Further update

Okay, first the adorably cute puppy pix.  She's actually five years old, but she only weighs 7 lbs, so she seems like a puppy.  Most loveable critter we have ever had.  She sits next me at my desk much of the time.  Unfortunately, she never outgrew getting carsick, so she has to stay home.  Honestly, she hates care rides so much she runs to her crate every time she thinks we're leaving!  She's very happy at home.

Covid warnings were everywhere, though I'm not sure why.  There were so few cases in Wyoming and even fewer deaths.  Guess the liberal media here needed something to terrify us with.  We never had a full shut down and masks were never mandatory.  The traffic never really decreased much so other than destroying the small businesses our governor says he loves, not much changed.  Oil and gas layoffs, coal mine closing and small businesses destroyed by the elected "leader" should clear the state out soon..... 

The redtail hawks were back using the outhouse in the basin as a nesting platform.  Our realtor sent a picture of four eggs in the nest he took with a drone.  We went down Memorial Day and this is what we found:

Last year, Jim went down later, into June and the four babies were larger then.  They had some yellow on them.  These were basically all white.  They hid down in the next quite a bit but would pop their heads up to see what was going on.  Hawks nesting on the roof means we can't use the outhouse, but that's okay.  We have alternatives:  Bucket with plastic liner and sawdust like we use at night.  It's worth it to see the hawks.

Gardening is coming along very slowly.  I dragged the raised bed frames from six years ago into the garden (we were killing weeds in the garden all that summer, so couldn't use the usual area), plus mowed most of the grass off (ducks were living in the garden last year, so lots of grass).  I will till later.  It's so dry, I had to water for several hours in the hopes of getting the ground wet enough to actually till.  The greenhouse remains in need of preparation, but as long as it's hot, I only get and hour or so in mornings and there are other things that need done in addition to the garden.

Signing off for now.  I'll try not to be another 10 months without an update.

Finally, I update!

It's now June and it seems I have neglected this blog for many months.  I guess it was a busy winter.  Certainly an uneventful one.

We are selling our cabin in the Basin due to the evironmental pillaging of the wind tyrants.  We bought ranch land, we now get an INDUSTRIAL POWER PLANT.  Nope, the greedy tyrants will do whatever they want, but we won't be there to see the sagebrush ripped up, tons of concrete poured and thousands of tons of metal shoved into the sagebrush sea.  We will not witness the extinction of the sage grouse and horned lizards at the hands of the greedy new gold rush participants.  Humans never learn.  They just destroy over and over.

I am still working on the garden and with the above average temperatures this week, it's slower than ever.  My plants did well after I put them in front of a window and added artificial light.  They're outside in a small greenhouse at the moment, waiting for their places in the garden and large greenhouse to be prepared.

 I'm going with some pictures now and will add more tomorrow.

 Daffodils

 Small buck

 Snow, of which we had very little this year.    Summer is going to be dry.

 Snow cornice formed over eaves trough

More daffodils!

That's it for now.  

My attention to blogging is not good!

I notice it has been a long time since I put anything on here.  I think they are going to revoke my blogging credentials!!!  Update coming by tomorrow, I promise!

Sasha says you can take my word for that!

Hopper invasion!!!!!

We have been invaded by thousands of hoppers:

Seems like there are more and more and more, and they are growing!  They have stripped several of my trees of leaves:

These are Russian Olive trees.  The hoppers attack the caragana first, then move on.  Many of my caragana have no leaves left.  I keep them watered and hope they will survive until next year.  Honestly, I have pretty much given up on the caraganas.  The deer destroy them by rubbing their antlers on them and the hoppers strip leaves, even in years when there isn't an invasion.  I have some ash trees, assuming the hoppers don't get them, to put in place of the caraganas.

I had intended to transplant the ash trees this spring, but broke my wrist and couldn't do much of anything for a while.  It was too late by the time the wrist healed enough to be able to move the trees—they had leafed out and it was getting hot.  So, next spring it is.

Due to the wrist, I also didn't get much of a garden in, which is probably just as well since the hoppers are after what little did come up.  It seems this has not been a good year for gardening.  I do have tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse, so maybe I'll get something out of those.  The hoppers do occasionally get in the greenhouse, but I can put Sevin on the plants and kill them.  Outside the greenhouse, I haven't got a chance.

