St. John Colony

A recent article in Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine talked about St. John Colony and other freed slave communities in Texas.

Finally got some agave in the ground via a want ad on Craigslist for a variety of cheap or free plant material. May have some free bamboo spotted this weekend too. More framing on the screen porch done last weekend. Probably will be our favorite room in the house. Have always wanted a good screened room with a view, shade, a hammock, a ceiling fan, maybe a bird cage. Sipping an adult beverage, some Hank Williams from an old radio, a good Travis McGee book.... ahhhh.

Have been working on the bottle window in the bathroom, Jeree has the technique down after some experimenting and is mass producing beer bottle bricks.

A visit to the Decommissioned Harris County nuclear reactor

Was able to garner unrestricted access to the decommissioned Harris County nuclear reactor last week and managed to sneak this shot down the very throat of the central core. The control rods are plainly visible after slowly draining off all the coolant into the downtown tunnel system. Rad levels are tolerable and at street level near the intersection of Preston and San Jacinto hardly registered above exposure from a few chest xrays. I had to harness off of a rusty but otherwise stable relief vent louver near the top of the containment dome and lean pretty far out to get a clear view but it was worth it to get this close up look at a rarely seen or even known about chapter in the state's energy past. Few Texans realized it existed peacefully downtown for decades quietly churning out the megawatts to light the likes of the Astrodome and kept the computers humming at the stealthy ICBM installation buried within the truncated black glass towers of nearby Pennzoil Place.

close enough to 4/1/10

finally a little progress

It's been too long since my last confession. Forgive me father blogg for I have strayed. Our schedule, the economy, the holidays and most of all the weather has taken a real toll on the house progress. It has rained an entire year's worth since October. The pond is in constant floodgate stage and the draw below it runs like a mountain stream; albeit a muddy one. Thankfully we were able to get the roof in and Tyvek on before all this started so the house has been able to sit unattended, but dry, for awhile. This past weekend we had all the exterior sliding doors and windows delivered and have the sliders in the holes, shimmed, leveled and all but sealed up. The underdog New Orleans Saints won the Superbowl last night. That's the extent of the good news for the weekend. The Penske delivery truck made it down to the house site and promptly sunk up to the rims. A frustrating time was had by all for the next three or four hours and but for the help of good neighbors with a new John Deere the delivery van would still be entombed in the mud. The end result is that our picturesque little two lane gravel packed road is a complete disaster for its entire length. We are parked at the gate and packing in supplies through the muck for the foreseeable future with more rain forecast this week. RC and his tractor had to drag the truck backwards to the gate. It was all but unsteerable and the pitiful excuse of an overweight and underpowered dually truck plowed ruts so deep on both sides of the road that I even had to fetch a chainsaw to remove several mesquite trees we had planned to save. The waterline was exposed in several places and snapped a connection in the process so plumbing repair and shovel mucking was on the agenda as well. We'll be forced to have a "real" road built now; no hand distributed gravel will fix this mess. Sigh. Heavy sigh.

Will install the rest of the windows next. With glass in place I can get started on exterior siding, and can finish framing the screened back porch. We recessed an area of floor for a brick pad under a wood stove using handmade brick from the 1870 era Hubbard / Hill Cemetery and will continue to gather the quartz stone and petrified wood from the place to use for the wall under a timber mantle. The majority of the salvaged lumber from the house has been cleaned and stacked under cover to dry to use for interior walls, ceiling and trim. Certainly no shortage of projects for the foreseeable future.

back home

Back home after two weeks in the Panhandle on a working holiday with the family. Came home pulling a U haul with a riding mower and the last few pieces of furniture from storage that will live in the new claim house. Everything was still buttoned up when we got here, had 6 live chickens, 22 cold eggs, almost 2" of rain in the rain gauge (now almost 19" of rain since October) and don't need a mower after all. First thing I saw by the headlights while opening the gate at midnight was a huge pile of fresh cow plop. Trespassing livestock. First light this morning reveals approximately 3.5 lbs of cow shit per square yard of closely cropped grazed grass. East 3 wire fence down in several places. Nice. Guess I'll be fencing this weekend.

assimilation

The PJG 746 license plates have been assimilated into the collective hive of the gazebo of junk. Resistance was futile. (Hmmm.. PJG : Plates for Jeree and Glenn or Plates from Jeraine and Gina?)

- thanks to our Trekkie friends for the donation.

