Saturday, March 18, 2006

Here Comes the Sun

Well, spring is slowly but surely pushing in. The weather has been great lately and lots of flowers are coming around. These are my first flowers at the house site to bloom. I love daffodils and narcissus and anything in that family. We cleared the land in front of the house underneath a large stand of sycamore trees and this is where I threw out about 2 dozen of these bulbs.


On an unrelated note, the other day Allen and I went searching for stone for a house he is building in Birmingham. Many of you have seen the posts here and on Rurality's blog about all the stone in this part of Alabama but even I didn't realize the extent of the different types available. There are several quarries and stone yards just down the road from us and these pics where taken at one of them. There are just acres of all kinds of stone in all different colors; its really cool. I guess I'm weird but I just drool over all these rocks and what you could build with them.

These were some of the more unusual ones we saw. I had never seen any stone around here like this before. These pics really don't do the color justice; they were much brighter. These had been sawn into tiles about 16"x 24" x 1" thick and were fairly smooth. They did not have many and I wasn't even going to bother to ask the price. Allen and I have been trying to think where we might could use a piece or two of this maybe as an accent or something. We could probably afford a little bit.
Here I was just trying to show a little better detail in that one stone. It appears to be some type of sandstone I think, so I don't know how well it would stand up to foot traffic.

Also, we received our first large delivery of lumber this morning for framing so hopefully I will have pics of that tomorrow or next day if the rain holds off. And by the end of next week I am supposed to have completed drawings of the house. Or very close. I can't wait!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am sooooo envious of you. Maybe you could do the front of your fireplace with that colorful stone. Or a wall in your bathroom.

MamaHen said...

Hey Pablo, that's a good idea; a wall in the bathroom or something... we are actually going to have a wood burning stove instead of a fireplace but will still need a hearth so maybe there....hmmm.

Anonymous said...

Don't people usually build some sort of fireproof wall around the sides of their wood stoves? If you put it in the corner of the room, the two walls beside it have stone going up four fee or so?

The author Sue Hubbell lived in the Ozarks many years. She and her husband had bought a place that had been owned by an old farmer and his wife. One spring they saw daffodils coming up in straight lines radiating out from the house and going deep into the forest. The old farmer was not the sentimental type, but his wife wanted flowers. So he drug several long trenches with his plow and dropped the bulbes into them. Not very conventional gardening, but it allowed for great story telling after he was gone.

MamaHen said...

Yes, you're right about the stone behind a stove and when I mentioned a hearth in the previous comment, that's what I was meaning but I did not elaborate enough. In fact, we were thinking that the stone behind the stove could serve as thermal mass also but that doesn't work so well on an exterior wall. All the heat is drawn outside (or so they tell me). So, we are planning some type of thermal mass for an interior wall.
That's a good story about the flowers; that's about how Allen would plant them if I let him. Any reason to get on that tractor!

Anonymous said...

Hello from Remlap!

I've been reading your comments off and on for a while--if that rock is super expensive, maybe it could be part of a kitchen countertop, like a cutting board???? Anyway, it's nice to see your progress on the house, even if we haven't seen you in person for a while. Hope everyone is well. Maybe the beard makes Daddy feel like a caveman--so he thinks he can live outdoors?

MamaHen said...

Hey Linda! Honey, don't you know by now, your daddy IS a caveman! We are doing fine and hope ya'll are well too. Come see us! Any Sat. or Sunday we are down there.