Fourth Snow Event!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was real good, I believe everyone got what they wanted and we had prime rib, pork shoulder and lobster with dinner at the retirement home where Meg's parents live. Could not believe it was such a great dinner!

Late on Christmas it started snowing, by 11 pm when I went to bed we had 3/4 inches of snow. Right now my estimate would be 4 inches and it is still snowing!

The feeders were refilled about an hour ago and to be honest there are more birds at the feeders than ever before. Several of the feeders  have 10 birds on them at a time. Perhaps later I get a few photos of the birds.

Meg gave me Photoshop CS5 for Christmas and these are the first edited photos processed in the new software. Granted snow photos don't do justice to what Photoshop can do with normal photos with vivid colors.

 Our cold frames, don't they look pretty darn cold?

 The screened in porch, very cool all the snow on the screening!

 One of our favorite chairs.

 Pretty snowy.

 The pond is frozen and I expect it to turn white. Going down to 16 degrees Tuesday morning...

 The road we have to drive up to get out of here, no trucks have even tried it yet. I think Meg's Toyota Truck will make it. The power is out at Meg's sisters house, she has been rescued already.

 Snowy tools left outside.. my bad.

 Some of our blue wine bottles and a mini cold frame we added. Nothing but left over plastic and PVC piping stuck into the ground. I think there is rape and mustard greens under there. I picked some mustard greens and kale from the other cold frames Christmas Eve for our salad.

Snowy willows over the pond.

Christmas blooms report: Several pansies were actually blooming and one hellebore niger has 2 inch tall white blooms hidden mostly near the ground. 

Screened Porch, Finally Done!

We started building our addition on the foundation on February 15, 2008. It was a long haul to get the 985 sq ft addition finished, still some final things need finished. Along with the addition we added a 16 x 20 deck with an adjoining 16 x 16 covered porch. The roof and deck was long ago finished, we finalled the job in mid November 2008.

Just yesterday I put on the final touches to the porch. Having bought a warped treated lumber screen door at Home Depot I had to add 2 more hinges to straighten it out, 4 hinges seem over kill, but it is much better. The door has the old type Stanley solid brass knob and handle, something you can;t buy at Home Depot. The other last touch was adding more railings as Dot The Wonder Dog ran right into the screen, the bars will hopefully keep the animals from going through the screening.

Please excuse the clutter inside the porch. All we need now is a nice set of outdoor furniture for enjoying relaxing at the end of a warm day.

Notice the sign at the bottom left of the above photo? We are a certified wildlife habitat, posted right there!

Above is a view of the porch from the garden. Notice the pair of French doors inside the porch, those open all the way up into the master bedroom. If we want fresh air in the bedroom or a master piece frog concert we just open those doors. The walls inside are 9 foot tall and give a 8 foot high view of the outside.

Above is what you see from inside the porch our pond and the road we live one, two other houses are down at the end of our road so it is fairly private on our porch. You notice the chrome railings? The railings are actually 3/4 inch galvanized electrical conduit, we used it because you can see through it better than normal railings. I added the divider to make sure the railing would be very strong and never sag as I've seen on other poorly made railings. Note the stair railing our architect designed the stairs so they would not block the view of the pond. Look at the top of this photo see the real beaded board ceiling painted sky blue.

There is our veggy garden. See the poles those are our Sugar Snap Peas getting ready to be strung onto those poles.

To answer your question YES I built the entire porch. I had two helpers with the main framing and deck and did all the finish work myself.