioner works very good upstairs so we're good with doing outdoor stuff early and then spending the rest of the day indoors.

We bought the set of 4 plus 1 more of Qi Gong DVD's that Activities got for the Tai Chi class last season. It cost $100 for the set of 5 but it's really worth the money. Both of us were really starting to feel our age with stiff joints and soreness but since doing Qi Gong every morning we're starting to feel much better .... so we start the day out with one of these every morning (after coffee of course) ....



If you could only get 1 then I would recommend "Qi Gong For Seniors" or
"Qi Gong For Healthy Joints & Bones"

I finished the blue bathroom shower!!!!!!! We took our first showers in it this morning and it worked perfectly :)



Lea's friend the Walking Stick is still around .... now she hangs out on the upstairs back deck .... I think she has a crush on Lea



I'm still making silk scarves .... it's sooooo fun!



So one of the things about humidity that we're learning is that cold things tend to get a lot of condensation ..... like cocktail glasses with ice .... you can't put them on the table without them sweating all over the wood .... and you can't find a coaster that won't get all wet and then stick to the bottom of the glass ..... but we did discover that these work .... so we're calling them "Arkansas Coasters" .....



To finish off the blog today I just thought I'd throw in a short video of Andi & Millie for my good friend Ellie. If you can't hear the sound very well, I was talking but I shot this with the iPhone so it may be hard to hear what I'm saying. What I did say was something like .... "Here's Millie doing what she loves to do on a very hot and humid summer afternoon ..... sunbathing with her frisbee while she watches the dragon flies. And then there's Andi, doing what she loves to do ..... and that would be lizard hunting, or really seeking anything that creepy or crawly"

Silk Dying & Steaming

The morning was beautiful and we did a lot of outdoor stuff .... then it got a little hot .... then it cooled down and then a really big thunderstorm came in and it rained most of the afternoon .... it was a great afternoon to stay indoors and do some silk painting. I did 1 yesterday, 2 today and I was anxious to try the steam setting instead of using a chemical fixative. So here's a little photo summary .....

I tinted some resist and made a bunch of shapes .... waited about an hour for it to dry and then went into my zen zone painting all the colors ..... if you look closely, you should see Millie sleeping on the .... I mean "her" bean bag in the background ....



Meanwhile .... Lea patiently creates the most intricate and delicate drawings ....



So I wrapped up my 3 (not gonna experiment with Lea's ... that's for sure) in newsprint and aluminum foil like I'm going to bake a fish and put them into a roaster with a little rack I made to keep them out of the water and put that onto a 2 burner electric stove in the basement. I put a lid on and steamed them for an hour ....



Unwrapped them, rinsed them in cool water (very little dye came out .... yeaaaaaa) and hung them up to dry. I think I'm going to like steam setting, the colors are really intense and satisfy my psychedelic nature :)

Woodpeckers & Silk

We had just pulled out of the driveway this morning on our way to the lumber yard when we spotted a woodpecker .....



Then another came into the scene .....



No binoculars needed. Sure wish they'd had ivory beaks but they were a pleasure to watch. The iPhone got the shots but we really need to keep a better camera in the car .... we knew if we ran back to the house they would have left and as it was they only pecked away on this tree for a minute and took off but didn't seem to mind us watching.

One other photo for today ..... Silk Painting .... Yeaaaaaaa!

Walking Sticks, Birds and Showers

There's only one of each but the plural sounded so much better in the title.

Here's the "Walking Stick" video that Lea made today ....



And here's an American Gold Finch that stopped by for a snack .....




Still working on the Cardinals .... they're here all the time but are super camera shy.

And .... I'm almost finished with the Blue Shower. Here's a summary .... I removed an ugly shower door and with it came a bunch of tiles that were loose because there was water getting into the wood under the tiles .... which meant rotted wood .... so I had to replace wood, fill big holes with Durham wood putty, clean the back of the tiles which had plaster board and tile adhesive stuck to them and put it all back together like a jig saw puzzle. While I was at it I removed the grout from the entire shower and put in new grout. So here's a couple of photos that show some of the damage and a photo of the outside of the shower as I have it finished now. I'll post an inside shot when I put in the new shower head and regrout the tile floor.





