The power and the beauty of Mother Nature

Over the weekend we received our first snow here in the Wood River Valley with the majority of it dumping on Sunday night and Monday morning. And what a dump it was. The following is a photo from my backyard early Monday. My little house is hiding in there.

Unfortunately the snow was so wet and heavy and all our trees still had their leaves that there was a lot of tree limb loss throughout the valley. One of the trees in my backyard split right in half. Luckily it was the back half of the tree and not the front. Had it been the front it would have landed right on top of the house. It didn't even take out any part of the fence. Phew!








Just missed the fence.



























More in our local paper the Idaho Mountain Express.


The following two photos I took Sunday night as the snow was gently falling and I was excited to see it. (I was also trying to practice with the camera at night. Hence the weird photo of the chair.)




The first snow is always so special.

























Little did I know...

The only thing I've ever seen that comes close to the destruction of the trees over the weekend is the same type of destruction to trees due to an ice storm in Vermont in the 90s. I've never lived on either coast here in the U.S. or on the plains so I've never experienced a tornado or a hurricane. I can't imagine.

And although the loss of trees and the damage done to property is sad this world never ceases to amaze as I still find so much beauty in the snow and ice.

And so the adventure continues...

I have just moved from an apartment at the base of Bald Mountain in Ketchum, Idaho into a newly renovated tiny little house in Bellevue, Idaho and as a result I have decided to use blogging as a journaling medium to track all of my new experiences that will come with living in my new great space.

Blogging is completely new to me and I am fully expecting it to be as much of an adventure as the rest of my ideas that come with living in a house that has a great big fenced back yard and a beautiful front yard resplendent with numerous trees including some fruits as yet to be determined.

I should mention that although the house has just been completely renovated all of the out of doors was woefully neglected for the last four years (as was the in of doors hence the complete renovation) and will require much work and TLC to bring it round to it's full potential. Below is a picture of pick up load number two of things found under the snow to be taken to recycle. When I first looked at the house back at the beginning of March there was four feet of snow on the ground...

Pictures of the backyard including from the top of the dead end street (yes, I'm the last house on a dead end street and it is quiet, quiet, quiet, well...except for all the birds, including cooing doves) and a picture from inside the fence.




















Picture of the front of the house.

Things to be learned, created, accomplished while living at the 'Casa on the Corner':

The Short List
composting
gardening: including vegetables, herbs and flowers
canning
dehydrating
bread making

In general just live a more sustainable lifestyle.

The Long List would include things like learning about raising chickens and goats and things but that's for later. Waaayyy later!

The next few posts will include lessons learned from this past week including information about composting and gardening. Did you know there is hot composting, cold composting, vermiposting? It all gets really confusing really quickly but I have started composting my kitchen scraps and I believe I will be creating a hot compost out in the backyard. We'll see.

And...I've started a gardening class and I came home with some soil blocks which have seeds started in them. I really hope I can nurture them to full bloom.