Who Dat?

I had so much fun creating this costume....first I went scrounging for parts at my favorite recycling center, Green Guy Recycling in San Marcos....its always fun to go and find treasures and flirt with the boys who work there. I tried to explain that I wanted to be a San Martian...I have dressed as a San Martian before in the Lighted San Marcos River Boat Parade (we won first place!) so I already had the green unitard. Actally I was inspired to make the metal brasierre when I saw Danise's and then she raffled hers off at a Breast Cancer benefit. The skirt is made of duct tape and metal parts from a hot water heater. Silver Crocs, bicylce helmet covered in aluminum foil with hologram icecyles. Laura Beth said I have too much time on my hands! HA! Playing in the studio was big fun too! Something I need to do more of!!

Studio Addition

I am getting ready to add a bathroom onto the studio.....made of the same thing....papercrete! The bathroom will have a composting toilet and a shower. I have never prepared a foundation before so this is a learning experience and whole lot of work! Thank goodness the ground is mostly topsoil with very few rocks...however in this tiny addition of 8'x8' there is a water line, a phone line and a 220 electric line...making the digging more difficult. Stay tuned for more about this building.

Gardening with a Troy Bilt Tiller

I should do a commercial for the Troy-Bilt Tiller......I have had this tiller for a little more than 23 years now.....I got it as a birthday present when I was pregnant for Laura Beth........these are the Cadillac of tillers...you can literally drive them with one hand......I am plowing this ground and will be putting horse manure and leaves before I plant a cover crop of clover and vetch.....all to ready the soil for a future garden. The other little garden is doing fine providing me with all the fresh greens I can eat!

Earthships

These strange looking houses are totally energy self sufficient! NO UTILITY BILLS!!
The community we visited is near Taos, New Mexico....they even have a visitors center set up so curious people can see first hand how they are made.
Made of used tires filled with compacted earth for U shaped walls, and either dug into the side of a hill or earth bermed up against the tires, these houses are cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
They have a couple houses that are nightly rentals. We stayed in this one bedroom ($190)...it was below freezing when we woke up, but the inside was 68 degrees (farenheight).
The 9" of annual rainfall is collected and cycled through the house 4 times before it is put into the common greenbelt or landscape. Solar is the main energy producer though some folks have wind power too. The water was piping hot the next morning.....solar hot water heater..must be a heck of an insulated tank! The entire south facing front is made of glass at a slant......the idea is that in the winter when the sun is low in the sky it penetrates the house to the back wall and heats it up. In the summer the sun is high and so does not enter so much. There is a greenhouse inside against the glass. Plants for food, oxygen and humidity. Therfore, this is a passive solar home.....no mechanical heating or cooling system. The solar panels are mostly for the lights, refrigerator and water pump.

There were some really cool ideas and uses of different materials, like this storage building made of cement, bottles and cans. This living room fireplace had a WATERFALL in front of it!
Most of the inside non-structural walls are made of cans and bottles, either arranged in a design and letting light through as in this wall surrounding the bathtub, or plastered over for an adobe effect.

This chandalier made of coiled rope lights! Notice the thick wall made of tires and covered with plaster. All the floors I saw were either poured cement or flagstone.
Since the rooms are U shaped and no corners, the bedroom closets are behind the built in headboards.
Gas stove and solar DC refrigerator. Someone just told me DC does not shock you...is that true?
The visitor home left an interior wall unplastered so you could see how the tires are stacked and the empty spaces filled with cans.
Here is one under construction. This community is 633 acres and there are 43 homes on it now. They are selling lots, cost depends on location and size, and the build turn key price is $175 per square foot.
And finally I cannot end without including this photo of the Angel's Nest. That is a hydrogen powered stretch Hummer. These folks are producing hydrogen and also have the coolest wind turbins I have seen....DNA helix shaped...they are bird and bat safe. I am including the link to the YouTube video because they give a nice tour of the inside and they have a water machine that produces 8 gallons of water each day from the air. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpId9ZrT0Ak
I saw in the Austin paper last week that Willie Nelson is selling the water machines for $1600.

PieTown and Piñons

We also went to see Dinah´s land in Pie Town, New Mexico which is out in the middle of nowhere! There are 2 Pie restaurants and thats it and yes we ate a delicious pie made of apples,green chili and piñon. Once we located the land at 7800 feet above sea level....the air was sweet, the sky a deep blue and the temperature...COLD...well that is for this southern gal...we walked the perimeter using the GPS and crossed an Elk trail, huge ant mounds which someone told us is a sign of water below!?! and there were lots of piñon trees, the source of piñon nuts!
We picked a few, and had I known they were so expensive to buy I would have picked more...it was piñon season as there were many roadside stands selling them....$9 for a small ounce size bag!! The higher in elevation the bigger the nut. And when you talk about shelling those little things, size does make a difference!

New Mexico

I am here visiting my daughter Annie in New Mexico....she took me to beautiful Lake Abiquiu north of Santa Fe.
Then we drove below the dam and had a nap in the sun on the Rio Chama under the Cottonwood trees that were turning colors!

Reticulated Giraffe

Went to a fundraiser at an Exotic Game Ranch built on a Landfill a few miles from Austin, Texas. There were lots of antelopes, deer and the kind of animals you might expect...but a giraffe...wow...poor thing was in a pen but was very social... "Stretch" loved to be petted....he would not eat grass from the ground as they are used to eating by reaching up to trees, but he would eat the grass if you handed it to him
and get this interesting fact...their tongue grows an inch for every foot of height...Stretch is 14 feet tall and had a 14 inch tongue!

Planting Oats

This one is for my sister Pam as she just learned to drive a tractor at her place in Louisiana!I rallied to the call for help to plant oats on the family ranch this week...there is a 30% chance of rain on Monday.....we sooo desperately need rain!! Normally the procedure is to plow the ground, scatter the seed and then come back with a spreader to cover it up....however with the price of diesel about 60 cents higher than gasoline, we took another route....scatter the seed with a pick-up truck, then plow it in and drag some spreader bars behind the plow...

now really it wasn't that hard, air conditioning and XM radio make it very tolerable...I plowed a 99 acre field and a 30 acre field over 3 days...its just a lot of going round and round....clutch, gears, throttle, hydrolic lift, and your off...watch the gauges, lift the plow for the turns or you can break a blade......the dust was the worst part....not bad if the wind was against you but once you turn into the wind...you could barely see where to go.....the most fun was watching all the birds fly around as there were lots of insects coming out of the grass and sunflowers....lots of dove too, but I didn't tell my hunter friends! The cows were all lying down under the pecan trees...that is a sure sign of rain say the oldtimers!