Isle Royale Moose Wolf Project Volunteer - Annie!

Remember that lecture we attended in October in Ann Arbor, Michigan? An old friend of mine from high school, Jeff Holden, explained his role in the long-running predator-prey study on Isle Royale, in Lake Superior, and his role as a team leader in taking groups to the island. The study explores the relationship betwen the two populations to shed light on how ecological systems work. The function of the volunteer teams is to collect evidence on the ground from which information is drawn to support the study - the number of wolves and moose killed, how they died, evidence of disease or genetic abnormalities in the carcasses, and so on.

And now Annie has signed on. She will be a member of Jeff's team and will spend the first nine days of June trekking across the island's rugged wilderness, documenting kill sites and packing bones and antlers back for further study. Sounds like every 18-year-old girl's dream vacation! This should make for any number of fun blog posts this summer - stay tuned.

Merry Christmas!!!!

We are all home and enjoying being together on Christmas. Here's Annie enthusiastically modeling the super-comfy lounging pajamas her mom got her. And here's our rejuvenated Victrola, a (McAlpine) family heirloom that had seen better days and now is seeing them again. Lee Ann sneaked it off to a little furniture repair place and they refinished it and replaced some of the disintegrating oak veneer. It looks amazing. It cost her a small fortune in wrapping paper, but what a good gift!

Unidentified Frying Object

Looking up from my computer desk the other day, I spotted something in the lineup of shoes under my dresser that didn't register at first. It turned out to be our cat Stitches, looking for all the world like some weird animal slipper. The room's heat grate is under the dresser, and Stitches was happy to lay there in the hot air blast with my New Balances poaching herself.

(Formerly) Perfectly Good Kitchen

I had been content to loaf through most of December, but now have gotten restless and started on the next Tower House project. This involves tearing out the kitchen that a previous owner installed in what originally was the house's dining room. The photo shows the last of the creepy tile countertop as I broke it up for removal. Boy does that generate a lot of debris.

This morning I brought a couple of the base cabinets home to East Main where I am planning to build them into a kitchen island here - updates to follow.

Mayhem

Annie has inherited the baking gene from her mother. Here she is in full Christmas cookie mode, making about 15 different kinds of cookies all at once in our tiny kitchen. Last week it was Lee Ann baking fruitcakes - not the dry store-bought kind, but her delicious secret-recipe variety with big juicy cherries. Both these girls are bound to end up with fat husbands.

Meet Nick

Once again the horsey stork has visited a little equine bundle of joy upon us, and his name is Nick.

Lee Ann had been without a horse of her own for most of this year, and not too happy about it. Starting a month or so ago she began shopping seriously and, on November 30, found an irresistible deal. Nick is a three year old thoroughbred who was bred to race but never saw the track. He was relatively cheap, seems sound (that is, he is not obviously lame) and has an easygoing personality that Lee Ann appreciates after long association with various obstinate or downright hostile members of the horse world. He is now boarded at Win Row stables here in Lebanon, where Lee Ann is trying to get some weight on him and has begun training him. Wish her luck!

Christmas Prep

Thanks for sending us Christmas cards! Here is what they look like, festooning the mantel in our dining room. Very cheery. We have sent out a lot of our cards this week but still are working to finish up the season's mailings.
I have been shopping a few times this week in downtown Lebanon, a five minute walk from our house. This is a great town to walk in, and even better this time of year. Tonight I took a walk just before dusk and then saw the Glendower mansion (that's a beautiful big brick Greek Revival owned by the Warren County Historical Society) all lit up. Volunteers had decorated the rooms with old-timey Christmas decorations and the place was open for tours, so I spent an hour there soaking up the 1850s ambience. By the time I left it was plenty dark out, but not too cold, and I enjoyed looking at the big old houses in Lebanon's Floraville neighborhood all lit up for Christmas on my way home.

Rather Large Meal

It was a meal of epic proportions. Lee Ann cooked for two days and set out enough food for fifty, but we few did our best against it and in the end had made a not inconsiderable dent. Now we are of fairly epic proportions ourselves. Maybe a walk will help. After a nap.

And WOW, the spinach stuffed salmon with mustard glaze was amazing. Annie enjoyed it to the tune of about half her body weight. She won't be walking or napping that off any time soon.

Snow!

My cute little rental car was minding its own business here in the Kansas City Motel 6 parking lot. Then, sometime last night, from out of nowhere came snow where a little light rain was supposed to be.

