Roofing and Siding

Here is update number two:

It is coming along.  The yard does not slope.  It looks like it, but that is just the underpainting.  The grass will cover that and, hopefully, look like the lovely lawn that was really there.

The weather here is amazingly cold.  I said a little while back that I was prepared to walk on the trails in the snowy and icy weather.  Well, I lied!  I was definitely not prepared and I have not done it.  Here is a shot of our solid ice driveway:

I’m not gonna do it.  And Toby doesn’t want to do it, either.  The temperature has been below zero for a few days and he has to do his business in shifts.  He only has to be out in the wind for a few minutes before he starts shutting down and I have to get him inside quickly to thaw out.  It is so cold, that we can’t really get it warm inside even with the fire blazing high.  It is supposed to warm up, soon.  I can honestly say that I am looking forward to it.  Even the birds are hopping around on one leg, trying to keep the other one warm while snapping up birdseed.  I don’t know how they manage to survive winters.  I am finding it difficult to function much at all.  Grandma said that when you get old, it all falls apart.  It appears that she was right.  And most of the falling apart happens in the cold winter.

What nutriment can I extract from these bare twigs?  Starvation stares me in the face. “Nay, nay,” said a nuthatch, making its way, head downward, about a bare hickory close by, “The nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat…. If at any time the weather is too bleak and cold for you, keep the sunny side of the trunk, for a wholesome and inspiring warmth is there, such as the summer never afforded….” “Hear! hear!” screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, “winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it.”… [A] red squirrel… came running down a slanting bough, and as he stopped twirling a nut, called out rather impudently, “Look here! just get a snug-fitting fur coat and a pair of fur gloves like mine, and you may laugh at a northeast storm.”

–Henry David Thoreau, Nov. 8, 1858