Month: December 2021

The week leading up to the holiday was a busy one. We entertained another visitor, fresh pies were baked, major grocery shopping was undertaken, and good food was prepared for every meal. I have several photos from the week so let’s get started.

Becky’s daughter Caitlin drove to NE Iowa from the Minneapolis area to stay overnight and spend some time with her mother. Christmas Eve day she headed out, after lunch, to the LaCrosse area where she will spend time with more family. We had a lively visit and caught up on all her activities. Being the owner of a resale clothing shop (“Cake”), Caitlin had her share of COVID-related problems in 2021 but the business survived. Hopefully it will thrive in the upcoming year.

Here is a photo of us with Caitlin (front) and Becky (mid-step) on our front porch entry.

Pam and Becky put up our second tree (the “heart” tree) and decorated it. This one is on the main floor in the parlor. The cats, particularly Elmo, love it. Elmo is now known as the “de-decorator” as he has tried re-arranging the lights and ornaments already.

The local paper published “Letters to Santa” and this one just caught my eye. We all need more rainbows and kindness. (Click on the image to open a larger, and more legible, version.)

We opened our presents on Christmas Eve. Becky, Pam, and I received several gifts but the most enchanting went to Pam; a small garden statue of Gromit (from the animated series “Wallace and Gromit”) was Pam’s gift from Santa. This Gromit features a bobbing head, mounted on a spring, and a spring mounted tail. Gromit will become garden/yard art next year.

It was an enjoyable Christmas Eve for all of us. Speaking of “all of us,” here is a photo of Becky’s cat, Vanna. I have mentioned Vanna a few times in these posts and thought I’d better include a photo so you can see what she looks like.

Pam noted how pleasant it has been to interact with young people this holiday season. A few more photos show off the lighter side of Caitlin’s and Toby’s visits.

In non-Christmas news, I put together two new Galleries, one with photos of mine sites around the Telluride area (Savage Basin Road) and another containing photos of the Colorado Yule Marble Quarry near Marble. There is a new feature on both of these; I have included an introductory voice clip that gives a short explanation of the gallery. Clips are located at the top of each gallery page. If these work out I may add similar voice clips to my other gallery pages.

Photo Archive

This grouping of photos is from all over.. taken in the early to mid-’80s.

Finally, a couple of sunset photos.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

Happy Solstice and Feliz Navidad. Thanks to those who “took a chance” and ventured to mail cards to us. (Our postal “service” … <sigh> …)

Happy Trails.

The big story this week was the arrival of Becky and her cat, Vanna. Both will be with us until Becky can find an apartment in the Madison, Wisconsin, area. Second to that was our son Toby’s first visit to Heart House. A sub-story was the arrival of an F-0 tornado over Elma as part of a major winter wind storm.

Becky arrived last weekend. She winterized her mobile home in Rice Lake and brought the cat and last carload of household goods down to Heart House and moved into the guest bedroom. We have already enjoyed her company and look forward to having her with us for a while.

Becky’s cat, Vanna, is still getting used to having a house to explore. She is not familiar with dogs and careful of the other cats at this point, but appears to be getting more comfortable as the days go by. We are getting used to the sight of a pure white feline going up and down the stairs and walking through the house.

Toby arrived on Friday after a 7 hour drive from South Bend, Indiana. This is his first visit to our NE Iowa home. We have spent several hours visiting and catching up with news from his and our end. One of Pam’s goals for the visit was to have Toby take home a few boxes of his stuff that we had been saving for him (for twenty years). Toby was delighted to find that we still had his collection of Pok-e-mon cards and football trading cards from the late ’90s. Some of these cards may be worth anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars each. Toby plans to catalog them and do some research to find which cards, if any, have collector value.

The weekend was spent in good company and eating good food. Toby and I took a tour of local holiday lights, including the Elma Park Christmas light display. It was a very nice way to spend the weekend before Christmas.

The down side of the week was a major wind and rain storm that passed through Elma last Wednesday. This storm had been forecast a few days prior so was not a surprise, but the estimate of top wind speeds kept going up. We lost power for about 3 hours and had some dead branches on our yard but suffered no real damage. After the storm passed the weather service classified it as a F-0 event, with winds between 40 and 72 miles per hour. Unfortunately, nearby towns suffered a bit more damage and had no electrical power for most of the following day. One fatality was reported. Damage included loss of roofs and downed trees.

Ahead of the storm we set heat records for the month of December, with temps getting into the mid-60 degree range. The state of Minnesota recorded its first-ever December tornado. With no snow in the forecast for the upcoming week a white Christmas is doubtful. While I would like some snow for the big day, I certainly would not mind a milder winter this year.