I can't really complain - it is mid-November, after all. Besides, I like snow, especially the good-packing variety you get when it is 36 degrees out. Maybe I will have a snowball fight at the scrapyard today, rather than just another safety review. They wouldn't see that coming.

Third Time's The Charm

Here is Annie at Roanoke College last weekend. From the thumbs-up expression of glee, it seems she can sense a pretty darn stratospheric ACT retest score is on its way. Today she got the score,(a 30) which places her in the top 3 percent of college-bound high school seniors. Woo Hoo!!!

800 Mile Father-Daughter Road Trip

Last week I conducted a three-day safety school for my company here in Cincinnati. We finished at 4 p.m. on Friday, and I drove straight home and picked up Annie for a crazy 30 hours of driving and college visiting. It was tedious and, by turns, really fun.

Friday Night - We left home at 5:30, pointed toward Virginia. Annie has been accepted at a school in Salem VA (Roanoke College) and was registered to attend an open house on campus for most of Saturday. We also planned to drop in at Washington and Lee University, in nearby Lexington VA, where Annie has applied and is awaiting a decision. We drove 200 miles in four hours, angling across Ohio to Portsmouth and then to Charleston WV where we snagged a room at Motel 6 for the night.

What we learned Friday Night: 1) Annie has not lost her childhood habit of z-ing out for the duration as soon as a car in which she is a passenger shifts out of park. 2) West Virginia is not that scenic if it's dark out. 3) Motel 6 really does leave the light on for you.

Saturday First Half - Up early, and fueled up on potato chips (me) and meatless Egg McMuffins (Annie), we continued south and then east another 180 miles, passing into Virginia and reaching Salem a little after 8 a.m. On this day Annie shared the driving. The weather was perfect - blue skies and rising from the 40s to afternoon highs near 70 degrees. Checking out the charming Salem main street area adjacent to campus, we stopped in a coffee shop for second breakfast (Annie recommends the gingerbread chai, and I give the blueberry scones two thumbs up). We then walked the Roanoke campus before settling in for a financial aid presentation at 9:45, given for us and about 75 other early birds, followed by brunch in the student center cafeteria - way too much food by now. The main program began at 11 a.m. for a crowd that had swelled to about 300. We listened as two admissions staffers talked about the Roanoke experience. By now Annie had chatted up both the Director of Financial Aid and the VP of Admissions, the only kid to introduce herself to either of these speakers, and our basic questions were anwered. The program continued with student and faculty question/answer panels and campus tours until 3:30 p.m., but we instead took ourselves on another walk around campus and agreed to head out at about 1:00.

What we learned Saturday First Half: 1) Sometimes pictures do not lie - Roanoke's campus and setting are just as beautiful as the glossy brochures they sent us. 2) Something as mildly audacious as sitting in the front row of a college presentation can pay off in personal contact with the speakers. Whether this will result in extra consideration for scholarship dollars seems unlikely, but who knows? 3) Even when I am full, I will eat food if it is free. (Okay, I knew this one already.)

Saturday Second Half: From Salem, we drove 40 miles north to Lexington and the campus of Washington and Lee University. We arrived just as the admissions office was closing, but a nice lady there gave us self-guided tour materials. We spent a happy half hour walking the campus and reading about the history and traditions of the school. Then we drove home, retracing our steps and arriving well past 10 p.m. having logged 600 miles for the day.

What we learned Saturday Second Half: 1) Annie is definitely interested in Washington and Lee. (And not just because of the beautiful campus - it has terrific language programs too.) 2) The popular story that the ghost of Traveller, Robert E. Lee's horse, still roams the grounds is false. We were there for a good while and saw zero horse ghosts. 3) West Virginia is not that scenic if it's dark out.

Paydirt!

So there I was, digging away in the garden spot. Occasionally I would dig up an artifact - a fused door hinge, a part of a machine linkage, a chunk of a broken ceramic crock. Then, I turned up this 1885 Indian Head cent, in excellent condition except that it has turned green. A nice reward for my day's effort.

The Good Dirt

I had to share this photo of the garden in progress, which shows two things. 1) I didn't get done turning the soil this week (oh well), and 2) the soil here is amazing! I have had heavy clay soil in the last couple of places I tried to garden. This soil has enough clay for good tilth, but it is rich and crumbly with organic material. It is to the soil I had at my big garden in Georgetown as cake is to fudge. I could have mulched and composted in that garden for another ten years and not gotten dirt as nice as this. Maybe some master gardener of old worked the soil into this gorgeous shape for me and I am just lucky enough to reap the benefits.

