expirationdates

Unfinished Projects

As my house building and remodeling friends know, sometimes you can get overwhelmed with the details of projects.  Especially when you are working hard to get an occupancy permit, you always mean to get back to it and finish up but other projects get in the way and you forget.

This is how we left the hose connection on our deck.

As you can see, it needs a collar there to stabilize it and block off the opening.

Why is this a bad thing?  It is an open door to all sorts of critters.

Here is the other side under my kitchen sink.

There is a nice little opening there as well that gets them right into the cabinets and since the baseboard is not under the cabinets yet, into the kitchen.

This is my silverware drawer, busy little buggers.

They moved all that in one night. 

So, now this project gets moved to the top of the list whether there is time for it or not.  It's time for a trip to the hardware store for some supplies. 

The cabinets will have to all be cleaned as it seems they have been in every one.  I have taken all the stuff out of them and left the doors open so the cat can let everyone know it's time to find other living quarters.  I have a few live traps too so I can help them in their relocation. 

Bird ID Toolbar

As you know by the pictures I post I am into bird watching just about as much as I am into house building. 

Here is a little Spotted Towhee (formerly know as Rufous sided).  The great thing about the zoom on this camera is you can capture the bird without them even knowing you are looking at them.  They are more relaxed and doing ordinary bird things rather than being concerened about you. 

Since I am at my computer most of the time I can't tell you how excited I am about a new tool-bar that ID's birds.  You can find the link here .  It is based on the whatbird website and is just awesome to have right on the tool-bar for easy reference when I see a new bird out my window.

Back to my camera. I love the way my camera makes the water look when I take pics of ducks and geese. Here is a pair of Gadwall that I spotted on Greenlake.

American Wigeon

This camera also has an awesome macro lens.

This little mushroom is only about 1/4" tall. 

This is frost on some seaweed at Ruby Beach.  The best part is that it is all automatic.

The lens was about 2" from this bird nest.

Camera Review Part I

I love the Panasonice Lumix line of cameras.  My newest one is the Lumix DMC-FZ18 and has many of the features of the last one but with an 18x zoom rather than the 12x zoom of the last one.  And this one is smaller and easier to carry around.  While there are a lot of things I like about this camera the two best feaures are the zoom and the burst mode.

It is an 8.1-megapixel camera with a 28mm wide-angle lens, and has the Intelligent Auto Mode, which includes Face Detection, Intelligent Scene Selector, and Continuous Autofocus functions.  If you set the picture quality from 8 mp to lower like 5 or 3 you can zoom in even closer, up to 28 times, they call that an extended zoom, not digital.

All the pictures that I take of my feeders and the river mostly are taking through my livingroom windows.

Here is a normal distance picture of the thistle feeder.

Here is the same photo zoomed in 28 times.

Here is the same bird cropped in.

Here are some deer that Dave took.  They were about 75' to 100' away.  They are zoomed in 18 times.

Here is the same image cropped.

Zoomed 18x

Cropped

The burst mode is really great for wild life photography.  Since wild life is always moving it's hard to focus on them but with the burst mode you can keep shooting and that will get you some nice clear shots.

Here is a burst of the deer hightailing it to the island.

Burst 2

Burst 3

Here is a crop of the second burst.

I'll work on some more examples of picture quality and different zooms and crops.

Spring Projects

It's already May and not much has been done.  We are about 75% done with the fence.  We sill need to run two more 100' lengths of fence and put up a gate but rest of the fence will be put on T stakes.  We put the first 200' on pressure treated posts that are between our neighbors and the front of the house.  The rest faces the wilderness and is on a slope so we didn't want to sink 4" x 4" posts in concrete for those length.

This is the gate we are planning to install. It's just the frame and hardware that will allow us to be creative on the face of it. 

The chickens are nearly moved, I still have to move some cross fencing before that can happen but maybe this weekend.  I love T-stake fencing.  It's so easy to move around when you need to.  They will be happy to get to some new space as I see them with their head through the fence all the time eating on the other side, which is apparently always greener.

We got some major cleaning done in the garage and you can even park one car in there.  This is a big day for us as we have never been able to park in any garage we have had.  The dream is to be able to park two cars in there one day.

Meanwhile, the landscape and wild life continue to delight me.

This is the first time we have had Evening Grosbeaks here.  There were about 50 of them in the trees, taking turns at the sunflower seeds.

The Goldfinches returned the same day.

They were about two weeks later than last year, guess they got the snow report and postponed their trip.

This Bald Eagle was hanging around Saturday morning.  His (or her, hard to tell) head is not 100% white so I am thinking he is about three.