In other holiday related news, we finished decorating our tree. A few purchases have arrived, including my Bean Boots and a couple pairs of flannel-lined jeans. Neighbors have added a few more outside lights and decorations to their yards and the town is beginning to look more and more festive. A week away from Christmas and we are pretty well set for it. Becky’s daughter, Caitlin, will be stopping by for a several day visit in the next week and we are looking forward to visiting with her.

Pam has been busy planning menus and organizing the house for Becky’s and Toby’s visit and working on embroidery projects; she is staying busy. I have been scanning more slides and have added photos to my Old Equipment gallery and started to change the John Deere from mower to snow plow. I have been hindered in this by my bad shoulder which is s-l-o-w-l-y improving but is far from normal. I had planned to replace the main drive belt as I know there are cracks in it, but this requires under-tractor work that I don’t feel like taking on. I may just mount the blade and hope the belt holds though the season. Tire chains and extra rear weights have already been installed. As there is no snow in the 10-day forecast I am in no hurry to finish the conversion.

We are finishing the year in pretty good shape, although a couple projects (laundry room, upstairs shower) are not yet finished. I did get my last load of yard debris out to the dump and unloaded, and finished what I hope is the last yard clean-up of the season. The mulched leaves from that session were spread over the Mary Lynn Memorial flower bed located on the east side of the house. I never thought I would be mulching leaves in mid-December but the storm had blown a large number of leaves in from surrounding yards and these had accumulated around the catio, garage, and fence lines. I took advantage of the mild temps and got rid of this accumulation.

We are looking forward to Christmas. At this stage of our lives we buy ourselves items we want or need and generally have a quiet day. This year we will have Becky here and visits from Toby and Caitlin will have punctuated the season with more family visits than has been our norm. One of the reasons we moved back to the Midwest was to have closer proximity to family and friends and this is reflected in our expanded social calendar.

Photo Archive

Family photos are the theme for this week’s post. These were taken in the late ’80s.

I have a few other photos I would like to include here. The first is our good friend Hank Tourtillott using his metal detector near Waldorf, Colorado. The others are of my 1953 Willys truck on the Savage Basin Road near Telluride, Colorado.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

When did tornadic activity get a “Category 0” rating? Did I miss something? I’m assuming a Category 0 means some wind rotation but no funnel cloud. Didn’t we use to call this just a strong storm? In any case, in December in the Midwest, who was expecting a “Category Anything.”

With vaccinations and boosters for visitors to Heart House, isn’t it something to be able to gather together in small groups again?

Happy Trails.

Last night and into this morning we had our first measurable snow for the season. It was not a heavy snow, only about 2 – 3 inches, but it covered the lawn and sidewalks. I was out shoveling and running the snow blower to clear our walks in hopes that they will melt off under the sunny sky.

Normally I would shovel this amount of snow but my shoulder is still bothering me and I could do only a limited amount of of shoveling, hence the blower.

On Wednesday we drove out to the same tree farm we had visited last year and cut our tree. It is in my bedroom this year as the Media Room is full of Becky’s plants. This is OK by me as I like waking up to the fresh pine scent. The tree is in the stand and full of water; decorating will come over the next few days. Photos will be in my next post.

Pam finished our cards and everything was mailed. We have started to receive cards and it is a great pleasure to open and read the included notes. We don’t have much planned for the holiday season; it is just nice to wake up and know there is nothing critical that needs to be done that day. This is not to say we are not working on projects, we are. Pam has started an embroidery project and I have been editing my transparency (slide) collection. It is just the pace of work is not as frantic as it had been over the good weather months.

I have discovered my slide collection is not well organized. Family photos are mixed in with trip and event photos, and I have a large collection of Colorado fall colors and back road trips. Other topics include old machinery, flowers, waterfalls, mine sites, and landscapes. These are all mixed in the sequence I took them which means they are not grouped by topic. Probably OK when the collection was small, but now I would rather they be in related groups so I have undertaken reorganizing them. That will be a long project!

In summary, we are slowing down a bit as the cold weather and snow build in, but continue work on more sedentary projects. Pam’s sister Becky’s home sale has not yet been finalized so she is not yet with us, but arrangements are moving ahead and we hope to have her at our place within the next week.

The other upcoming event is a planned visit from our son, Toby. It has been a while since we saw him at his South Bend, Indiana, home and we are looking forward to seeing him again.

