Into the Woods – Page 203 – Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere

Cicada

A cicada perched on a limb of the poplar tree above my trailer

There seems to be a healthy balance of insect life on my newly cleared acre. Several types of bees including honey bees work the wildflowers, of which there are surprisingly many for the first season after clearing. I see lots of lady bugs, grasshoppers, and butterflies. To my surprise, I’ve not been bitten by a mosquito all year. Gnats can be bothersome when the humidity is high, but they don’t bite. On up the food chain, the critters that prey on insects also are in good supply. Each evening at dusk the bats come out. There are lots of spiders, including a black widow near the wood pile. And of course there are lots of birds.

One of the many reasons I want meadow rather than lawn is to support the insect life, and, along with the insects, the higher-order critters that depend on them for food. So far, Lily, my four-month-old kitten, has been content to torment the bugs and leave the birds alone.

Lily, photographed through the screen door, a blur as usual. She never stops. I got the slingshot to try to pop the butts of the deer that were stealing my tomatoes. The deer are sneaky, and I never got a shot at them.

Working with the weather

Weather Underground (www.wunderground.com)

Work continued on the roof today, including getting felt on top of the sheathing. Some inside framing work also got done. None of that makes for very interesting photographs, so no pictures today. The framing crew stopped work a little early today because light rain has started falling as tropical storm Hanna approaches the Carolina coast. Some of the counties to the southeast are under a flash-flood watch. However, Stokes County is not under any weather watches at present.

We’re expecting a rainy weekend from tropical storm Hanna.

Sheathing

The guys are working hard to get the roof sheathing and felt down before we get rain from Hanna this weekend. They actually had tackle attached to the ridge board and were rappelling up and down the roof today.

The rafters are done

All the rafters are in, and the framers are getting ready to apply the roof sheathing. Because of the flared eaves and the curved roofline over the side porch, some extra work is needed. The curved piece he’s holding above supports the sheathing over the side porch.

Fitting this piece required some tricky measuring.

The lower end of each rafter has this piece added to flare the eaves.

From up the hill at the end of the day

The wildflower season changes

It’s impressive how, abused as my spot of land is from the removal of the pine trees and the stumps, it’s struggling to produce. In early September, a whole new wildflower season begins. I call it the yellow flower time of year. Unfortunately I’m low on yellow flowers. I have only one small stand of black-eyed susans. But I certainly will attend to that in future years. Above: a morning glory

I planted the cosmos. Everything else volunteered.

See the bee?

I have no idea what this is. Maybe my sister knows?

Apparently this poor guy just held on and died.

More rafters

Putting up the rafters is tricky work, and probably a bit dangerous as well, because the framers are working from platforms just under the ridges. The rafter work is almost done, though.

From the back

From up the hill

Raising the rafters

Today’s work was pretty dramatic. At last some of the rafters are in, and the height of the house is visible. First, some framing went up for the front and side dormers.

Viewed from the front, here are the rafters for the right wing.

The right wing viewed from up the hill

Installing part of the ridge for the left wing. Seen from up close, the height of this house is pretty imposing. But if you get back a hundred feet or so, it shrinks to cottage size and snuggles into its setting between the hillside and the woods. By the way, the rafters are sitting on what the contractors called a knee wall. The knee wall rises about two feet above the level of the second floor’s floor, and the ends of the rafters are notched into the knee wall. Come to think of it, that may be the complete ridge for the left wing, since it’s a hip roof. I’m terrible at working with three dimensions in my head.

Another view of the left-wing ridge going in

The right wing seen from the back of the house

The front and right side of the house seen from up the hill a bit. This picture was taken before all the right-wing rafters were in.

The house sits up against the woods, as is fittin’ for a cottage.

Farmer's market update

The farmer’s markets around here are small but very good. I’ve not been going to the big farmer’s markets like the ones in Winston-Salem or Sandy Ridge. The King and Danbury farmer’s markets, both of which are in Stokes County, have had everything I need. I’m also getting to know some of the local farmers, who are always happy to take the time to tell you where their farm is and how they farm. Above are free-range eggs from Pinnacle, tomatoes and pimento peppers from Francisco, and apples from north Stokes. Pimento peppers are rarely grown around here for some reason, but they’re my favorite, eaten raw and fresh, or whomped into what I call Carolina Church Supper Potato Salad. I also got some Stokes County honey, which they said was blackberry honey. I’ve never had blackberry honey before. It’s really good.

Framing, Day 5

A lot got done today, though today’s work is not very easy to photograph. A truck arrived with more materials just as the materials piles were getting low. The rafter materials arrived today. Those things are long!

At the end of the day

The side porch roof starts to emerge.

The front porch roof starts to emerge.

The stairs up to the landing

From the landing to the second floor

Looking over the balcony from what I call the radio room down to the living room fireplace

Looking from the second floor down the stairs

These two doors are at the end of the living room opposite the fireplace. The door on the left leads to a bedroom; the door on the right leads to a bathroom. The architect loves angles and nooks and crannies.

And speaking of 19th century French literature…

Internet Archive — Around the World in 80 Days

Here in the sticks I’m clearly not surrounded by a population of readers. The Stokes County library at Danbury is tiny. There are bookstores in Winston-Salem, but they’re pretty terrible bookstores, not like the bookstores in the San Francisco Bay Area. But living in a travel trailer I don’t have room for books anyway. So I’ve been making my own books with free on-line texts and my Sony Reader.

I wanted to continue my tour of 19th century French literature, but after the bleakness of Notre-Dame de Paris, I needed a change of pace. I had never read Jules Verne, even in translation, so it seemed like a good time to check out one of the pioneers of science fiction.

Verne has not a lick of interest in philosophical ramblings. He is interested in characters, and places, and situations. So he just tells a tight, well-ordered story. He is, to tell the truth, just a tad shallow. In fact some people assume that his books are for young people.

Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours — Around the World in 80 Days — is a romp. It reads like, well, a David Niven comedy.

I’m not sure what to read next. Probably George Sand, to see what kind of connection, if any, can be made between George Sand and my favorite 19th century English novelist, George Eliot.

These lines from nndb.com are intriguing. I’m not sure who wrote it:

As a thinker George Eliot is vastly superior; her knowledge is more profound and her psychological analysis subtler and more scientific. But as an artist, in unity of design, in harmony of treatment, in purity and simplicity of language, so felicitous and yet so unstudied, in those qualities which make the best of George Sand’s novels masterpieces of art, she is as much her inferior.