Put On A Happy Face

Remember Jack? We have been tracking him from his birth and lonely upbringing as an only gourd. We saw Jack beat the odds, winning out against vine borers and the vagaries of weather to grow into a fine figure of a pumpkin. Now, after all that, having realized his destiny, Jack can lean back and smile.

Garden Work Begins

This is the back edge of the new garden spot. I dug a trench and have put in a line of stout old oak boards (scavenged from the barn) as a border to separate the lawn from the garden area. In theory this will keep the grass from spreading back into the garden and discourage moles from burrowing in. I began turning the sod too, but that was after this picture was taken. Turning and chopping up sod with a shovel is hard work for my finicky back so I can only do an hour or two per day of this. I hope to get the soil turned and covered this week - we'll see how I hold up.

New Vegetable Garden

Yesterday was a nice day out, and I am off work this week, so I began prep work for what will be our vegetable garden at the Tower House. The area is 14 feet by 28 feet and is bounded on two sides by concrete walks. Lee Ann has planted a row of boxwood bushes on the third side as a separation from the parking area beside the house.

This has been a staging area for Lee Ann's pond project, so it is strewn with debris and mounds of dirt but is mostly established grass which will need to be turned over and covered for the winter.

Camera Shy!

Our dog Danny is a fine pet in many ways but like all of us he has his little quirks.

On Monday morning Lee Ann and I took a walk on the bike trail near Oregonia. This is a very undeveloped and woodsy part of Warren County. We discovered another trail leading off into a big meadow and by reading the signs found out this is a wetlands restoration area. It made for an interesting walk.

So we took turns trying to get a photo of us walking Danny along the trail. Sounds simple, but something about the camera spooked Danny. He would see me or Lee Ann raise the camera and immediately cower away, as you see in the photos, turning his head and ruining the shot. For some reason, in Danny's mind the camera equals BIG TROUBLE. Do any of you dog psychologists out there know what's up with this?

My Flying Tiger

Years ago, when Annie was little, she worried that I would be lonely when I was traveling on business. She dug into her stuffed animal collection and found me a traveling buddy. Since then the little stripey guy and I have flown 680,000 miles on Delta Airlines to all corners of the U.S., plus selected stops in Mexico and Canada - and I have never been too very lonely. This week (for the third week in a row) we are in Kansas and Missouri, business traveler and faux feline, keeping each other's spirits up.

Incredible-ish Journey

We just got back from a long weekend's drive. On Saturday morning Lee Ann, Annie and I piled into the car and made our way north to Jackson. We visited Brian to see his Cranbrook Drive house(and after months of work it is ready to rent and looking sharp!), and spent the afternoon at Mom's catching up on news and eating her yummy lemon meringue pie.

From Mom's we drove to Ann Arbor to attend a presentation given by my old high school friend Jeff Holden. Jeff has volunteered for several years to pick up bones and antlers on Isle Royale (in Lake Superior) so scientists can track the wolf and moose populations on the island and unravel some of the mysteries of predator-prey relationships. The subject is fascinating, and we really enjoyed the presentation and first-hand accounts from Jeff and other volunteers about the work that is being done there.

After spending the night in a motel south of Toledo we continued this morning to Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware OH. Annie participated in a lacrosse camp there with about 50 other high schoolers, instructed by the OWU coach and senior team members. Annie had a good workout, and it was fun to watch her play in the big old-fashioned football stadium there.

Now we are home, having traveled 600 miles in 36 hours to get back to where we started but feeling it was well worth the trip.

New Pumpkin Pic

The vine is about dead and Jack is turning orange, so I guess he is as big as he is going to get. The next time you see him, he will be smiling into the camera!

Lots Faster!

Today was trial mowing day at the Tower House. My tractor came with an old four foot bushhog, so although someday I would like to get a 5 foot finish mower I just used what I had. Surprisingly, the bushhog did a pretty good job. The finished product is nothing you'd want Tiger Woods putting on, but it wasn't too tufty and I only dug furrows in the ground with the bushhog box where I had to turn on a slope.

I wanted a tractor mostly to speed up the mowing of my four acres and, sure enough, I now can cut the wide-open spaces about three times faster than with my riding mower. Also, having my own tractor is really, really cool.

Grand Opening

Lee Ann and I were both off today so we took a drive south to Brown County, our old stomping grounds. Our plan was to head straight for the river town of Ripley, but on the way we stopped in Georgetown. By coincidence, we discovered that the folks who rented our commercial building there were having their grand opening. They have fixed up the store area and have a nice selection of Carhartt workwear, RedWing boots and other stuff. It looked great.