Photo Archive

Normally I don’t say much about these photos, instead depending on a short intro and captions to describe them. This time will be a bit different; some of these photos require an extended description.

These first two photos are an example of that. These were taken in the late ’70s at the Colorado Yule marble quarry in Marble, Colorado. At that time the quarry was deserted and one could walk up and look into the vast chambers where marble had been quarried. The Tomb of the Unknowns, in Washington , D.C., was a 60-ton solid block of marble from this quarry. Several buildings in Denver, and many more across the country, were built using material from this quarry.

The following photos were taken near the Colorado town of Telluride in the late ’70s and early ’80’s and feature old mine sites. Quite a few were taken from the Savage Basin Road, not as well known as the Black Bear Road, but Savage Basin delivers great vistas and includes a vast amount of mining history.

I will have many more such photos in future posts; I hope you enjoy them.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

As a result of a random comment by daughter Felicity, I’ve been researching the differences between Victorian architectural styles. It appears Heart House is what is known as Folk Victorian, with elements of Queen Anne and Italianate. The Folk Victorian period in the Midwest spanned approximately 1880-1910, exactly the time period Heart House was constructed (1894) and the early years of the Tierney family’s residence (starting in 1907).

Folk Victorian house plans were fairly basic and usually symmetrical. Details were added with available local millwork – usually spindles (below porch rails) and spandrels (upper edges of porches), corbels (in assorted corners high and low), and ginger breading (in the eaves). Heart House has all of these. I characterize it in my mind as ostentatious East Coast Queen Anne meets practical Midwest farmhouse.

I have plans [at some point] to remove one level of our (flat, pseudo Italianate) tower. The tower actually needs a peaked roof for drainage and probably mitigation for bats – yet again. Since the house is a Folk Victorian, I feel we’re free to make tower changes and not ruin the architectural character of the place. Because – no two Folk Victorians look quite the same. Gotta love individuality and creativity.

Final Solstice cards are now beginning their voyages through the USPS; I look to my next project. (I have many projects on my list.)

Happy Trails.

There were a few notable events this week: Becky’s household goods arrived, we finished putting up our outside and inside Christmas lights, and I took a fall.

Becky’s household goods, which we are storing until she finds a new apartment, arrived on Monday. While most of her gear ended up in our garage, many items were taken upstairs to the guest bedroom. Unfortunately, Becky’s home sale ran into a snag and may not go through with this particular buyer. We will know more this upcoming Monday and hope for the best.

Here are a few photos of this event.

Becky has an interesting collection of houseplants which made the move OK due to mild weather. We have unpacked them and put some in the Media Room and in the Guest Bedroom. Here is a shot of one of the plant stands in the Media Room:

We hope Becky can sell her place and join us in the next few days.

This past week saw us pretty much completing our Christmas decorations for the year, with the exception of getting our tree. The place looks pretty good in daylight and when lit up at night. New this year is a large heart, made from rope lights, that we put up on the garden fence. Here are several photos of our decorating:

(Note: I added another string of white lights to the lower porch railings after this photo was taken as both Pam and I felt it was needed.)

All the outside lights are now on timers which eliminates the need to plug them in at dusk and unplug them when we go to bed. The inside “window” decorations are now powered up and down with little switch modules that plug into the outlets. This eliminates the need to plug and unplug their cords and is a quite handy addition this year.

The only drawback to the week was a fall I suffered when filling the bird feeder. The two-step ladder I had been using collapsed under me and I landed hard on my right shoulder. Using a combination of ice packs, my TENS machine, and Aleve capsules I have regained some movement in the right shoulder but it will be weeks before I have full use of it again. I had injured the same shoulder a couple years ago and this fall certainly didn’t help matters. Good thing our outside activities have pretty much ended!

General activities: I was able to do a final leaf clean-up but still need to take the trailer to the dump and unload it. That may not happen for a few days but is not really critical. I have been working on inside stuff such as scanning a few more slides and reading. A couple galleries have been upgraded and another dozen photos have been added to the Heart House Gallery. When I decide to sit a spell, Elmo The Cat has approved of my reading location, landing on my lap as I read.

Pam is nearing the end of her greeting card project and plans to finish this coming week. We scan the weather report for a good day to travel to the tree farm and fresh cut our holiday tree. I will continue to work on scanning some of my slides and negatives and weeding out many that are not worth keeping.

Photo Archive

Ranging from the late ’70s to the ’90s, here are some family photos.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

Solstice cards are taking a wee bit more time than initially planned. Cards being sent outside the Midwest are ready to go. Midwest cards still in process.

Happy Trails.