Cabin Trip and More

View from the porch.

The back porch.

Before I get into blogging about the latest trip to the cabin, I have to add an "I told you so" from my post last week regarding alligators and other animals.  A 12 foot 4 inch long, 800 pound alligator was run over on the road this week in North Carolina near Manteo.  Click here to read the news article.  http://wavy.com/2014/05/26/800-pound-gator-killed-by-vehicle-in-dare-county/   Apparently, people fed it because they had nicknamed it Cheeseburger after its favorite food.  I admit I don't know a lot about alligators, but I question the wisdom of feeding a large free roaming reptile.  It gets the reptile used to being around people and expecting food.  What happens when a gator shows up and you don't have any?  And what happens when you show up somewhere not expecting alligators?

Anyway, on to a more pleasant topic: the cabin.  I visited with family and made a trip up to the cabin for a few days.  When I was there a few weeks ago, it was still winter cold and most trees had not yet leafed out.  It is now well into the blooming season.  The stream and river is still running high from the spring run off. 

It was still cool up there, at least until the last day.  The mornings were in the forties (Fahrenheit).  We slept under blankets.  It is a wonderful feeling to wake up in the morning and snuggle down under the blankets for a few minutes longer rather than having to jump up and get started on the day.  Most days were in the upper sixties to low seventies.  There was a chill wind, so we were wearing long sleeves and flannel shirts.  It was a bit of a shock to the system when we came down off the mountain and it was ninety degrees down below.

The old ceiling.

Aside from mowing and weed whacking, we worked a little bit on the ceiling.  We have decided to revisit our plan for the ceiling.  We are going to try to put up V groove strips on the ceiling.  The individual strips are flexible enough that they should be able to conform to our ceiling which is not level.  I'll let you know how it turns out.  No matter what, it has to be an improvement over they way the ceiling looks now.  Our plan is to finish the boards with a clear polyurethane here at home and then bring them up to the cabin.  That way we will be able to immediately get to work on putting the boards on the ceiling.  We are hoping that the changes in the height of the ceiling won't be too noticeable. 

No leaves in April.

We only had a few furring strips up there, so that part of the work is not finished.  We should complete that section on our next trip.  Then our plan is to paint and re-stain the wood wall before we actually put the ceiling up.  We don't want to mess up our nice new ceiling with splotches of paint. 

A good part of the trip was spent sitting on the porch.  We really needed a break since we have been working so hard to repair the damage to our home from the plumbing disaster.  We have completed the den and hallway, installed new dry wall in the large and small bedroom, and painted the large bedroom and both closets.  The new flooring has been laid in the large bedroom closet and the trim has been installed.  This coming weekend, we are ready to lay the floor in the larger bedroom.  All this time we have been sleeping on the floor on air mattresses.  We are now only two weekends out from putting  furniture back in the bedroom. 

One of the small jobs we did up at the cabin was to repair the screen on the porch door.  It has had a hole in the screen for some time.  We had wanted to replace the door, but could not find a wooden screen door that seemed to go with the cabin.  The style of doors that we saw at the home stores just looked wrong with the style of the cabin.  I think that if it ever breaks, we will have to build one ourselves.

While I was visiting with my family, I was gifted an interesting piece of art by my step-father.  My next blog post will be about that art piece.  We just came back from the cabin, and I need some time to research the artist.  Check back on Sunday.

Holiday weekend - No Post Today

Sorry everyone, it's a holiday weekend, and I'm spending the time with family and friends.

The Thing in the Woods

This is an off topic post, as it is not about art, but from time to time I do post about my trips to the mountains so it is not entirely off the mark.  I want to post about the "thing in the woods" because it is becoming more of an issue than you might expect.

Before I get too much further into this post, I want to reference some documented instances so you will not think I have gone completely off the deep end.  In the last couple of years, there have been some things in the woods that ought not to be there.  If you do web searches, you can find documentation of these items in news articles.