While we were in Georgetown we also attended the Brown County fair. There's nothing like fair food for lunch - yum! The weather was super pleasant - sunny and 70 degrees, perfect for fall in the Ohio Valley.

Luck Of The Draw

This week I am in Tampa, Florida taking the "four scrapyards in five days" tour you hear so much about. Instead of my usual econocompact, I am driving this pretty cool Volkswagen Beetle. Getting a rental car is pot luck, and occasionally I end up with some big SUV or gimmick vehicle. Once I got a Prius, which was fun. The worst ever was a Ford Mustang, which was uncomfortable, got awful gas mileage and had blind spots the size of Nebraska. The Beetle is a pretty good ride, and if someone offered me one I wouldn't turn it down.

Bonus info: My company took away my old phone and forced a Blackberry gizmo on me that is a veritable Swiss Army Knife of electronica. One gadgety feature that I initially pooh-poohed is a built-in camera - but as you can see by the attached car photo, I now am appreciating this capability a bit.

Sad - Lost A Cat Today

I had been at the Tower House this morning, clearing a spot to park the tractor in the old barn there, Annie was at work and Lee Ann at a horse show. When I returned to Lebanon about 15 past noon I saw our cat Maya (or CC - we never did agree on her name) laying in the street behind our house. I parked and went right over to her, but she had been dead for a while. It appears that she was hit by a car.

Maya was the white-haired poofball cat with the feathery tail that Lee Ann and Annie rescued a year or so ago. We would see her on our walks, living in a truck trailer parking lot and crying piteously when we came by. Lee Ann started dropping off food and water and eventually brought her home, nearly starved to death and so dirty we did not know what color she was. Once installed at our house Maya stabilized and for the past year has lived a pretty pleasant existence here with us.

I buried her in our backyard, next to the fence she used to like walking on top of. RIP, poofball kitty.

New McAlpine Family Addition!

A very large stork will be headed north from Louisiana soon to drop off our little bundle of joy!

This is my new (used) Ford 1320 tractor. It is a lot like the Ford 1310 that I owned for seven years and used at my Moon Hollow farm. It is the same size class, has the same 3-cylinder diesel engine, but was built in 1992 as opposed to the older-model 1310, which was built in about 1977. It also has a few added features such as that protective roll bar that you see in the photo.

I have known for a while that I needed something bigger than my dinky riding mower to keep the four acre lawn at the Tower House under control. Three weeks ago Lee Ann and I stopped and looked at a Ford 1520 that a guy had for sale on his front lawn near Caesar's Creek Lake. It was beautiful, the cleanest used tractor that I ever saw, but just a bit too big - and too expensive. He sold the tractor that same day to someone else, preventing me from changing my mind, and I kicked myself for not buying it despite the fact that it wasn't the ideal tractor for me.

Since then I have been looking locally and online for a 1310, 1320 or something similar in a John Deere or Kubota. I didn't intend to get interested in something so far away as this one, but even with freight delivery charges it is a lot less expensive than the 1520, and exactly what I wanted. But I am buying it SIGHT UNSEEN - the quintessential eBay experience. Gee, I hope this works out. I should know in eight days max.

She's a STAR

Today Annie was accepted to Roanoke College, a Virginia liberal-arts school with a lovely campus nestled in the Alleghenies. Attagirl! It was just like in the movies - I fished the letter out of the mailbox, and it looked like it might be an acceptance, and I carried it upstairs to where Annie was studying in her room, and she opened it expectantly, and the first word on the letter was "Congratulations." I was not surprised, since her qualifications are very good, but it sure was satisfying.

It's not a lock that Annie will attend Roanoke, however. She plans to apply to about eight schools in all, Roanoke having been the first. With any luck, she will be able to choose among several schools that accept her and find at least one that offers both an ideal curriculum and great financial aid. This will all be unfolding slowly between now and May 1, which is the deadline for committing to a school for the fall of 2010. Wish her luck - and a couple more "Congratulations!"

The Big Score

Here in the hyperkinetic McAlpine household, a weeknight's family amusement might include a little ultimate kickboxing, the ever-popular juggling knives while riding unicycles, or (more commonly), a game of Scrabble. It is usually me versus Lee Ann, since Annie is afraid of damaging our delicate egos and participates sparingly.

Tonight's game stood out because I scored 516, which might be a personal best. I don't remember scoring five hundred plus since my childhood when we played by Grama Miller rules and kept counting the double/triple words and letters even if they had been covered in a previous play, which really jacked up our point totals.