And our order from DharmaTrading came in today so it looks like we'll be doing a lot of silk painting soon :) Yeaaaaaa!
Anyone who wants to make some scarfs with us is welcome to come over :)

Backyard Dragon Flies

As promised here's the video that Lea shot yesterday, except the beginning which was shot the other day in the river. It's kinda hard to see the amazing amount of Dragon Flies in the backyard ..... they were surrounding Millie. Lea will keep trying.

Furniture, Thayer & Dear Crossing Finds

There's this family run furniture store in Highland (about 7 miles away), it's probably been there for 100 years and it's really the only game in town if you want some new furniture with free delivery. Their prices are really low ... I mean ridiculously low so they aren't taking advantage of the lack of competition. It's like this ... the family lives in the house next door and when someone drives up they can get up from watching The Price Is Right and walk over to the furniture store. The store is packed ..... you have to literally crawl over furniture to get to other parts of the store .... they make use of every square inch. So we bought a couch, the most comfortable recliner I've ever sat in and an old round (with 2 leafs) scratched up knotty pine table that we're now using for our eating table until we find something better. So here's a photo of the part of the "living room" that has the new furniture .... you may notice the dogs $500 bean bag on the right side of the photo ... maybe they'll stay off of the couch ..... sure :)



The walls look bare now but that won't be for long. Yesterday the epoxy resin finished curing on the table I made. This was really fun to make ..... I banged it up, scratched it, gouged it and carved into it before using Watco Danish Oil on it. I built some stick legs to attach the top to a base, wound hemp rope around it, mod podged the picture of the elephants onto it and the poured epoxy resin over it. I think I'm a resin freak .... I love that stuff! It's even more fun to watch Lea resin something .... she hasn't quite grasped the concept of it being very sticky, quick to harden and permanent, it's hard for me to help get her unstuck when I'm peeing my pants laughing. So here's my funky little table ....





Seems about every 4-6 months I do something to cause great pain to my lower back which often lasts a couple of weeks. That happened yesterday so now I'm a bit of a gimp for a while .... probably a good thing to slow down a bit but the pain really sucks and I have to sleep on my side with a pillow between my knees .... I hate that. So anyway we ran out of booze ..... again .... and had to make a trip across the border today. Thayer Missouri is a really old town and one of these days I'll spend some time photographing it but for now here's a 7,000 sq. ft. building that's for sale across the street from the booze store ..... I would love to have this place and set up shop .....



So we can't go to Thayer and not stop at the Dear Crossing on the way home. I was specifically looking for a long narrow horizontal sign ......

Nope ....


Hmmmm .... gotta bike .... Nope ....


Really liked the chairs .... maybe next time ....


So here's what we did get today ....

A glass that we'll use on our craft table to hold brushes .... oh BTW ... we ordered in all our silk dying supplies from Dharma last week .... tons of dye and bottles and lots of different silk sizes so we'll be building frames this week and dying this weekend. We're going to be steam setting the silk instead of using the chemical fixative ... now we have to find a newspaper that will sell us unused newsprint ....



And a really kinda unusual glass napkin holder .... the photo doesn't do it justice ....


At first I was attracted to these because of the ornate metal 5x7 frames and the $2.00 price tag .... but I also love the elephant and giraffe so they will stay just as they are ....





Same for this 8x10 wooden frame for $3.49 ..... loved the frame but now I love the image in it ....



Lea found this old Velvetta cheese box



And I grabbed this old tobacco box



Lea picked up a couple of these 40's glass blocks ....



And my favorite find today was this Machu Picchu clock ....



Which goes perfectly here ..... :)



So that's about it for today .... it's almost happy hour and Lea's down on the grass with her video camera shooting the hundreds of beautiful Dragon Flies who have been feeding in the backyard every afternoon for the past week. They are so big and docile, when we're floating on the river they land on your feet and hands and it's awesome to just look at them so close. So hopefully she will get some good footage and I can post that but for now here she is with Millie filming ....