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Amy on Salt Spring wrote:Cool gate but cool house too! Do you have any pictures of the whole place?--I'd love to see it. Its like the complete opposite of here! Maybe I'll dig out a photo of our place....
Amy
thanks. we designed it ourselves and had it built by a g.c. it took almost 2 years from starting to look for land to move in. a lot of the design came from the new mexico pueblos that we visited in taos. i did a bunch of the work myself.
Very cool house--it so fits with its surroundings. You must be so proud of it esp. because you did so much of it yourself. I said it was like the opposite of ours because our house is surrounded by 60 to 80 foot tall pine, maple and arbutus with a view of the ocean in the distance through the trees. Like two different worlds. You must be able to see forever there--do you have tumbleweeds? What is the weather like?
Amy
yes, we have tumbleweeds which are actually bushes which get detached from their roots and get blown in the wind. they use the method to scatter seeds. really prickley. i try to pull them when they're short and don't let them get large.
335+ days of sunshine per year. most often cloudless. average rainfall is about 7"/year, but we're in a 5 year drought, so more usual is 4" recently. typically one can see mountains 50-75 miles away pretty clearly, and we always have a great sunset (thanks to the pollution over california). winter is like your summer i would guess. my area gets maybe 1/2" of snow every 3-4 years, but i live about 1000' higher than phoenix. snow on the cactus is very pretty. i haven't turned on my heater yet this year.
summer is like hell, although i like the heat and work outside a lot in the summer. my studio is unheated and uncooled but i can work in it year round.
very low population density outside of the few large towns we have, but most of az is indian reservation or government land. that means lots of back country 4wheeling, camping, prospecting, etc.
Ain't ahht great and ain't it great to have some for yourself.
What a true comment. I've been planning all kinds of things since retiring. It's a rather exciting... and somewhat strange.... feeling to dream up things for one's self. I've never had the time before to make things for my own home. I've never had a hobby since childhood and now art is my hobby. It's a new experience and I find myself exploring all kinds of new media. Last week I decided to make my own polymer clay buttons for the knitting I'm taking up. Have you any idea what a person can do with that stuff?? There are some awesome materials out there. Every artist ought to think about a hobby on weekends using a totally different medium, don't you think?
