Thursday, February 21, 2008

Gloomy in the Ship

It has been the cloudiest winter I ever remember experiencing in Colorado. We have a ton of snow. This morning it was snowing so hard we couldn't see the canyon. Our swing has snow clear up to the seat. This is the kind of weather that makes solar life a little uncomfortable. We aren't getting any solar gain for our passive solar heat so I'm burning beetle killed pinon in the wood burning stove for heat. I do have to say this, though, a conventional house would not have stayed above 58 degrees Fahrenheit without supplemental heat when the exterior temp was in the high teens, so the house is working well. When we went to Mexico for a week we didn't have to worry about our pipes freezing which is always a concern in the mountains in winter. Even with all the snow and cloud cover, our photovoltaic panels are keeping us supplied with electricity.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Time Flies

I had all but forgotten that I had started this blog when we were first moving into the house. Decided to come back to it because amazingly enough almost 600 people have viewed one of the videos I posted to YouTube about our house.


Today we had two "wildlife" sightings. Early this morning when Rick was opening the drapes he saw a bob cat in front of the house. It disappeared over the lip of the canyon edge before I could spot it. A few hours later the dogs became very agitated and I figured the cat had returned. When I got to the far end of the house and looked out there was a little white fluff ball of a dog. I don't know where it came from or where it went. Like us, our neighbors tend to have large dogs, the better to not become prey.