On two occasions here, there have been chimpanzees in the woods here in Mechanicsville.  They had escaped from a private zoo.  The owners did the ethical thing and notified the authorities that the animals had escaped.  The first time only one escaped.  The second time two escaped.  They were caught just two miles from my home if you go by the road.  After the second escape it was discovered that the private zoo had more chimps than they were licensed to have on the premises.  Because of that and the two escapes, they were ordered to find new homes for the chimps or else the chimps would be euthanized.  This made the national news.  It really came down to the wire because it is not easy to find a home for a whole group of chimpanzees.  Eventually, a new home was found that would keep them together as a family.  But at least for a time, there were animals that don't normally exist in this area in the woods around where I live.

Chimpanzees are not the only thing that have been found in the woods around here, although this was water surrounded by woods.  Alligators!  Yes, alligators have been found in the Falling Creek Reservoir in Midlothian, Virginia about two years ago.  This is about 25 minutes travel time from my house.  The first time someone found an alligator, they thought that they were doing a public service by eliminating a predator from a recreation area.  Wrong idea!  The man was fined for killing a gator.  The news spin was that this was an isolated event of someone dumping a gator.  Last year, they found a baby  gator, so that indicates that there are more gators in the area and that they are breeding.  Let that be a lesson to you.  1. Don't kill a gator unless you have to for self defense.  (Always remember to say "It was coming at me")  2.  There are gators in unexpected areas now.  When you are around fresh water, check for slide areas and keep on the alert.  According to Wikipedia an American alligator can grow to be 790 pounds and 13 feet long.

It used to be that alligators came no further north than North Carolina.  Their natural boundary seemed to be the Alligator River.  Yes, it was named that because there were alligators in it.  However, in recent years they have moved north into Virginia.  There are numerous news reports of alligators having been found in the Dismal Swamp in the last couple of years.  The general consensus is that they have migrated up through the swamp and river systems on their own, that they have not been dumped into the swamp.  There is some suspicion that the ones found in the reservoir in Midlothian were dumped.  However, that river system runs all through the state so it could be connected to the place where they are supposed to have arrived naturally. It is not totally unreasonable to suspect that they might have meandered a little further north, and other news stories have already suggested that bears use this route. While I was following links on the alligators in the swamp stories, I found a map that showed where alligators had been found and it listed whether they were alligators that had arrived naturally or whether they were suspected of being dumped gators. I found that there had been an alligator found in West Virginia.  It was suspected that  this was a dumped gator.  There seems to be a whole lot of "dumping" going on.  More on "dumping" exotic animals in a moment, but first, another natural thing in the woods.

Bears!  I live in a neighborhood that borders on farm land.  However, being outside the state capital, there is a lot of suburbia around here.  Most people aren't expecting to have to deal with bears, but they should.  A news report of a bear in your suburban neighborhood, a  bear at your bird feeder, or a bear in the road is more than an annual event.  While I was researching what bear tracks looked like while I was making my latest walking stick, I came upon an interesting article.  It was entitled "Virginia Does Not Have A Bear Problem".  The gist of the article was that bears will eat your dog's food if you leave it out, tear up your bird feeder if you leave it in reach, or get into your garbage if you don't secure it properly.  So my take on that is Virginia does not have a problem with bears but you might.  So if you live near woodlands or swamp you might want to keep an eye out.  Yes Virginia, there have been bear attacks.

More importantly, if you are camping, make sure that your food is properly secured, and don't keep food in your tent.  Every time I go to the mountains, I see people camping in the forest that have coolers out within easy reach of bears.  Because this post is already getting long, I'm going to suggest that you research how to secure your food rather than explaining it here.  Don't think your car is a safe place to store food either.  There have been reports coming out of Yellowstone that bears are not only breaking into cars for food, that they also have an understanding that certain types of vehicles were easier to break into than others.  When I visited a forest in California, they required people to take their child's car seats out of the car and leave them on top of the cars because children's car seats so frequently have spilled food and drink on them that they attract bears which break into the cars.  I guess the reasoning is that it was better to lose the car seat than to have the whole car damaged.

