The Drunken Bear

This rusted metal was pulled from the river.  It is most likely a piece of a stove lost when a home went into the river.  We have placed it at the bottom of a large Douglas Fir.  The other plants are a Sword Fern and a couple of wild Huckleberry bushes. Steve brought a Hydrangea plant up and it seems to love the acidic soil...the source of the blue. There are very interesting stumps around the property.  Unfortunately we lost quite a few of them when we had the land cleared to build the cabin, but there are still some around.  The Huckleberry bushes thrive growing out of these stumps.  On the stump in the front, you will notice a notch on the right side of the stump.  That notch allowed a logger to put a board in the notch to stand on and cut the tree at a higher level. The early morning sun filtering through the trees makes for a very peaceful setting. A Douglas Fir seedling makes an interesting shadow. T...

After four inspections, we have finally passed our electrical inspection.  The first inspection uncovered a short list of things we had to change.  One of those things was the grounding rod.  As has been stated before, the cabin is located on river rock and whenever you try to drive anything into the soil, you will most likely hit one of those rocks.  A grounding rod is 8 feet in length, so naturally, we knew we would never be able to sink it the required length.  We had heard about another process that required the driving of two 4 foot rods and connecting them with the wire. Apparently, this procedure is no longer approved.  Luckily there is another process where you can put a plate in the ground and run the cable to it.  Unfortunately, the inspector did not tell us we needed two plates with the wire connecting the two...so inspection number two failed.   It was off to an electrical store to get another plate.  When the...