2010 Holidays

Our Holiday season began with a trip to New York City, Lee got tickets for a "Prarie Home Companion"

Jack and Anne joined us, we roamed through mid town, including Rockefeller Center and Times Square where the show was.
This year we decided to add some lights to the outside of the house for the Holidays. Its probably been a very long time since the house has been so carefully adorned.
A full moon rose behind the house for the solstice, which later that evening was fully eclipsed by the earth for the first time since 1638.
Folklure has it that a total lunar eclipse on Winter's Solstice invites visits from werewolves. Besides a howling coyote and some barking dogs, we witnessed no evidence of that.

Inside the Christmas tree, garland, cards and mistletoe are displayed to celebrate the 2010 Holiday season.

Summer Ends

Click any of these pictures to enlarge, press "back" to return to blog.

As another summer comes to an end, here are some random shots of the house. Our plantings did well this year and we have established landscaping for the future with pleny of room on which to build.

We take time to appreciate the beauty this time of year offers and go into the fall making sure we have enough firewood to see us through the winter. There is still plenty to clean up from the trees we took down in the spring. This is a fraction of what we have for the year.

The dahlias did great this year along side the elephant ears. Once the frost begins these tubers will have to be pulled up until Spring.

Down in front of the house the colors are starting to change, not as vibrant as last year. Paul rebuilt the stone wall along the road where it had collapsed before. Not only is it neater, but mowing the front is much easier now.

The front of the house displays the colors of fall. Dahlias, asters and chrysanthemums are the most prominent flowers among the ornamental grasses.

It's still a little early to tell, but the autumn colors don't promise the vibrancy we enjoyed last year, but its still quite beautiful and serene watching the sun set.

Pets and Critters

As the house nears completion, our pets all enjoy the comforts of home and in deed live a very comfortable life. Here, Boy and Pitoune enjoy a scratch from Lee. Pitoune looks comatose with pleasure - check out the tongue!

Olivia loves the outdoors and is a force to reckoned with for the dogs next door. Inside or out, all our pets enjoy freedom to roam as they please, provided they are careful of the other animals that surround us.

They have friends who come by regularly. After some intitial tension, Pitoune has become quite fond of Winston (we call him "Prancer"), the standard poodle who lives next door.

Prancers brother, Bower, is as big as a moose, hence our nicname for him, "the Moose" He is as big as a pony but very gentle and friendly. He's the "old man" of the group and had a hip replaced which slowed him down considerably.

Our neighbors, Cory and Patty recenlty brought home an English Bulldog, Franky, whom we call "Piglet". Piglet loves coming over to play with Pitoune.

But, as is with most homes where we live, we are frequently visisted by wildlife from the woods. Some, like the deer, visit on a daily basis, sometimes twice a day. There is an abundance of food for the deer on and around our property.

We have about five regulars who eat from the apple trees in back. Oddly enough, most of the deer under the apple trees this year are bucks with varying degrees of antlers.

As you can see, they are not bothered by Pitoune and even share the yard amicably.

This doe allowed Lee and Pitoune to get uncomfortably close before she scampered off back into the woods.

We have a wide array of small critters that we truly enjoy. Our bird feeders are used by woodpeckers, sparrows, carindals, chickadees, finches, robins and a host of hummingbirds. Here is a Chestnut Breasted Chickadee ready to feed.

Chipmunks and rabbits are everywhere and frequently come inside the house or are brought in by the cats. We have very few squirrels considering where we live, which is okay with Paul who is no fan of squirrels. We have seen the occasional opposum and a few skunks. Coyote, some of them quite large, and fox are some visitors with whom we tend to be cautious. We have not personally seen any bear but have been told they are near by.

July 4th 2010

We are light years ahead of where we were this time last year. This year's Fourth of July weekend was HOT! HOT! HOT!

We put up a new flag pole where the old locust tree used to be. It still needs plantings and finishing touches, but its way too hot to worry about.

The heat was intolerable all weekend. Fortunatley, Lee got tickets to go ballooning so we got up early Sunday morning and boarded a hot air balloon.