It used to be that we did not have coyotes and wolves in Virginia.  I guess about a decade ago they found the first coyote in my county when someone accidentally hit one when it crossed the road.  The driver took it to a vet, thinking he had hit a dog.  Now coyotes are a nuisance all over the state.  Although I have not been able to find anything on wolves being re-introduced into Virginia, they have been deliberately re-introduced into North Carolina.   The wolves seem to be coming up through the mountainous areas on their own.  I read in a magazine of one wolf being shot in Virginia.  Again, there was a fine.  It is hard to use the "it was coming at me" defense when it is shot in the rear end.

Now, as I mentioned above, more on the dumping of exotic animals. Maybe some are dumped.  More than likely, some escaped rather than being dumped, there is no way to tell.  A few years ago, there was a report of a lion in a neighborhood in Chesterfield, again, just 25 minutes away from my home.  Some people were convinced it was a hoax because it was right before Halloween and because no lion was caught.  There was a big fire in the Dismal Swamp in that time frame.  It could have driven a mountain lion out of the confines of the swamp.  In any case, that is not the only report of big cat sightings.

Virginia Game and Inland Fisheries flatly denies that there are big cats in Virginia.  Up until the the 1960s there was a predator eradication program here and supposedly all of mountain lions and black panthers (Virginia was the northernmost part of their range.)  were killed then.  When people have made reports of sightings, the wardens just flat out deny that there are any big cats here.  Although it is possible that they were all eliminated here at one time, it does not mean that big cats cannot come back.  Especially since the predator eradication program ended somewhere between forty or fifty years ago.  One author of a book about Cougars speculates that the denial is because Game and Inland Fisheries will have to do something about it if big cats are proven to be here.  A study will have to be done to determine how many there are, hunters will sue because they want to hunt, and animal rights groups will sue because they will want them protected.  The cost will be considerable.  But the natural repopulation is not the biggest problem.  The bigger problem is the dumped or escaped cats.

From time to time I visit a website where you can report  big cat sightings in Virginia.  Most of them are of the "I saw one while I was out hiking" variety.  However, once in a while someone gets a picture.  Strangely, this website tries to debunk the sightings, claiming that they are hoaxes.  However, they will admit if they are wrong.  On one occasion, the photo absolutely showed a cougar (mountain lion) that had been shot, but then they said that they could not prove the picture was taken in Virginia.  (The claim and photo made by a third party due to extenuating circumstances.  The person who allegedly shot the cougar supposedly did so because it charged them while they were dressing a deer.  [The "it was coming at me" defense] However, even though cougars are supposedly non-existent here, there is a fine for shooting one.)  On another occasion, so many people signed affidavits saying that they had seen a big cat, and there was a picture of it that the website could not sweep it under the rug.  They finally said yes it was a predator cat.  It was a jaguar.  They said it probably was someone's pet or zoo animal and that it had escaped.  This was in Amelia, the county on the far side of Midlothian where the alligators were found.

On another website relating to big cats in Virginia, I read that there are more than a thousand people in Virginia keeping large cats either as pets or in private zoos.  Many of these animals are cross bred animals because it is illegal to keep a pure bred.  Many of these animals would not cross breed in the wild normally, but are bred by animal traffickers. There are ligers, a cross between a male lion and a female tiger and  tigons, a male tiger and a lioness.  There is a lot of profit in this, and the possession of these cross bred animals is largely unregulated as the laws generally only refer to specific animals.  Just this week there was an item in the national news about a woman whose animal was seized because it was a bob cat as confirmed by DNA.  The woman claimed it was a cross between a female bob cat and a Maine coon cat.  The animal was returned to her when the DNA of the male parent was not able to be determined.  (This was in New Jersey)