The ducks are cheap to feed due to the hoppers.  They free range and eat the hoppers and weeds during the day, then they go in the garden at night.  Since I only planted 1/4 of the area, they have the other 3/4 for staying in at night.  It gives them far more room than the pens we usually keep them in and makes it easier to feed and water them.  Eggs laying has been more erratic than usual.  My pet, Baby, has been laying fairly well.  I think the others are hiding their eggs under sagebrush and outside the garden where I have yet to find them.  Ducks are not good about laying where you want them to, especially if they get broody.  One sat on eggs for 2 months and hatched none.  We may need to get new stock as these are getting fairly old.

The dog continues to be adorable (of course, I may be prejudiced!).  She goes for a 10 or 15 minute walk with me when it's not too hot.  I broke my wrist taking her to the vet, but after she was treated there for not eating or drinking for most of a day, whatever they did resulted in her no longer regurgitating her food two or three times a week.  It also resulted in her gaining weight!  Thus, the walks!

The last one is "puppy tracks" where I pulled her across the carpet because she often refuses to move with her harness on, especially in the house!  I was amazed at how well a small critter can dig its feet in when it does not want to move!

The weather here is hot and I'm not very ambitious.  I miss the cold!

That's it for now.

My curtain project

These are the black-out insulating curtains I made.  I didn't want to go back with the warm window curtains I had due to cost and complexity of construction.  So I had to come up with a new method.  See below the pictures for instructions.

                                  Bedroom window with swamp cooler and air conditioner

Large bedroom window

This curtain opens by moving one panel to the other side, double-hanging both curtains on one side on the l-hooks that hold the curtains up (see below for more details).  If I want to have the entire window uncovered, I toss the curtains on the bed for the day.

This is what the curtain looks like open half-way.  This is the usual situation with this curtain.  It can hang off to either side of the window.

Living room window

These are used only in the summer when it's extremely hot.  Since they are hung on l-hooks, they easy go up and down.  I made a box in which to hang them when they are not on the windows.  In the winter, the box gets covered and the curtains store in the shed.

Spare bedroom

Bathroom 1

This is not like the other curtains,  It is just an insulation panel cut to fit inside the window against the glass and covered with a fabric envelope.  I used snaps to hold the panel inside after closing the top of the envelope and there's a tab to pull it back out of the window when I want it out.

Bathroom 2

This is the same as the larger curtains, only using denim for the covering.

I started with bubble type insulation I bought in a roll from Home Depot.  It's 15 inches wide and I had to sew two panels together for my 29 inch wide windows.  I just hand-sewed it, securing the top and bottom when I started so it wouldn't shift.  I bought the type of insulation with a staple tab, which just meant the inch on each side had flattened bubbles.  I overlapped by an inch for the middle seam, taking advantage of the staple tab to get a flat seam.

You will need to measure your windows and decide how wide and long the curtains need to be.  That's up to you.  Also, the rods will have to be cut to size, with and extra 1/2" or so to keep the curtain on the hooks it hangs on.  Most of this will become obvious as you progress.

I used fabrics I had on hand.  Once you determine your window size, you can calculate the amount of fabric you need.  If you have fabric available, you can make a paper pattern for the size of curtain required and then lay it on the fabric to check and see if you have enough fabric.  Otherwise, you'll have to do some math!  Any lightweight fabric will do.  I used denim on my small bathroom window, but that would be too heavy for these curtains.

I will note that plaid may not be a good choice of pattern.  I had a hard time getting all the seams and casings perfectly straight and it is very noticeable on plaid!

The covers are an envelope into which the insulation slides.  I sewed ribbons into the casing and the side with just the turned over edge so I could secure the envelope together at the top, rather than using a permanent seam that wouldn't allow for easy washing and fabric replacement.  This was probably the slowest part—the ribbons were stubborn about staying pinned in place!

This is the envelope with the insulation pushed inside.  The middle seam goes down the middle of the envelope vertically.  I trimmed any pieces that did not quite fit.  You want a tight fit for a smooth looking curtain, but not bulging or curving.  It needs to lay flat.   The white rods off to the right are what I used to hang the curtains with.  They are 3/16" rod I got from a local recycling business.  I painted them white to give them a nicer look than bar metal.  If your curtains are long, you may need a slightly larger diameter rod.  However, these are very lightweight curtains.

This is the envelope, tied together, with the rod run threw the casing and the silver insulation inside.  The ties keep the envelope "sealed" and allow easy removal of the fabric should you need to wash or replace it.  This makes the curtains very easy to repair or change the colors of the fabric should you want to do so.  That was a problem with the warm window curtains—hard to replace the fabric cover that showed on the inside of the room.  Mine was never replaced.  The fabric also had to be vacuumed rather than being washable like these are.

