Well probably more like a tractor shed… call it my Red Ukrainian tractor barn… when finished it will have three stalls and shade our cars from the hot Texas summer sun…
Just starting to lay out the foundation blocks on the freshly cleared land…
Digging in, squaring and leveling a foundation block…
Raising a post…
Squaring a post with the others…
I’ve written before about the cedars (actually an ash juniper) that is endemic around here. It leaches a lot of water from the soil as well as being quite flammable. Just a pest plant.
I’ve got thousands growing on the ranch and have been cutting them down as much as I can over the past ten years. I can really only do this in the spring and fall when the rainfall reduces the fire danger as I burn the downed trees.
This time I got to cut down a few that were pretty large and I’d been wanting to remove for quite a while. Three of them were in the way of building a shelter for the cars as you can see above.
The other four were in the patio area and needed to be dropped pretty precisely to avoid damage to the fence, fountain or other ornamental plants.
Following the dropping of the trees there was a lot of time dragging the pieces to the fire… my rule of thumb is 30 minutes of chainsaw time equals 2.5 hours of dragging. It’s usually worked out that way anyhow.
Valentina decided that sunning in the bluebonnets was the thing to do on a fine spring day…
I’ve been spending some time in the tree house… the weather is cool and crisp and the babbling of the creek and waterfalls underneath are just sublime…
We’ve had more than our share of spring rains here in central Texas… the creeks are full and flowers are blooming. My bluebonnets are back too!
A while back I started on some renovations to the home office. With 5 computers and multiple monitors as well as the raid storage unit I wanted to make a more efficient arrangement. One other thing that I wanted to do was to make a standing desk with enough area to really work from.
I used a countertop and a prefab kitchen cabinet from Home Depot to make my desk.
I also removed the carpet and installed a laminate floor…
Which went in pretty quickly…
and made for a really nice new work environment…
I’m getting close to finishing up the fountain and now that there is water in it I’m hating having to clean out all those little cedar needles. (Cedar is actually a type invasive laurel that’s pestilent here in central Texas.) So they are going to go, but I’ll have to plant something to replace them for shade.
In my PEC (Pedernales Electric Cooperative) monthly magazine there was a nice listing of Texas I’m going to a bit of research and figure out which trees to plant around the patio…
We’ve had an extremely cold stretch for the last week, I’ve had to build a small tent to trap heat around the exposed water lines around the pump house to the well head and tank. I’ve got several lamps with 100 watt bulbs heating the enclosure. I wonder what people will do when we phase out incandescent bulbs? Neon doesn’t throw off any heat so we’re screwed as far as using them as small safe heaters!
Anyway last night we has a dusting of snow, but the temperatures are up somewhat…
Snow on the fountain…
The back patio…
Now that the Autumn weather is here I’m gearing up for a lot of work… it’s time to finish off the fuente project, put the roof on the water building and then start the upstairs renovation. That will mean roofing, moving walls and new flooring. Lots of work to do!
It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated the postings… I’ve been pretty snowed under at work and on various projects. I’ve got an event I’ve been a major planner on as well as getting the final details done for joining the Sheriff’s Office… but I’ve also been hard at work thinning the cedars and freeing up the oaks!
I’ve even found time to work on the fountain…
