We have drywall!

Ceilings!

Walls!

Springtime and a new year

I'll bet you thought we had abandoned the dome project by now. Not true! I'm just a very bad blogger. It's coming up on four years (!) since we broke ground, and the work is pitifully slow sometimes, because we're doing it all ourselves in between all the rest of the stuff that goes on while one is just living one's life. Since I last blogged, there's been vacations, a gall-bladder surgery, and a thousand other little non-newsworthy things. The dome still has one small, elusive leak, but it only matters when it rains really hard, and Mike thinks he has it tracked down now. The footers for the new, less saggy front deck are in place. Warmer spring weather has come to the region and we are hoping to finish up this year.

Armed with caffeine, we headed out this morning to get some work done.

Mike worked on the wall in the downstairs bedroom. The exterior dormer walls are well insulated, since they are really the worst heat-loss points in a concrete dome, and then covered in plywood in preparation for the drywall guys.

In the meantime, I'm under orders to not do any heavy lifting (long story), so guess who got to sweep upstairs? We're both wearing dust masks, by the way, because there were some of those rat-poison cakes scattered about the dome to help get the rodent problem under control. No more mice, but the poison cakes are now all half-disintegrated; neither of us was much inclined to breathe in the dust as I swept it up.

After the upstairs was as clean as I could get it, I went outside and wandered around a bit on the lower half. Two red-tailed hawks were circling the second lot, looking for a late breakfast, I suppose. In spring, the hawk activity increases markedly as all the little creatures become more active, so they are a welcome sign that winter is just about over here.

In the meadow to the west of the dome (which I have started calling Gaia's Meadow), there are three stately trees standing in a triangle at the westmost point of a little natural glade. I call them the Three Ladies. They are, oh, forty-fifty feet tall. I think they are elms, but I will have to get someone who knows more about trees in Missouri to confirm this for me. The stone circle is going to go here.

Apparently, in the springtime, we have a little creek. It will dry up as soon as it stops raining, but for now, it winds down to the southwest corner of the property in a very charming way.

The pond is quite full, and looks weedier than ever. This is the same pond that I said was on the neighbor's property way back on the second post of this blog, but then we bought the adjoining lot, so it's our pond now! Mike has plans to clean it up once we get moved in, but for now, it belongs to the frogs. There was a raucous bullfrog making quite the racket as I walked around the pond. (Another sign of spring...)

The pond was fenced at one time, and about three-quarters of the fenceline still stands, although it is quite rusty and overgrown with vines. We'll have to pull it all down eventually. We're not going to run out of projects anytime soon, I assure you.

Grass Fire

A little excitement for our Valentine's Day week -- a grass fire swept over the property yesterday when a neighbor's rubbish fire got out of control. Disclaimer up front -- Nothing was harmed (other than grass) during this incident. We weren't actually at the site when it happened, but here's what we have pieced together: Our oh-so-intelligent neighbors to the south were burning some trash, and perhaps didn't attend the fire quite as closely as they should have. A light breeze is almost always blowing on the ridge even when the rest of the state is quite still, so a spark must have been blown over into the tall grass of the vacant property between us. Our weather for the last week has been cold but dry, so the dead grass caught readily. The fire swept through the vacant lot, pushed north by the wind towards the dome.

It got down into the lower portion of our property, the meadow where the leach lines for the septic tank were dug, and burned some grass down there. You can see that it passed over so quickly, though, that the trees are unscathed. I don't think we lost any trees at all; even the tiny apple trees in the orchard seem to be largely untouched.

More frighteningly, the fire also came right up to the propane tank behind the dome, but the fire department was on scene by this time and knocked the flames down before anything could happen there. The tank isn't even scorched. We had the gas company people come out to inspect it, just to be on the safe side, but there's not a thing amiss with it. (You can see the oh-so-intelligent neighbors' house in the distance of this picture.) All told, around five acres burned. I am thankful that this turned out to be a minor-sidebar type of story -- it could have been much, much worse. Also, two good things will come of this little adventure: 1) The grass will come in green and lush in the burn areas this spring. 2) I won't have to work very hard to convince Mike of the virtues of brush-hogging the property this year.

Painting is Finished

We finished the final coat yesterday, except for a few touch-ups and a little work on the upstairs dormers... as is pretty obvious in this picture, we were racing the weather. (It's supposed to rain tomorrow.) What a relief to finally have it done. Now, with the exterior finished, we can concentrate on the interior work all winter.

For some reason, there are ladybugs all over the dome. I don't mean a few here and there; I'm talking thousands. It's common to see these kind of swarms during Indian summer; the bugs will be gone once it freezes again. But still. I think they are attracted to the flat concrete surfaces of the dome, which may look to a ladybug brain like a cliff (its natural winter habitat)... or perhaps they think they have found the mothership, who knows.

Dome Primered

Mike & I were out at the dome painting this weekend... the primer coat is almost finished. The dome looks completely different now. The finished color won't be white, however; it'll be more of a light beigey natural shade.