I did sew small buttons on the corners to hold the insulation in place (see picture below).  I put 3 buttons on the top curtains because I made them longer to overlap the bottom ones, but they are difficult to visually identify as longer.  The extra button makes this easy.  (I will have to cut the buttons off should I replace the cover or the insulation, but that's not a big problem.)

I installed the curtains using l-hooks I purchased at the local hardware store.  The curtains for the taller windows are in two pieces, allowing one to open all or half the window.  The bedroom ones with the air conditioner and swamp cooler have extra hooks that allow the curtain to be hung either above the air conditioner and swamp cooler, or to cover to the bottom of the window in the winter.  If we only want to open the curtain half way, the bottom curtain moves to hang with the top one on the top hooks.  If the full window is opened, I toss the curtains on the bed during the day.  I used longer hooks on top to accommodate the double hanging of curtains.

Because the curtains can slide off the rods, I put rubber bands on the rods to prevent this.  It's optional.  If the casing is tight enough or you don't move the curtains often, they will not be needed.

See the button sewn on to hold the insulation in place?  There's one on each corner and an extra one in the middle on the top curtain.

An additional notes:

These are not as effective as the warm window curtains because they simply hang on a rod and have no magnetic strip holding them tight against the wall.  However, I have had them freeze to the window on cold nights, so they do insulate.  They also block virtually all light.  These are much lighter and easier to deal with than hanging a blanket over the window or other varients on DIY warm window curtains.  As noted, I  do have them freeze to the window due to condensation on the window.  My house has a condensation problem and it stained the warm window curtains on the window side quite badly.  This is why I chose to make covers that can easily be replaced.

That's it.  Should you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comment section.

May/June update

A word about the “fake prairie life".  There are blogs about "prairie life" that include dressing up fancy and pushing products on the net.  THAT IS NOT PRAIRIE LIFE.  That’s downtown Denver life.  Believing this fantasy land can lead people to think moving to the prairie is romantic.  Suddenly, the kid is bitten by a rattlesnake, the dog attacked and killed by an eagle, and the home flooded in a hail storm and electricity is out for two weeks.  Assuming one is still there when winter hits, it's 10 feet of snow and 60 mph winds.  The lie of the prairie romance is exposed.   I find all of this type of “make-believe” harmful to the world, creating a false story that people fall for and can end up dead from.  I realize that fiction is the new “reality”, but I have to mention that reality still exists even if you think you can ignore it.

Speaking of rattlesnakes, I came out of my garage and found this on laying along the path to the house.  I fetched the snake hook, a cooler and the snake is now in the taped shut cooler in the shade to be released after my hubby comes home.  We usually look for an open place to release these, though the wiping out of ranches means there are fewer and fewer places the snake can actually live.  (For those of you who hate rattlesnakes, all I can say is "haunta virus".  You kill the predators that keep the vermin in check, you get more vermin.)

A couple of days later while mowing I went over the top of a baby rattlesnake, about the size of a pencil.  I couldn't catch him and he slithered out of the yard.  About 4 days later we found him again out in the windbreak.  Again, couldn't catch him.  So now I do yard work with leather gloves on!

Speaking of vermin, I now live between two rural ghetto junkyards:

These are vermin haven.  The bunnies like it too, but I worry that the number of mice breeding is huge.  The county doesn't care in the least.  You can have 100 dead cars and other junk and nothing is done.  Now, for the lowlifes who want to live in garbage, that's great.  However, I caution you if you want to move to Wyoming that you may be living next to garbage dumps.  

There is an up side to this.  I was going to paint my house all one color and make it look nice.  However, since I live between garbage heaps, I'm sticking with the calico motif and painting the walls, trim and skirting whatever colors I have.  Actually, I kind of like the quirky look and since my neighbors have made it clear that there is no reason to care what your lot and house look like, I plan on going with the idea.  Plus, adding some colorful "garden tool statues" (really recycled tools welded together and called "art"), probably a few other cute artsy things in really hideous colors, etc.  It's quite freeing to live where there are zero standards. 

The good news is the really ugly, rotting trailers up the road (that we drive by daily) are being torn out.  I guess the owner finally sold them and maybe the new owner will actually care about having a decent subdivision.  Maybe….. These are the remaining blights, and the demolition of other trailers.

This one is torn down now

Now, just some pictures.

Kingbird

Pincushion cactus blooming

Prickly pear cactus about to bloom—looks like a face!

Locust tree in bloom

Iris in bloom

Most odd-looking critter

We saw this yesterday, the 4th of February, on the way home:

A mule deer without ears—or without the usual big "mule" ears they are named for.  This one has like teddy bear ears.  Slightly creepy…..