Sean’s First Snow

This is the first time our cats have seen snow.  They were born in the winter but there wasn't much snow to speak of last year.

This year we got 3-4 inches of snow at one time.  Nearly a week later we were still seeing snow in super shady spots along roads and by buildings even though the temperatures reached well above freezing.

Some of the flakes we saw were well the size of half dollars.  For those of you who might not realize money comes in a hard form, and not just your parent's plastic, that would be about two and a half fingers wide.

This picture was taken at the start of the snow fall.  As you can see, the houses in the background are just starting to get some snow accumulation on top of their roofs.

That corner you see would be a good spot to put a garden shed, leaving a 5 foot walking area around the side and back for maintenance and mowing.  Five feet is about as narrow as you usually would leave a mow strip so that it can both be accessed and be able to have enough light to actually grow grass between a shed and the fence.

Maintenance room is one of those things I really hadn't thought much about when laying out our first house backyard.  But then again it already had a shed that was hard to get around.  The previous owners had put it caddy corner to the lot footprint and the north corner was a mere two feet and way too shaded to grow anything but saplings which were a huge problem for most of the time we lived there.  I should have taken a week or more off just to clean up the backyard but so many thing take up time we never got around to it.

This time we're master planning the yard so that we can make the most of it.  The fig tree is a prime example being several feet from the fence to give it adequate room to spread out.  Fig trees in our area can get pretty big pretty fast and I'm hoping to train it well so we can get plenty of figs in the coming years.  This snow should help it acclimate well.  I checked it after the thaw and the branches still looked amazing.  So many things we've learned since then and we're going to be implementing a lot of new things going forward.

Dew on a Spider Web

This is one of those little things you don't think about when you move into a more densely populated area.  I woke up one morning to see this lovely spiderweb covered in dew.  

We're living in an area surrounded by a lake now so the humidity is pretty high up there most days and the cooler weather means we're getting nice foggy mornings where things like this are more common.

The other thing I didn't realize I had been missing for so long was the sound of nature.  We're about 1,500 feet from the water's edge and only about 600 feet from the tree line where it's protected by the US Army Corps of Engineers.  This means there will be NO development in that direction.  I have never in my 25 years working with civil engineers come across a situation where this would ever change. So I'm pretty sure the sound of nature will be there as long as we are.  This unfortunately also means mosquitos but that's a small price to pay for being able to sit outside on the back porch and listen to the sounds of night.

We still haven't gotten around to doing much with the backyard but we're thinking really hard about it.  We finally got the garage to about 90% complete with storage and shelves.  We could actually park a car in there if we wanted to.  I think that's a first for us.  Our first house had a pool table in the garage from about 3 months in so we never really parked in there.

We do still plan to purchase bicycles so we can get out and about in the neighborhood and get some exercise in but there are so many other things we need to get still that that's on the back burner for now.

What do you enjoy about being near nature?

Plumeria Winter

There are a lot of sites discouraging keeping Frangipani, or Plumeria plants in the house.  They usually state how, even though it's a lower toxicity than its relatives, it's related to many much more poisonous plants and they wouldn't risk it being in the same area just in case.

This seems a bit of a stretch since tomatoes and deadly nightshade are also in the same group but no one is worried when they eat a salad. 

I'm more worried for the plant.  This is our plumeria plant after our cat decided that its leaves were perfect toys to bat around.  It had one more leaf but it was chewed on so much that it fell off.  This half leaf is all that's currently left but it being winter I half expected it to be losing leaves anyway.

As you can see from the stem though it had a nice summer even though I can attest that it only had a short summer at that.  I planted it a bit late in the season.

He currently lives at the office with a couple of the cacao trees that I have kept alive for some time now.  I will keep him here until the threat of frost is gone and I can put him back outside in the backyard where it seems to thrive.  In the mean time he gets to hang out here.

This specific plumeria was brought back from Hawaii when my wife and some friends went to visit for a couple weeks.  Originally it was supposed to be for one of their moms but it was left at our house for so long that I decided it needed planting and was told to just keep it.  The passionfruit seeds on the other hand never did sprout.  Not sure what's up there.

The loss of all of its leaves is not a bad sign.  In this area it will overwinter this way and keep just fine until spring when it will leaf back out and hopefully double or more in size.  Some other friends of ours had a couple dozen of these which they would put in the garage every year.  Sometimes they would lose one but usually they all came back bigger than ever.

Thoughtful Journal Series Launch

 

We're launching a series of books to help people think about all of the things they do from travel, to food, to daily life.

The first two in the series which have already come out are The Thoughtful Travel Journal and The Thoughtful Tasting Journal: Chocolate.  We started these because we've started traveling more again and realized that pictures, although good to take, are only a part of the experience we had.

The Thoughtful Travel Journal will help us and you to better record and be able to reflect on the the journeys we make.  The beginning of the book has tips on how to journal, be mindful of your experience, and tips on things you might not otherwise have though to write down.  Many of the journals that have been published for others to read started out as private journals of people who merely got to do interesting things that we today now want to read about. This could be true of anyone's journal.  What you think is ordinary, to your children or grand children might be a glimpse into the life of a beloved family member.

Our families still tell new stories that they had forgotten about or that they didn't think were that interesting at the time until something brings it up.  Just think how many stories never got told just because it was never jotted down.

The other book that we put out recently is a Stamp Book for collecting rubber stamps from various locations. There are a few places in the states where you can get such a book stamped but we traveled to Japan where it's a huge past time.  Every city we went to had multiple stamps including most train stations and public buildings. Other places to check for stamps are museums, corporate buildings, and shopping areas. All you usually have to do is ask and even if they don't have a stamp they will most likely know where the closest one is.