At six o'clock in the morning, the air was cool and still as we floated over the Hudson River near Poughkeepsie, NY. This is looking Northwest at the Catskill Mountains.

South of us is The Mid Hudson Bridge with some of the other balloons taking off after us.

More Balloons followed. Weather conditions were perfect for a sunrise launch.

This one dipped into the river as we had done a few minutes earlier .

That evening we ended up at Jack and Anne's for a great barbeque by Jack complete with sparklers

Paul and Anne usually end up dancing regardless of the props or circumstance!

Mike came by after the fireworks with his girlfriend and her son, who was already wiped out.

The heat never relented over the three day weekend. Monday, Vinny came by and we spent all afternoon in the pool with him, taking breaks for lunch and cold drinks.

Not much home improvement this holiday, too hot to work, we played this year instead.

TIMBER!

We'd been planning to open up more yard for a while.

Lee had an issue with how much shade the pool was getting and wanted some of the trees blocking the sun removed. We had our friend Jeff come over with his tree cutting gear and get rid of the problem

After we moved all the shrubs out of the way, Jeff removed some of the smaller trees at the base of the big one we needed down
Then he put his skill into action, climbing the tree, cutting the limbs and taking the upper sections off a little at a time Jack was on hand to help, here he is guiding the rope for Jeff who, if you look carefully, can be seen about 40 feet up the tree

Before tying the trunk of the tree to his truck, Paul assessed the job and also made sure Jeff had not fallen from the tree

With a tug from Paul's pick up, the tree came down with a loud thud

The back yard hardly resembled what it was that morning. A great deal of clean up will be needed. We planned on one tree, and ended up taking down three in back. Why stop now? lets move to the front of the house

The old locust tree in the front corner of the house was nice shade, but Paul wanted a flagpole there. So down it came, and just in time. The locust tree was full of ants and even a mouse nest, the branches were quite rotten, so we saved ourselves from a potential problem

With trees down all over the property, some of them very large, we broke down a purchased a 25 ton log splitter. This should be helpful in getting the debris out of the way and also supplying us with a nice stack of fire wood for the winter months.

Poolside Color

We did not have much time to clean up around the pool during our first summer in the house. Since most of the projects inside the house are complete, we can focus this year on the outside, especially around the pool.
Before uncovering the pool, we power wahsed the parts of the house that had not been resided, like the bump out near the pool.

Even cleaned up, it still seemed drab, so replaced some mouldings and painted badly chipped the eves and trim. Better, but we need some color, after all this is supposed to be a fun place to spend time. Even the furniture we put outside was old and dull, so we might have bought new furniture, but then we thought, "Why?"
At $4 a can, spray paint seemed like a good idea, so we stocked up on some Caribbean colors like yellow, pink, bright green and blue. Hmmm this might just work!
We were happy. The cement patio will need to be addressed, some of it is crumbling around the fence, then we will stain it but that can wait for now.

A bright blue base around the bottom of the house and re-painted entry floor brightened up the patio and helped bring out the color of the pool while the light blue ceiling in the entry added a "sunny" effect.

Okay, we are not ready for House and Garden magazine yet, but its an improvement.

The Garage Door

We painted the original garage door last fall because leaving it the way it was took away from the face lift. The opener suffered from electrical problems and didn't work, the spring was broken and the door was extremely heavy to open. Not to mention, it was pretty unattractive. So, we sprung for a new door.

After the old door was removed, the racks were replaced and new springs installed.

The panels of the doors were put in place one by one. We ordered the door to match the colors of the siding job that was installed last fall

Once the door was in place a new door lifter was installed. The old one was chain driven, we purchased a belt driven lifter. Its as quiet as a whisper, well, almost

We picked a carriage house style door. The square windows compliment the 6/1 design on the rest of the house. The decorative hinges were not shipped but are on the way.

Now that the front of the house has been restored, lets look at before and after shots. It doesn't seem possible.

We took this picture the first time we saw the house on January 4, 2009. We had visions, but completion seemed a long time off

A year and a half later we are quite settled in and the transformation on the face of the house is almost complete.