The hummers are enjoying the feeders and the new fuchsia that I got from my friend Denise, she has a new website about to launch called Garden Girl

 

It's a nice addition to the deck.  As soon as we have a few dry days in a row we will pressure wash the deck and deck roof and get a coat of sealer on it.  It's raning again today though so I guess it's a good day for inside projects.

Wait a Minute!

It's April right?  It is not supposed to be snowing.

It is snowing big time.  We have about 2" so far.  They say another inch tonight and freezing temps.

You saw last post that Spring is a little behind this year.  I sure hope the buds survive this.

All the buds have a nice coating of ice.  This is the big leaf maple in front of the house.

This is my neighbors Magnolia tree, just about to bloom.

Here is my new Japanese Maple, it is still in the pot.

The Salmon-berries are all weighted down with snow and ice. 

While completely out of place it is so beautiful, so silent and crisp. 

We had to put the heat back in the chicken house and I'm glad we don't have tomatoes in already, there are a lot of folks scurrying around getting their gardens covered up.

I'm also glad it's Saturday tomorrow as the roads are going to be a mess.

 

Migration

The Brant Geese are on the move again.  Brant make one of the most amazing migrations twice each year. Over 140,000 Pacific Brant migrate along the pacific flyway in the spring from Baja to the Izembek lagoon on the Alaska Peninsula, stopping to rest and feed on the eel grass along the way.  We spotted them in Blain, WA in Birch Bay last weekend.

This has to be my favorite goose.

I used to be in charge of several flocks when I worked at Northwest Wildfowl and grew to love their personalities.

I could watch them for hours.

This coming weekend there is a festival called  Wings Over Water NW Birding Festival  in their honor, in Blaine Washington.  There is also the Brant Wildlife Festival in Canada which we have attended many times and the Brant always seem to oblige and show up.   

Spring?

It seems that spring is coming later and later every year.  It sure felt like spring or summer really when we got temperatures well over 70 on Saturday, but it was back to rain on Sunday.  We were looking back at previous April dates to see what the apple trees were doing.

This is from this morning.  Not much going on there.

April 07

April 06

April 05

By this time most years the onions were up and the tomato plants were in.  Not sure why we are so far behind this year.

We did have a late snow a few weeks back.  The froggies came out prior to the snow and went back to bed to wait for spring I guess.  They are out in full force now.  We saw these guys on a walk at Narbeck last week.

Here are what I think are salamander eggs.

It's hard to tell from this distance.  There are hundreds of eggs in that jelly like ball.

Time Management

Has it been that long?  Sigh.  While I love my job and I still consider it my dream job, working from home has it's pros and cons.  On the pro side, I don't have to leave the house or even get dressed if I don't want to.  I can set my own hours and I am a morning person so when I get up at 5:30 to see Dave off to work I usually start working.  I can stop for coffee, take a walk, go back to bed..........it's all up to me.  Sometimes there are deadlines but mostly it's continuing work.

However, the cons for me are it's hard to turn it off, the five o'clock whistle does not blow.  Last week I realized that I have not been posting, haven't quilted or done a house project in so long that I needed to rethink my schedule.  I have missed all these things that are what working at home is all about so I'm changing my schedule!  It's good to be back.

Reserve this space

I know it has been a long time since the last post.  Jane has been busy.  She has a backlog of great pictures of Brant geese and even Harlequin ducks.

This weekend we are going to go and get even more pictures. 

On top of that we had a surprise visit from a flock of green wing teal.  We have never seen them before in the wild. Those pictures really spotlight the great 28X zoom of the Panasonic Lumix FZ18DMC camera.  Jane will write a full review soon. She just needs to hear from her loyal readers.

I think even the casual reader has to admit that her blog has been full of content even though the focus has changed some from dream home building to dream home living, she is truly living her dream.

As always we will keep you posted.

Dave (dream home builder)

Vent Covers

It's very important to cover your vent openings to the outside.  There are several reasons to do this, there is the heat loss, rodent access and then the following problem-birds.

Starlings nested here last year.  They were able to squeeze into the space above the bird block there.

   This year we got some hardware cloth put up before they got started.

It never occurred to me that they would go for the dryer vent.  Eventually I plan to have a washer/dryer in the master bedroom closet.  I didn't think about finishing that off since I don't even have them yet.

I have a towel stuffed in there now because I can't find the cover that is supposed to go there.

It's amazing to me that they thought that was a good idea as they went all the way down the pipe and put the nest at the bottom.

Those clothes were piled up over the opening so that at least kept them from coming in the house!

The babies could have never gotten out of that nest as the opening is 6ft up and out.  There were no eggs so I felt OK about blocking them.  They are really upset and are still trying to get in, they scold me every time I go out there.

So, go out and check your vents. it's spring and birds and rodents are looking for warm places to nest.