RIP Colonel

The Colonel, being the only white chicken, ran out of luck yesterday. Visual contrast from the air worked against him evidently and he caught the eye of a large hawk. We came home from a car show in Bastrop to find the dog nervously hovering over the body while the hawk was in a nearby tree angry at Joey that he couldn't carry his meal off. The rest of the flock was nowhere to be seen save for one quivering rooster under the camper so we feared there had been a mass slaughter. A thirty minute search found two more roosters and a lone hen hiding under a cedar tree and the final two hens snuck back to the coop several hours later at bedtime. So the score on the great chicken experiment stands at

Heat - 3 (plus three turkeys)

Coyotes - 2

Hawk -1

Leaving us with three possibly edible roosters and three hens of which only one, maybe two, have laid less than a dozen eggs since March. That's a lot of poop cleaning and chicken feed for 6 or 8 eggs. Oh well; they are entertaining to have around and provide occasional exercise for Joey. At least that's what we'll keep telling ourselves.

KISS

If it CAN have KISS on it, it SHOULD have KISS on it." - Gene Simmons

Gotta love him.

Don't count your chicks...

Uh oh. # of eggs laid last night x # of hens x nights / week. 5 x 3 x 7 = 105 eggs / week. We will be eating lots of omelets. Meringue, quiche, french toast , deviled eggs ... fresh eggnog for the holidays!

(don't really expect that many of course, just hope the poor little thing was backed up. Had a scrambled egg sandwich a little bit ago; mmm, mmm good.)

front porch eyebrow & a man and his roof

More rain all last night; another 2 1/4". Water standing everywhere and the pond is so full it just spread out a little more all around, not near the dramatic change of the last floater. Marble Falls and parts northwest of here are searching out gopher wood and tape measures that measure in cubits at Home Depot so they can start building their arks. Posting a new picture of the front porch eyebrow, not deep enough to call it a porch with a clear conscious although folks around here don't seem to bat an eye when they call their 20 acres a "ranch" so dammit; it's a porch. Really, I designed it to provide some added protection from rain and sun over all the eventual glass on the front side. Although the overhang on the west approaches 4' it is at such an angle to shade the clerestory windows at the plateline. The 3d computer models with shadow casting (in Google Sketchup Pro) I did while drawing the plans showed me it would have allowed a little too much late afternoon sun on the front glass doors. The extra modeling seems to have worked: Watching the shadows as we work looks like the glass will at least be half shaded until past 5pm. By then it is cooling down and the trees to the west take over for additional shade while we can still enjoy a sunset view from the kitchen.

The roof we used is a 26 gauge galvalume PBR panel from a local distributor in Bastrop. Inexpensive, it is also simply attractive - even from the bottom - as seen through the exposed framing on the overhangs. Durable with a good warranty. The panels cover 36" wide and designed the roof to be an even 20' long standard length, although most distributors will precut to custom lengths. Installation was straightforward using self-tapping screws with washers and a cordless impact driver. Butyl tape at every seam. Will keep plumbing penetrations to a minimum for less leak opportunities plus the simple shape negates potential problem areas like hips, ridges and valleys.

"Is this end the head?"

And we thought all we had to worry about was getting carried off by the giant vampire mosquitoes that have been thick since all the rain. Got a new camera today to replace the last one that cratered a few weeks back so have been a little lax in the postings. Celebrated the new pix-taking ability by promptly finding a worthy subject - a most unwelcome visitor. The good news is, yes: he is very much headless (but still moving much to Joey's concern) in the photo. A full grown near four footer and bigger around than my wrist with 7 rows of souvenir buttons. No one was hurt - other than a good spooking - and he was about as far away from the house as the property will allow. Jeree saw him first on our evening walk. She took it in stride but promptly left me to deal with him from great distances and to distract the dog. I handled him old school - really old school - caveman style. There was a handy pile of softball size rocks nearby to dispatch him with and an extra long mesquite branch to finish bashing his head flat. We had been gathering rocks and stacking them along the path to pick up later and all of our tree trimming left me with lots of long thick branches to choose from. Never considered that we were stocking an armory. The bad news is with all the rain and sudden burst of growth he may not be the last one to be hiding in the tall grass but since he is the first rattler, or even suspiciously venomous looking, snake we've seen in two years here maybe this will fulfill our quota for a while. Believe the double barreled 20 gauge may be my new "walking stick".

Have built the front porch eyebrow over the front doors on the house that will provide an extra layer of shade late in the day. Finished screwing off the metal roof - truly a thing of beauty to have done - and ready now for a good initial rain test. Still have some counter-flashing to do over the end bay windows and picked up lumber to frame most of the interior walls this coming weekend. Still deciding which direction to slope the gutter and the best spot to place the rainwater collection tank.