I guess that this is really the gist of my post here.  When I mentioned the chimpanzees escaping at the beginning of the article, I also stated that the owners had done the ethical thing and had alerted the authorities that large, potentially dangerous animals were on the loose.  Look what happened there.  They lost their chimpanzees.  People who are keeping animals illegally, or who are suddenly worried about the liability if their escaped animal harms someone may not report a lost animal.  (One website referenced other websites with information on how to track your escaped cougar.)  There may be things in your woods that aren't supposed to be there.  And if it is an escaped animal that has been exposed to humans, it will not have the same fear of humans that wild animals have.  So my point here is that natural predators that were not in the woods for many years are coming back.  And there might even be animals in the woods that are not supposed to be there at all.  The majority of the time, these animals are going to avoid you, but if they are hungry and out of their element, especially if they have been around humans and associate them with being fed, all bets are off.  Keep an eye out, because things are not like they used to be.

Today's Field Project

Field 5-18-2014

This is today's field project picture.  It was taken at 8:20 am.  The temperature was 51 degrees Fahrenheit.  Winds were from the NNE at 9 miles per hour.  It was partly cloudy.  Although it is not in the picture, the farmer has mowed a little piece of the field and stuck the for sale sign in plain sight again.  I am beginning to suspect that he is not planning to plant anything in the field this year.  Just my luck that the year I decide to take a series of photos about the crops growing that nothing would be planted.  Well, I guess we shall see what a field look like when it lie fallow.

The dogwoods and azaleas have lost their blooms already, but many things are still blooming.  I am including some photos from the yard while everything looks so nice and fresh.  The round disks on the ground in the picture are some of my outdoor art works.  The light was in the wrong direction, so I could not pick the detail of them in the shot.  The Comfrey has really shot up and is in full bloom.  No matter how hard I tried, I could not pick up their delicate lavender color in the photo well.

Wild roses.

Also, I see that the raspberries that grow wild around the edge of the field are blooming.  It looks like there might be a bumper crop this year.  It is enjoyable to take a walk in the morning and come back with a handful of fresh raspberries to have with breakfast.  

Buddha in the Comfrey.

I don't have time to do a regular blog post this morning.  We are getting ready to lay the new laminate floor in the larger of the downstairs bedrooms.  Earlier this weekend we painted the bedroom.  Between the bedroom and the closet it is almost as much square footage as the den, so I don't know if we will complete the floor in there today or not.  However, slowly but surely we are starting to see the house get back together. 

Another photo is below, so please scroll down.

Wild raspberries.

Hypertufa Spheres - Part 5

Balanced Hypertufa balls.

I've been blogging about making Hypertufa spheres and what I did with the leftover Hypertufa. I had used anything I had available for a mold, and I still had a bit left.   I decided to make some hand rolled balls of Hypertufa.  I knew they would flatten out on the bottom because they would be sitting on something flat, but that was not really an issue since I was just doing something with the end of the leftovers.

Painted with heat set paints.

My first plan was to paint them to test if they could be painted with the heat set in the oven glass paints.  I have saved a couple for that purpose.  I used these paints on some stepping stones and the color have barely faded even though the stepping stones have been outside for years.  I use a dedicated toaster oven for this.  I am not sure if the heat in the oven paints will work for this project because I have concerns that the peat moss could ignite.  The oven temperature is low; the temperature is only 200 degrees Fahrenheit, so there is some possibility that it will work.  I'll let you know when I get that far.  This is definitely an outdoor experiment with a fire extinguisher handy.

Then I had another inspiration for the other Hypertufa balls.  I have seen from time to time artfully stacked stones.  Some of the stacked stones are actually balanced.  Other stacked stones have holes drilled through them and have rods to help them stay in place.  Since I have an abundance of premixed thin set mortar, I decided to dab a bit of mortar on each one and stack them like the stones.  For some reason, my husband was convinced that this was not going to work.  Guess what, it worked.  Once I can get back into my studio, I'm going to paint them to look like rocks.   If my heat setting experiments work, I may to heat them in the oven.  I am pretty sure one of them is short enough to fit.  If they fall apart, I have a place for them.  Our shed has a drip line from rain falling from the roof.  Our property is so steep in the back that we have a problem with erosion in this area.  It is covered with rock to help keep erosion to a minimum.  I'll just add these "rocks" to the other rocks. 

