A Place for Everything

(note: first entry without blog mentor's over-the-shoulder guidance, time to cut loose)
In the time that my significant other and I have shared a home it's come to my notice that, surprise, we don't share a common philosophy on everything. She likes to wake up early and get a lot done by noon. I think that many significant improvements can be made between 8:00pm and midnight, or later. I believe that my older brother has been most inspirational in this perspective. Two years ago we bonded by garage building in a December snowstorm by tractor light.

Given the differing philosophies and close quarters of City Cabin where is one allowed to accomplish such tasks without disturbing the early riser?

The Man Cave, (coined by the blog mentor) of course.


I'm not a big car guy, building guy, mason, blacksmith, ornithologist or agronomist but I enjoy dabbling in all of them. Kinda like writing words and putting them on a compewter. So I guess by default of gender I'm the director of garage space at City Cabin. With other distractions the garage didn't get a much attention in the past 10 months we've been here. I installed a garage door opener. It's the far one, Craftsman's updated aerodynamic model for more better opening.



And I like to hang things up, bag things and stack things. Ready for action!

The silver pipe to nowhere is the chimney, minus a heating source. Word on the street is that the city of St. Paul and insurers don't approve citizens installing wood burning stoves in garages, even if they're not attached to the house AND mostly made of cinder block buried half way into a hill. I can get a kit for a barrel stove for less than $60 and it would be complete in a day. Maybe if the fall is unseasonably cold...

Last week while transporting fall's yard waste from our still-in-development composting site



my first garage art installation happened.
On the first sticks-and-leaves-stuffed-into-a-tarp-lined-Neon-trunk-trip I spotted an interesting item abandoned on the road. Two trips later and without its proper owner coming back to claim it this found its way into my backseat .


With my profession and family agrarian connections I've had some time to devote to admiring and driving semi trucks. While I'm typically critical when it comes to brand loyalty and human-as-billboard marketing, I'm a hypocrite when it comes to Kenworth trucks. I pushed the toy version around as a kid and now, essentially, I do the same.



Pssst. Don't tell anyone but instead of doing man stuff at City Cabin today I saw the season's first oriole.


And word from my associate working at the horse barn was that humming birds are in the area so I made WAY too much nectar mix and chose an interesting container. I'm still learning.





But I found a way to get it into the feeder. And a new oriole feeder arrived home hours after this adventure so hopefully the Cabin will have few new guests to report in the coming days.

balance restored in st. paul!

well, at least until the republican national convention.

the weather is ridiculously nasty enough today that i have time to procrastinate indoor fix-ups by updating the house blog. just last sunday, the temp was in the mid-seventies. today, snow/wind/clouds AGAIN. kvetch, kvetch.

so when it was all beautiful last weekend, we were really jonesing to get our hands in the dirt. but, as any good minnesotan knows, it is waaaay to early to expose those poor plants to the elements quite yet. we satiated ourselves by digging up all the crappily-laid bricks bordering the gardens and re-doing them completely.

see what i mean by lack of balance?:

(these are either side of the porch on the front side of the house)



now, i'm all for eclectic design. however, the two of us are a bit too scandinavian for shenanigans like that. so, we changed it up to look like this:







and we have the south side before:


and after:





he DOES get all the fun jobs:



in birding news, we've witnessed tons of cool stuff lately. last sunday, a red tail hawk flew through the yard. the songbirds were NOT big fans. many new birds we've never seen before are stopping through on migration routes, like this fox sparrow:

and a new sighting just today, a white-throated sparrow:


most people don't get excited about sparrows. but we do. i'm not sure what that says about us.

we root for the underdog?

soundtrack for this renovation:

red-winged blackbird yelling

robin tweakin'

Minnesota warms up, a bit. Then. There.

(FYI: B's first try at this blogging thing, hopefully I can spell pretty good.) The poor grammar in that preface goes out to public education and my blog mentor who's looking over my shoulder.

Anyway...it did warm up last weekend and it's all the rage in Minnesota small talk. So it's not quite this nice:

But it's this nice:

That's me washing a big window. See the backup paper towel? That way when I fall off of the bar stool that I'm standing on I can use my one good arm to wipe the blood away from my eyes to see the clean windows in all of their glory. OSHA doesn't apply at City Cabin. I get all of the fun jobs.

With warmer weather and being American one also acquires a sudden drive to go out and consume. Luckily for us, there are a number of used/vintage stores withing a five mile radius of our home (think the flea market in Battle Lake, minus the campers) and you get to consume some relatively fun, previously-used stuff. For example, tired of looking at your washing machine? Get a couple of these:

and one can be mesmerized by the bamboo weaving instead.
Which also complements my favorite piece of string art in the room:



Our screened-in porch was essentially unused during the inaugural summer. Maybe it was because it looked like this most of the time:

Thanks to a weekend visit to Swank and a couple of days of deliberation with the realization that 99% of patio furniture is unbelievably ugly and expensive, our catio (termed by my blog mentor) became this today:
The three chairs, table and love seat all fit into a Dodge Neon. What a machine! Further props to my sponsor in catio design, Newcastle.

in full denial of the current weather conditions

i just ordered 135 plants from spring hill nursery. that's a lot of planting.

i prefer to just not think about where those plants will be stored until it is safe to put them in the ground.

all of those little plants (and ALL of them will survive, dammit!) are going to go into these spaces:


butterfly garden. we're ripping up the bricks and re-locating the chives.



50 foot long shade garden (just a few lonely hostas there now):


and, the gap between the yard and the garage roof:




the entire five minutes i was taking these photos, i was being maliciously barked at by this:



the past few days have proven to me that grackles eat about five times their body weight in seeds every hour.

this is spring?

yeah. this is spring.

apparently, so is this:

the birds are way confudido:

and, frankly, so am i.

free nuts

i'm holding off on the mutant zombie squirrel for a bit, as i actually have trouble stomaching the pictures. in lieu of that, some cleansing shots of birds from the backyard. all of these were taken in the last two weeks.


white breasted nuthatch:





red breasted nuthatch:




extremely scruffy downy woodpecker:


infamous chickadee:

red bellied woodpecker:



cockatiel:

blame being midwestern

so....yeah. i wasn't done with the bathroom yet. i didn't realize the ceiling was such a fugly color, and i kinda forgot about the messed up area around the toilet. so, i painted the ceiling with three coats of white, and patched holes and re-painted everything else in the room.

before:


and before:



and after:



and after:

in birding news, the mourning doves and robins came back on saturday. robins, meh. mourning doves? WOO!



coming up, a post on mutant squirrels and mangy rabbits. and woodpeckers.



sound track for this renovation:

the honey dewdrops, the handsome family, and epitonic radio