Ringtailed Cat, Christmas Parade, and Palominas Drum and Drill Team (18)

One of our neighbors dropped by recently to show us this picture of a Ringtailed Cat that had apparently been chased by her dog onto part of her house. It appears to be a young one, and it stayed up there all day before slipping away after dark. They are known to live in the mountains down here but aren't often seen during the day, so I scanned the picture and added it here.

Once again we all went out to watch the local Palominas Christmas Parade. Anyone and anything is pretty much allowed to march in it, as you can no doubt tell. Old equipment is always well represented. The machine below is a 1949 Allis-Chalmers Model G tractor.

Two years ago the parade included the "Palominas Drum and Drill Team", but for some reason it was missing last year. To the great joy and relief of everyone it returned this year in all its glory, although the temporary absence seemed to have diminished the discipline and precision of the members a bit, if not their enthusiasm.



In case the picture doesn't show it well, those are hand drills they are carrying.

Palm Nailer

We were originally planning to buy a framing nailer for the interior walls, but a suggestion by a friend of mine caused us to go with a palm nailer instead. It has turned out to be one of the best decisions we've made, as the palm nailer is quick, easy to use, and very versatile. The nailer handles a wide variety of nail sizes interchangeably (we've been using mostly 10D's and 16D's), and it gets into some really tight spaces that a framing nailer or a normal hammer wouldn't be able to even get near. It can be used with either hand, which really helps sometimes when you're up at the top of a ladder and need to get to an awkward spot.

Some palm nailers drive nails with a single powerful stroke, but his particular model uses lots of really short, sharp strokes. This seems to give better control, particularly when toenailing. The model we bought (we actually bought two of them) is made by Porter-Cable and was the highest rated of the brands we could find. It has held up excellently.

The DeWalt compressor is a standard 4-gallon, 2.5 horsepower model and it more than keeps up with the nailer. It's a heavy sucker, though, and I'm getting tired of lugging it back and forth at the beginning and end of each work day.



Addendum: We (just my wife and I) finished the framing all of the interior walls of the house in about three weeks. It was a piece of cake, thanks to these two tools (plus a saw, of course).

Road Damage

One afternoon in the middle of August we got about three inches of rain in less than an hour (I measured it). The ground was already pretty wet from rains the previous days, so pretty much all of this one just rolled down the mountainside taking everything with it. This is ... was ... the road up to our lot, and some of the rocks you see here are eight to ten inches across. The damage was much worse in other areas, and the washes were just roaring with water. It took me all day to repair the road so that vehicles could get through. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever be able to sell the Caterpillar when we finish the house.

This is the same road a little further down the hillside. It's not easy to tell in this picture, but the road is now about two thirds its previous width and the chasm to the right drops straight down about seven feet.

Amazingly, the drainage measures we had taken to protect our lot worked great and we had very little erosion anywhere except the normal washes. The house held up fine and was clean as soon as the water ran off the slab.

Rock Wrens in the Vent Tubes

Here's a curiousity. We accidentally left a couple of four inch vent tubes (these will feed outside
air to the fireplace) uncapped. Some Rock Wrens, as shown on below in a picture I stole from an
Audubon Society website, made nests in each of them. The nests were just twigs and stuff, but it
turns out these particular birds make a walkway of small stones at the entrance to their nests.
No one has figured out why, supposedly. I took the bottom picture looking into one of the tubes.
Each pebble is almost the size of a quarter, so these little birds had to work to get them up there.
The birds squawked and scolded us a bit if we got too close to the tubes, but otherwise pretty
much ignored us and often perched within a few feet of us while we worked.

                                          

Fairy Duster

Our lot is covered with a shrub-like plant called a Fairy Duster. They're in bloom now (April) and the flowers are really pretty. The plant grows sporadically all over the slopes but our lot seems to have way more than average. I'm not sure why but I'll settle for being lucky.

Here's what they look like up close. The flowers are feathery and delicate, but the plant itself is quite wiry and the roots go down at least three feet. We found that out when we were trenching.