| Prior to Christmas, we headed over to Warren to a members home in the branch and picked up some pecans. She has some pecan trees in her yard, and doesn't have a use for pecans, so we decided to de-clutter the ground around the trees and pick them up. You can see in the picture the pecan shucks laying on the ground around our feet. As it is winter here, all of the deciduous trees look dead, but luckily this is only temporary. |  |
 |
Our yard is no exception. The trees have littered the yard with many, many leaves. We have spent some time trying to make the grass visible once again, but it was mostly in vain. After 3-4 hours we had made 4 piles of leaves and had only found about 0.25% of the grass in the back yard. We then proceeded to burn the leaves in one pile and will have to save the remainder of leaves for another day. At this rate it looks like we will have many Saturdays full of fun ahead of us. |
| I know that there are many people who enjoy this type of thing, but I am really not one of them. I spent quite a bit of time debating how the best way to cut down the trees would be. I am torn about the presence of the trees in the yard. I like the fact that the house is shaded 90% of the day in the summer time, as the air conditioning doesn't have to work nearly as hard to get cool the house. This is because the trees have many large branches that stretch over the roof. |  |
 |
What I don't like is that the branches stretch over the roof, and the trees themselves are very near the house. If there were a wind storm (and they happen on a fairly frequent basis here) strong enough to do some damage to the trees, then the trees would land on the roof. In fact, I was up there picking up a toy that ended up there, and found a branch about 15 feet long and about 2.5 inches in diameter. I also don't like the shade in the yard, as it prohibits any room to grow a garden, and I really like gardening. I do like the shade though if you were to go outside during the day - again it is cooler than in the sun. The only tree that I am really worried about is an oak tree that is about 15 feet from the house and about 5-6 feet in diameter at the base. |
| I have not been nearly as quick at fixing the hole in the wall as I have been at other projects. Just before we left Arkansas on vacation, I finished up the remainder of the flooring. The tile in this picture was already laid (except for the doorway) and we had some tiles left that matched (of course this tile is out of production now). The bad news is that this tile was laid on top of some linoleum which was laid on top of some asbestos tile. I found some floor leveler, and built up the doorway and then laid some tile on top of it to match. |  |
|
As we didn't have enough tile to complete the job, I found some corner tile that was close and put it in the edge of the door way. I think that it actually looks pretty nice. Of course the cement grout that was poured to widen the doorway needs to be painted white, but I think that it came out looking pretty good. I did the grout the night before we left (so the kids would let it dry) and it was hard when we returned from Arizona. |
| The trip out to AZ was eventful, as most of you know. I should have captured more photos to tell the story, but this is a parking lot in Fort Smith that we stopped in for gas. Notice the layer of ice that covers everything. This is what the freeway looked like for about 75 miles prior to turning to snow. It is not hard to see how 100's of vehicles slid off of the road ways. Somehow, we managed to make the trip without incident (although slower than we would have liked to make it). |  |
 |
As promised, I have provided some relevant information on the weather in Arkansas for the first year of our stay here. This is the rainfall amounts in inches by month and following this chart is the rainfall amounts in inches by day. I have lived in a humid climate before and knew what that would be like (although I have forgotten the worst parts), but I wasn't prepared for the wetness of this year. From what the weather man has said, this is a record setting year for rainfall (and we didn't even have any hurricanes). Some statistics are as follows from the data. I collected all of this data from the mill where they monitor and record each days rainfall amounts. It probably doesn't agree with the Little Rock Airports data. |
All in all, I hope that this year is not the same as last year in the amount of rain. I really don't like the rain, nor the fact of working in it. |
 |
|
| As luck would have it, just before we made the trek out west (and in fact after we tried to start the car from picking pecans) it wouldn't start. Since it is a standard, we roll started it and then drove it the 15 miles back to Monticello. I tried to turn the car off many times on the drive back and then start it again while moving, and each time, it would just click. I concluded that it was the starter and (given the rain forecasted for the next 3 days) I called around and found a started at our local Auto Zone. I ended up working on the car that night and in around 1 hour had the car back up and running. I hate working on cars in the rain, so the dark was the next best thing. While under there I found another broken CV boot, so one of these weekends when I have nothing better to do, I can always fix that as well. In other news this car is still making a frightening noise, but I have yet to diagnose it. I have taken it to a "professional" and was told that it is the throw-out bearing, but I am not convinced. My current plan is to wait until something either quits working, or the noise goes away on its own and then fix the (obvious) problem. So far it has been about 2 months and the noise still plagues me. Terra says that the car smells like burning rubber when she rides in it, but I can't smell it. I guess what this means is that in one of our next letters you should have something fun to read about in the car adventures.
Tonight (Wedensday) it is supposed to get down to 15 degrees, and then it isn't supposed to get above freezing again until Monday, we are also supposed to have some freezing rain tonight and tomorrow, so that means that tomorrow would be a good time for the car to tell me what the problem is... |
|