Some words Lee Ann and I accept probably don't appear in a Scrabble dictionary and would never fly in tournament play, but our house rules are fairly relaxed. In any case, the big play of this game was legit - I used all seven of my tiles and covered two triple word spaces by playing "graphite" in the lower left corner of the board for 203 points. Lee Ann gets an assist for playing "bar" immediately beforehand to set me up. Thanks honey!!

Jack - Update

Our future Jack-O Lantern is now about 8 inches in diameter and is looking like a real pumpkin now. The vine still looks healthy, so I expect him to keep getting bigger.

Floor Project

Thirty or forty years ago someone put oak strip flooring in most of the rooms at the Tower House, over the original floorboards. The floors were finished, but then some time in the past they were stripped and left unfinished - I have no idea why. Now the wood is discolored and has paint splotches from the last awful interior paint job the house received, as the first photo of the upstairs back hall shows.

I am taking up the oak in the downstairs rooms but we decided to leave it upstairs. A couple of weeks ago I sanded the bedroom floors. Now I have stained and shellacked the front bedroom floor - second photo. This work is tedious but I sure like the result.

Dig This!

Things were humming at the Tower House on Wednesday. I had two skilled crews doing work that day that was beyond my humble skills (and horsepower). I like to do almost all the house renovating work myself, but sometimes it makes sense to call in experts.

One crew took out a tree that had plugged up the septic tank discharge, and will be back in a few weeks to lay in a new drainfield. The other replaced our well pump, which was fried by a lightning strike a few weeks back. While they worked outside, I was refinishing bedroom floors - but that's for another post.

Since I took these pictures I insulated the pump and buttoned up the well pit, and Lee Ann and I have already cut up a lot of the tree. With any luck, we won't have any "water in" or "water out" issues for many years.

One Egg - No Basket

All summer we have watched the pumpkin vines that sprang from last year's Halloween pumpkin snake all over the back yard. For weeks we have patiently waited for pumpkin fruit to begin forming. Now - success! We have ONE pumpkin on the vine. I had almost given up, thinking that we had an infertile hybrid or something.

This little guy is about the size of a baseball. Any size bigger than a muskmelon by the end of October will suit my purpose, but I'm not counting my Jack-o-lanterns yet. Typically our vine crops are polished off by boring insects just about the time whatever they are producing nears maturity (the downside of organic gardening!), so Jack may never make it to usable girth. But since optimism is just as cheap as pessimism, and more fun, I am dreaming of a BIG result.

Last First Day Of School Picture

This was Annie on Wednesday, headed off to school.

Wonder Girl

After a long, hard summer, Annie starts school tomorrow. It will be the first day of her senior year, and it's just like they say - kids grow up so fast! One moment she's a tiny little baby some nurse hands to me at the hospital, so I can carry her swaddled form down the hall for cleanup and first weigh-in. Then, in the blink of an eye, she is seventeen, fiercely intelligent, principled beyond her years, and working three jobs to sock it away for the college expenses that loom just ahead.

Good luck, Annie. I hope you have a wonderful last year of high school.

Unleash The...Frogs!

Lee Ann has been very happy with her pond. It has attracted birds and dragonflies and the deer drink out of it, so it has become a feature of the local natural world. Still, there was something missing - frogs. Every pond should have them, right? The pond has been in place well over a year, and we were sorta hoping frogs might just show up on their own. Finally Lee Ann had to force Mother Nature's hand a bit - she frognapped a couple of likely specimens from a puddle at the barn and we had the release yesterday. Live free, little frogs.

On Saturday night, on our way back from Greenfield Village, we stayed at the Grand Trillium Bed & Breakfast in Kenton OH. The house is a wonderful old Italianate mansion, and the town is charming too.

Greenfield Village

Lee ann and I just got back from a weekend getaway trip to Greenfield Village in Dearborn MI. We drove to Toledo on Friday and stayed at a Motel 6, then drove the rest of the way Saturday morning and spent the day at the Village. It was rainy and cool to start but the weather improved through the day.

Photo 1 - they didn't worry a lot about machine guarding a hundred years ago. Photo 2 - Lee Ann looks lovely in hats! Photo 3 - Here's the house Noah Webster lived in when he finished his American Dictionary. Photo 4 - This good-looking Greek Revival, home of Robert Frost, was our favorite. Photo 5 - Lee Ann sinks her fingernails into the garden wall at the Cotswold cottage, ca. 1600, saying "Look - it's following us home!" Well, maybe this was her favorite after all.