Blue skies, smiling at me. Nothing but blue skies do I see...

Today it was clear, and we started the day by digging a path out to the street the berm had now grown to 5 ft high. The snow was too deep to dig out the gate so we dug out the path that Derran (our neighbor) left when he came over to visit yesterday. He found the narrowest part of the berm he could find, which was on the parking pad, and crawled over the snow bank and then walked across the pad, and down the planter to the front door. We needed to get Eric's Jeep dug out from across the street; it looked like a giant snowball. He has more than two feet of snow on the roof. Derran, and Linda came over, and helped us dig the Jeep out for a while even with their help it still took us 3 hours to dig it out! We got it out just in time for the snowplow to come by again. It was a guy in a grader, and when he saw our street he apologized, and said he had no idea our road was so bad. He went a got a guy with a front loader, and the two of them cleared the road down to the pavement. The guy in the front loader took all the snow, and pushed it off into the vacant lot on the other side of Steve’s place. This guy was really nice, and really knew his stuff. He dug my jeep out, and then cleared the whole street so that we could actually park on the road. This morning it was a nightmare. Before he showed up the street was buried in 20-inches of snow, and cars were stranded all over the place. People couldn't get down it so they just abandoned their vehicles wherever they stoppedLinda was in touch will CalTrans, and she said that they aren't letting anyone up even residents. You can go down the mountain but they won't let you back up. As of 1:30pm they shut down Hwy 38 completely because there's an avalanche above us, so no traffic can come down our way from Big Bear or Arrowhead. Eric had to cancel several students this week because of the storm but he is determined to go down to his gig Friday night. I'm worried for him, there's alot of ice on the road. I asked him to stay down the hill if he can get down, and not to come back up or to worry about me. I have plenty of food, wood for the fire, and we just bought a Coleman stove if the power goes out again.As of 4:09 pm (which is when I'm typing this letter) the skies are still blue over us but there are menacing clouds coming over the ridge.The weather man predicted sun with scattered clouds for the next few days but we have another storm coming in from the Gulf of Alaska that's supposed to hit on Christmas Eve: just what we need more snow. If it does hit I don't think we will be having the kids up here for Christmas. It would just be too dangerous so, we'll have to reschedule it for another day.

Enough Snow, I mean it!

Still snowing, hit the 15-inch mark. At 4:15 in the morning the power came back on, which was a blessing because it meant that the blower on our fireplace insert worked, and it didn't take long to heat the cabin up. We spent most of the day playing games, and watching the snow come down. The snowplow driver that came by that night broke down our picket fence when he plowed the street. To give you an idea of how wide the berm is in front of the house, our picket fence sits 10 ft back on the property, and the snow drift is about 4 ½ ft high. When we looked out the door last night before we went to bed you couldn't see the fence or the gate any more, and the foot prints I had left earlier in the day, when I went to the trash can, had been all filled in. There was almost 2 ft of snow on the roof, and at least that much by the door. The snowplow came back, and made a run around 4am. It snowed steadily all last night.

Diggin' In

It snowed all night, and at some point we hit the 12-inch mark. It’s snowing still. This the morning around 4am the power went out. Great! Around noon there was a temporary lull in the storm so I suggested that we should go down the hill to Wal-Mart, and buy some supplies, and get a Coleman stove, some propane gas for it, some lamp oil, wicks, and candles. We stocked up on canned goods, and simple meals like Macaroni and Cheese. By the time we got home it was starting to get dark, and we still had to take all the food down the embankment, which was now about 24 inches high. Eric started a fire, and I started taking all of the food in the fridge out to the backyard, and burying it in a snow bank. We roasted hot dogs in the fireplace, and ate them by lantern light. We already had a Colman propane lantern in the emergency kit I kept in the shed, also without power the blower on our fireplace insert didn't work, and it got a little nippy in the house. Needless to say it was an exhausting day, and we bundled up in warm clothes, and went to bed around 9:30. It snowed steadily all night.

What A Transformation!

When we bought the house back in October of 2000 it looked like this half hidden behind an overgrown yard and painted a dark brown color that literally made it fade into the background.





After some serious trimming of trees and clearing of overgrown shrubs (they were a fire hazard anyway),and a lot of hard work by me busting out that driveway over the summer, the house looked like this.this.

And now it looks like this.
There was only one thing missing and that came next.

The finishing touch was the picket fence. The process took about a month to complete and it was worth every penny.

Now I just have to work on the landscaping.

A Stairway To Heaven

This is my second attempt at steps and I think I did much better this time. I found these wonderful bricks at Home Depot. They can be used for small retaining walls and weigh about 5 lbs a piece. I like the way the seemlessly blend in with the soil, and they are really good at holding it back and staying in place.

It's Getting There...

We have almost finished at this point. The house, the shed and the carport were finished but we still needed more room to store our stuff; the lumber in the yard is from the original shed I wanted built. I wanted it built across the front of the yard thinking it might give us some privacy in the front of of the house The shed was going to be 10x20, but as they put the sides up I realized that it looked horrible so we had the brothers unassemble it and use the wood to build the two new sheds. They were the nicest peopl to work with and they were very professional with reasonable rates. They didn't even charge us to take the original shed down!

Now that the shed and the house are painted the same it's not looking so bad. We bought a patio set and you can barely see it in the side yard. We also added shutters to two of the windows and coordinating flower boxes to the shed.

It's all starting to come together...

You can see in the backyard that the other shed is now completed and painted to match the rest of the house. I removed all the iris’ from in front of the Adirondack chairs and planted some hedges behind them; they are still thriving. After all of the commotion during painting all my Johnny-Jump-Ups died and did not come back again. The Virginia creeper is growing back on the trellis although it had to be severely cut back so they could paint the house. It’s slowly beginning to recover. The vinca has almost completely covered the unsightly and useless propane tank. Another project on the horizon will be to move the hose bib to the side of the house, right now it’s behind the trellis and is a bear to get at.