evan's ant village log

Days 296-299 (part 2)

Artists Week.

We made wreaths. Kai somehow managed to make his without using any string or other attachments, but I had to use a couple little pieces of string to hold mine together.

could be totally wrong (its hard to tell when its not in bloom or whatever) but those seed pods on the "unidentified plant" look a lot like st john's wort. theres quite a few different varieties, and that might be one of them.

Hmm, st john's wort is definitely one of the things that folks have mentioned as growing up here. That might very well be it. Thanks Leila.

Days 296-299 (part 3)

Artists Week.

More observation drawings. Also, we did some wood-carving. I made a crazy spork.

Days 296-299 (part 4)

Artists Week.

Observation drawing and woodcarving.

Days 296-299 (part 5)

Artists Week.

We did some fence-building.

Days 296-299 (part 6)

Artists Week.

Sharla took me out to see a play in Missoula. It was insanely ridiculous.

Missoula is full of art. I try to remember to take a picture of one of the painted transformer boxes whenever I'm in town. This one might be one of my favorites so far.

We stopped by the public library. They have a sweet seed library; I'll have to come back and get some seeds for spring. And they had a funky little gnome house in the library too.

This may be a really dumb question but I'm curious about all the roundwood timber you're using in contact with the ground. I assume it's ground durable?...or are you expecting to replace the fences every 5-10 years?

Sue, the wood is expected to rot away, but perhaps by then our living fence will be growing and hopefully able to serve as an effective barrier. I guess we'll see.

Days 296-299 (part 7)

Artists Week.

We did some cave "paintings" with clay-slip. We experimented with making our own brushes out of wooden branches and wool and human hair, and even hiked way up towards the creek to gather some cedar branches to see if they would work better than doug fir, but mostly we ended up just finger-painting.

Days 296-299 (part 8)

Artists Week.

Ancient cave art.

Days 296-299 (part 9)

Artists Week.

We also did a bit of macrame and seed mandalas to round out our artsy fartsy workshop week.

And somewhere in there we ended the heating stage of the Abbey thermal inertia experiment, (after 12 days of blasting the stove,) plugged up as many air leaks as we could, (though until the cob is done it's still not super well insulated,) and started the non-heating observation stage of the experiment. I'm about to post some of the experiment notes to the Abbey thread, so perhaps direct your questions and comments regarding the Abbey there. Thanks.