This morning was sad. I drove my 1996 Saturn SL2, which flunked inspection back in December, to Varna Auto Service for junking. I'd bought it new, with ten miles on it, in May 1996. It had done well, climbing a...
My house had a questionable roof when I bought it in 1999. It didn't seem to leak, but it didn't look likely to last, either. The old roof, looking less than perfect. I've thought about replacing it for years, and...
We have nice neighbors. Last year I had invited a lot of people to my birthday party, more than cars would fit into our driveway, So when the birthday came, Simon went over to our neighbors across the street, The...
I'd been planning since July to take a week off and build a coop for our chickens, but that week never arrived, and it's getting cold now. I finally broke down and bought a Chick-N-Barn kit. The kit was easy...
One of the more problematic features of my house has been the approaches. The front entrance has steep wooden stairs that lead mostly nowhere, though at one point there must have been a brick sidewalk. The back entrance has tilted...
I like deep snow. Spring (my dog) is a little less certain. Dog in snow with lamp. Yes, that's the barbecue grill, turned into strange white pyramid with a handle....
For the past few days, I've heard occasional crazy howling that I've always taken to be coyotes. I heard it last winter too, though usually the rest of the year is quiet. It's eerie, but otherwise fine - except that...
While the sudden burst of plant growth in my backyard was a change, especially since so much less of it was grass, the permanent work we did this summer was mostly digging. Some of that was digging to plant trees...
It's been a bit too serious around here, but Spring and Sprocket would like to change that. Spring as a witch. Sprocket as a devil....
Although we've done some very large things to my yard and gardens this year, there was still a large area in the back yard that was basically just lawn. After turning a smaller area in the front yard by hand,...
While the garden has seen a lot of work this year, it's also been hosting a rather large number of unexpected visitors. Some of this is because of the large piles of decaying mulch around, and some of it is...
There's been a dead poplar standing on the far edge of my back yard since we bought the house. It's been decaying slowly, but today it put on a real show - or at least a visitor to it did....
The garden work has slowed down a little as planting season comes to an end. We planted lots of trees, including plum, hazelnut, birch, poplar, maple, and chestnut, but work on major changes to the overall landscape has slowed down...
I wrote earlier about the beds and paths we built outside my back door on Monday, and on Thursday and Friday we continued that project. Behind my house there is a deck, was a yard, and is then a series...
Joshua Dolan and his partner Grace came by my house today to work on contour mapping and also some construction. I'll cover the contour mapping more when there is a complete map, but the work we did to the small...
The main reason I had trees cut down last week was to increase the amount of sunlight my yard received to make it easier to grow things. This past weekend and Tuesday evening my girlfriend Angelika and I put ten...
It's been bright and sunny, but every time I've gone into downtown Ithaca I've noticed that it seems to be a week ahead of us for flowers. Today looks pretty nice, though! Tulips and daffodils bursting onto the scene This...
I mentioned earlier that I was working on permaculture design for my house and its surrounding area. A key part of that is planning, and I've hired Joshua Dolan to help with that and more. To get started, he and...
I'm starting a multi-year project this spring, changing the current mix of shade trees and ornamental plants on my property and increasing the number of edible or otherwise useful plants. I'm planning to use techniques from permaculture, developing a system...
I haven't seen a huge number of deer this year - though I did hit one at slow speed on Hanshaw Road a few weeks ago - so I was surprised to look out my window on this scene: Deer...
Yesterday I made what I hope will be the last necessary major energy-efficiency improvement to my house for a while. A few years ago, I had the furnace replaced and the house insulated, but since the water heater still worked,...
This winter, I've been trying to shovel my driveway rather than use my snowblower. The snowblower is small, loud, doesn't turn off until it runs out of gas, doesn't do a great job anyway, and is buried further in my...
My water heater's been less and less happy over the past few years, and I'd been thinking about solar energy anyway, so I called Performance Systems Contracting to take a look at possible solar water or power here. (They'd done...
Repairing all of my windows is going to be a big project, one that will take some time, though I hope I'll get better at it over time. I'm also trying to do some smaller projects, though I'm finding again...
Our house-painting saga has reached its happy conclusion. After power scraping in January, Bob and the crew from Perfect Painters returned two weeks ago to finish the job. They spent their first few days prepping, scraping, and priming, and they've...
I'd never planned to live in a white house, and the final coats of paint definitely won't be white, but my house has now changed from this brown: 1259 Dryden Road to this: My house in white primer. As usual,...
When we first bought our house, it was obvious that it needed a lot of work. We immediately stripped and refinished the floors throughout most of the house (and eventually added a layer to the livingroom floor). We had much...
This week's weather has been wonderful, and signs of spring are appearing all over. These are just a few pieces of a developing story. Crocuses bursting with color. Flowers amid the sticks. Sprocket, our small brown dog, sunning herself in...
While I don't love having Route 366 in front of my house, it's been nice to know that the forested property on the other side of 366 is Cornell Plantations nature preserve. Between that and the massive amounts of fill...
The last step in the professional work we're having done to our livingroom is complete: carpenters came yesterday from Perfect Painters/Heritage Builders and installed crown and shoe molding. Will and Luke transformed the look of the room in less than...
Today's the first day in a while that the house isn't busy with painters working on the walls. The exterior's been quiet since last week, as the rest of the stripping and painting won't start for a few months, but...
There isn't a lot of traffic on 366 today, but I suspect a few people may notice the strange appearance of my house over the next few months. 1259 Dryden Road, missing most of its paint. You can see the...
Back in April I posted some pictures of a visiting cardinal. The cardinal still enjoys banging into our windows, but now I have a new visitor: Bird, looking in I'm not sure what to make of this one, since it...
I took some pictures of blossoms on a tree in front of my house. The first picture here is pretty typical flower stuff, but the second has an extra feature you don't normally see in flower pictures, a passing truck....
The Ithaca Journal's editorial today examines the annual assessment process. This process has come under fire lately, largely because taxes and assessments have risen at the same time. I think the Journal is right that annual assessment and a central...
I wrote earlier about how we'd had an energy audit followed by major energy improvements to our house last year. Monday night, I got a call from the Energy Star folks saying that they wanted to take a look at...
I reported a few weeks ago on the energy efficiency improvements we made to the house last summer, and that our gas meter at that point looked very promising. A new bill has arrived, and the results are in: we...
Thanks in part to New York State, my 74-year-old house finally has substantial insulation and a new furnace. When we bought the house, it had been a rental property for years. The owners had lived in it briefly at some...
I live on a rural highway, New York State Route 366. It's a 45mph zone, largely used by commuters going to and from Cornell University and downtown Ithaca, with lots of gravel and concrete trucks going by during the day....
I live at 1259 Dryden Road, Ithaca, NY 14850. Does that address say Ithaca, when this blog is about Dryden? It sure does. The house is in the Town of Dryden, but is just barely in the Ithaca zip code,...