The blog platform is starting to give me trouble uploading photos and where the paragraphs should be placed, so there is more text below
the photos.  I'm not sure why it acts up, but
once it starts, there is no getting things right.
The platform is getting so wonky that it started
removing the photos when I started to type this.
It would not let me reposition the photos or move the text. Sorry about the messy look of the blog post today.

Hickroy heartwood laminate.

Just to give regular readers an update on the remodel after plumbing crisis: we have reached the half-way point.  The den and hallway have been painted, the new floor has been laid, and the molding and trim are now back in place.  The laminate we chose for flooring is quite different from what was down there before.  Reclaimed barn board is very hot in decorating themes right now.  We chose a laminate that looks like reclaimed barn board made from heart wood of Hickory.  It has simulated nail holes and knots, and even has slightly raised areas and beveled edges on the planks,so it feel like you are walking on planks rather than a flat even floor.  We really would have preferred a slightly lighter floor, but this is what the manufacturers are making at the moment.  Most of the other flooring in the stores was much darker.  One photo is of the long sweep down the hall.  The other photo is a close up of the flooring, so you can see how different one plank is from another.  We have not yet had a chance to clean up yet.  The sofa had to stay in the room covered, because it was so heavy that we could barely move it. 

This week we will be starting on the large bedroom.  The old floor has already been taken up in that area.  The company doing the remediation after the damage took the old flooring away and had steam cleaned the concrete.  After Bill and I laid the new concrete we cleaned the floor and walls again because of all the concrete dust.  We will paint and then lay the new floor and add new baseboard
in that room.

Hypertufa Spheres - Part 4

Mold was a light fixture globe.

Today's blog is not exactly a Hypertufa sphere, but it is sphere-ish.  As I blogged about a couple of posts ago, I had a lot of extra Hypertufa left over after I cast the second half-sphere in the concrete mold.  Having already filled my available plastic ball as a mold, I decided to try another experiment of something I read on the internet.  I decided to try using a glass globe as a mold. 

Filed 5-11-2014

This type of mold is a one off.  You have to break it to get your object out of it.  You spray the mold with Pam cooing spray; then fill it with the Hypertufa Mix.  As with the plastic ball mold for last week, I had let it set in the closed plastic bag for a week rather than the one day most internet sites suggested. This was mainly due to bad weather and being busy with home repairs.

For Sale sign almost hidden.

The first part of getting ready to remove the mold is to don eye protection and heavy gloves.  Once ready to remove the mold, I stuck it into a heavy duty construction bag, and smacked it firmly with a hammer in several spots to break the glass.  (The eye protection is important, a few pieces of broken glass did come flying out of the bag.)  I had to take the thing out to examine it a couple of times to look at it to make sure that all the glass was off, so the gloves were handy too.  All in all, the glass came off without too much trouble.  I was surprised to find that the Hypertufa had picked up the detail of the floral motif.  I had thought that it was only on the outside of the mold.  I can see this opening up all sorts of possibilities for garden art from thrift store finds.

It is Sunday, so that means it is field project day.  The weeds in the field are really taking off.  They have almost covered that pesky for sale sign that popped up in the field.  The temperature was 64 degrees Fahrenheit and the winds were calm.  The picture was taken a little early this morning at 8:10 am.  I have to get back to work on the home
repairs.

An update on the plumbing disaster:  Bill and I completed laying the floor yesterday.  We had optimistically hoped to complete it last Sunday, but it really was a two day job.   It took two ten hour days to lay the den and hallway.  Today we are putting in the baseboard and trim.  At that point we will have completed fifty percent of the renovation after the plumbing disaster.  I'll post a picture of the floor on Wednesday.  I have not taken one of it yet.  By the time we finished we were too tired to do anything.

Hypertufa Spheres- Part 3

Cast as half-spheres and mortared together.

Child's ball was used as a mold.

