Sunday, February 12, 2012

Local Habitat for Humanity ReStore

We are doing some housebuilding here at Timber Life, if you have been reading my posts a while you may have heard me speak of it.

The weather has turned off absolutely frigid the last couple of days and the nails are bending as we try to get the room walls put together. We don't have the ability to warm up our space.  We are dependent on the ambient temperature  for pliability of wood, as well as personal warmth...

With the inability to build yesterday, we decided it was time go find some fixtures to move forward when we warm up a little in the next week.

Our first stop for the day began at our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I wanted to get there early since the inventory changes from day to day. We arrived five minutes before the store doors opened for the scheduled Saturday: 9:00 - 6:00. Hubby and I were the third vehicle in the lot wanting to peruse the stock without having a lot of competition, but others had the same thought. The store was soon bustling with deal seekers.

We pulled into the parking lot about five minutes before the store opened
I want to applaud the location upgrade recently experienced by the ReStore. They had their beginning in a smaller building with a lack of parking; as they became better known they outgrew the space.

My visits to my Mom in Des Moines allowed me the chance to watch the reclamation of a building/business on Euclid Ave. and I-235, left vacant by one of the first lumber companies I became aware of on the eastside after calling the area home.

The Des Moines Home and Garden Show is in town this weekend too. A booth there is surely going to help  the public to become more aware of the alternative opportunities in recycling leftover, or unwanted building supplies. The inventory contains both new, and used.

My next post will give a little insight to what I saw...


Tuesday, February 7, 2012

A Retroactive Look of February Weather at Timber Life

Going through my blogposts I came across one, three years and a few days ago. Definitely a big difference in the amount of snow that year compared to this one at Timber Life. We were finally beginning to see some open ground with the growing strength of the afternoon sun.

This year we haven't seen any great accumulation of  snow. Sometimes it has taken a few hours,a couple of days to a week to disappear, but our tractor which usually has been called to duty already to get that stuff out of the way hasn't been used for that cause. At least not yet...

                                                     
                                                                 February 7th, 2012


Posted on February 5th, 2009





The deer have been populating open areas to feed. They are hungry and continue to search for food at all hours of the day now.

Timber floors still being covered with layers of snow, takes the deer out where the sun has opened ground in the thawing spells of last weekend.

These deer are only a sampling of what I saw and what has been seen.

Notice all the young ones...that number continues to grow because of the capability of 6 month old does to conceive and become mothers. I continue to see a very small deer,which I assume was born at the end of last summer, running with the herd.



Too much attention sent them off to look just over the fence for somewhere else to enjoy a nibble...

Returning to February 7th, 2012

Our deer population isn't as numerous as it was back in 2009 and before. Extreme winters,human hunting quotas and coyotes have been a factor in my opinion to a decline that seemed to become evident from my perspective last year. Maybe others see a different slant on the same picture.

The weather in the last week has brought some heavy fogs to blanket us. Yesterday, turned out to produce quite a show as the fog began to ascend at 11:30 in the morning. The sun didn't breakout of the clouds until much later in the day. However, before the temperatures warmed and sent the frost dashing earthward - I captured some visions of Mother Nature's crystalline designs to create works of my own for decorating my cabin in the woods...