Today I'm posting the first photos of my Hypertufa (pronounced Hyper-too-fuh) spheres.  I've learned a lot from making the spheres, and I hope you can learn from my experiences.  It was not a difficult project, but there are some things that are worth knowing before you get started.  Before beginning this project I had read a number of articles and posts around the web.  I found a bit of useful information on each site, but not a site that had all the information in one place.  I hope that people who view this site will be able to get a lot of the information here that I had to search all over the web for.  And of course, I've learned from my mistakes, so there is always something to add in that area.

The first picture is of the ball made from the ten inch diameter half-sphere concrete mold.   It is cast in two parts and then put together using thin set mortar.  The Hypertufa mix I used was 1 part Portland cement to 1.5 parts Pete Moss, and 1.5 parts Vermiculite.  The mold is sprayed with Pam cooking spray for a mold release.  I mixed this mixture with acrylic liquid Mortar Ad Mix and water.  The first half-sphere had a little too much water in it.  It allowed a little of the cement mixture to leak out underneath the mold when it was flipped over, resulting in a slight lip forming on the ball.  I could have removed it easily using a putty knife or razor scraper if I had dealt with it after it had sat in plastic for a week.  At this point, I'll probably remove it with an Angle Grinder.  One of these days I'll get around to it. 

The Hypertufa mixture is much lighter than using cement.  On one website, someone had calculated the weight of this ten inch mold using concrete.  That ball weighed in at ninety pounds.  I weighed my Hypertufa ball yesterday.  It only weighed twenty pounds.  That is a workable weight.  The half-sphere mold would only weigh ten pounds, so it is easy to flip it over.   A twenty pound ball is easily lifted.

You can see a center line where I stuck it together with the Thin Set Mortar.  I count this as one of my mistakes.  I purchased a bucket of premixed Thin Set Mortar.  I thought it would be easier to use it on two counts.  First, I would not have to find another bucket to store the rest of the remaining mortar.  At this point, I would have had to purchase one.  The second consideration was that by using premixed Thin Set Mortar that I would have less clean up, as I would not have to scrub out the mixing trough.   Well, there was less clean up because I did not have to clean the trough, but using that premixed mortar was a real mess.  It had so much plasticizer already mixed in it that the mortar was like tar.  It was sticky and stringy and difficult to use.  It did not clean off the ball well.  (One of the web sites had said that the mortar
wiped off easily with using regular tissues.  It might have if I had not used this plasticized premixed stuff.)    Because the mortar mix was so sticky, I did not do the best job of getting the rim completely smooth.  The mortar was sticking to the ball, everything I had on, and everything it touched.  I finally decided to quit while I was ahead.  I had used a silicone spatula to spread the mortar and the stuff did wash off that easily.  However, I ended up throwing my rubber gloves away.  The mortar would not wash off of them at all.

The ten inch diameter mold is a true sphere shape.  It rolls very easily.  When you get ready to mortar the halves together, make sure that you have the half-sphere braced well so that it won't be rolling around while you are adding the other half.  Because it rolls so easily, the slightest imbalance is going to cause the top half to slide around on top of the mortar.  I had to keep moving it back into place until I had the ball balanced just right.  In other circumstances, I would probably have done a better job of it.  In the middle of the recovery from the plumbing disaster that befell my home, some of the things that I might have used to make the job easier were inaccessible and I was working in less a than ideal place.

As it is, this ball could stay outside all year.  I've read that if you treat it with a white vinegar and water solution to remove alkalinity that it could be encouraged to have moss grow on it.  This ball could also be used as the base of a mosaic gazing ball.  I would recommend bringing it inside in freezing weather if you add tiles and grout.  Or, the ball could be painted. 

I had some extra mix left over, so I experimented with another method of making a Hypertufa ball.  This ball used a child's ball as a mold.  I purchased this ball at Walmart.  Right now they are everywhere, but as soon as they sell out you won't see anymore for months.  So buy them now if you want them.  I don't have a picture of the ball itself, but it was the size is about eight inches in diameter when purchased, but the material is stretchy, so after the air was let out it became significantly smaller.  It made a ball somewhere between five and six inches in diameter. You cut a hole in the top large enough to get your hand into so you can add the hypertufa.  (Note, once you cut the ball, it will reduce in diameter. as it deflates.) Spray the inside of the ball with Pam cooking spray as a mold release.   Add a little hypertufa tap it down firmly.  If it is not firm, it will leave air pockets that are voids in the ball.  Fill it full, seal the ball in a plastic bag.  On the internet, it said to leave the ball nestled in sand to help keep it from flattening out on the bottom.  (See last Sunday's blog post for a picture of the ball nestled in a bucket of shavings.)I did not have sand, but I had wood shavings, so I used that instead.  For the most part, it worked.  The bottom was slightly flattened, but not so much that you would notice without a close inspection.  The opening at the top was more problematic.  It was hard to get it completely rounded. 

I was concerned that the  top of the ball would stick into the concrete mix and not come off, but that did not happen.  What did happen was that the ball formed a slight peak at the top.  This had to be shaved off once the ball came out of the mold.  You can still see a slight circle around the ball in the second picture.  I used a putty knife to shave the excess concrete from the ball. 

Again, there is something to be learned from a mistake.  From my reading on the internet, the instructions for making these balls said leave them in the mold for one day and then remove the mold them and let them sit in plastic for a week.  That is exactly what I did for the 10 inch diameter sphere mold.  However, with the mold created from a child's ball, that is not how it worked out.  Due to pouring rain and trying to get things back into some semblance of order after the plumbing disaster (see previous posts for info on that), this mold set in the plastic bag for a week.  I feared that this part of the project would be a total loss.  As it turns out, it was not. 

Once I was able to get to work on the mold, I cut into the top edge of the rubber ball.  Once started, the ball pealed away in a spiral around the concrete ball.  The ball was still quite moist from being sealed in a plastic bag.  I was able to use a putty knife to pare down the part of the ball that was above the top of the ball mold.  It was firmer than if I had tried to take it out after only one day.  I count this as a good thing, because some people had said that sometimes their balls fell apart when trying to remove them from the mold.  So, this was a happy accident that has added something to the conversation.   Even after leaving it in this type of mold for a week, it was no problem whatsoever to unmold it or to shave down the raised areas. 

Due to the mold having to sit on something, it is not a true sphere. It is somewhat flattened on the bottom.  However, it is not so badly flattened that the casual observer would pay much attention to it.

This post is getting long, so I will blog about the other experimental molds on Sunday.

Field Project Photos

Field 5-4-2014

I've been working on the Hypertufa Spheres, but I don't have new photos yet.  I will have the first photos of the sphere and some of the balls ready for posting on Wednesday.

Today, I barely have time to grab a photo for the field project.  My field project is to photograph the field and how much it changes from week to week over the course of a year.  Today's photo was taken at 8:20 am.  The temperature was 57 degrees (Fahrenheit).  The wind was calm.  The vegetation has grown to almost the height of the cornstalks that were left in the field from last year.  The flowers remind me of sweet peas, although the leaf does not look like peas. 

The plants in the yard are also flowering.  The Comfrey growing next to the Buddha statue has pretty purple bell shaped flowers on it.  The Iris were only small green leaves a few weeks ago have flowered.  We have already had to mow the lawn twice. 

Buddha in the garden.

I did not post about the Hypertufa spheres today because we are starting early this morning on the next phase of the reconstruction of our home.  Yesterday Bill painted the den and hallway.  Today we lay the flooring in those areas.  This is a major step in getting the house back together after the plumbing disaster.  Next weekend we will be painting one of the bedrooms and hopefully laying the floor in there.  Here's hoping that we will be able to lay the floor.  We have to wait until the concrete cures to a certain level of dryness.  I'm thinking that we will probably start with the smaller bedroom because the trench created to dig up the pipes in the slab was not as deep in that area.  I guess we will cross that bridge when we get to it.