Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  I took my usual morning walk, but with only one dog (Race), as Miki has a limp and we're letting him take it easy.  We left about 30 minutes before sunrise, and were walking as the valley lit up.  Some photos:

In the first photo you can see a lighting effect that I enjoy – the tip top of Box Elder Peak (in the Wellsville Mountains) east of us is lit up by the sun rising over the Wasatch Mountains to our west.  In the last photo, the grassy field in the foreground used to be a barley field!  We've had so much rain since the barley was harvested that lots of grass has sprouted and grown, in some places nearly a foot high.  I can't tell what kind of grass it is, but I don't think it's barley – so I'm wondering where the heck all the grass seed came from.  I'm certain it wasn't planted.

When we walked into the driveway, we spotted Bucky (our injured buck deer) hanging around the bridge over the irrigation canal.  We haven't seen him for a few days, and we were a little worried about him.  It's good to see him back.  I put down some feed corn for him.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon with a home inspector, at a house near Newton, Utah that we're in the process of buying.  Working with the inspector is an interesting process, and useful beyond the obvious purpose.  The inspector (Keith D.) is methodical, where we (as prospective buyers) tend to be much less so.  He has a checklist of things to look for, and a specific method for each particular thing.  He keeps track of it all with a program on a laptop, which then generates a very professional-looking report.  The real value for me, though, is that I can hover around him as he works, and that leads me to check all sorts of things myself.  I wrote down quite a few of my own observations as we walked around.  I also get to ask questions of him, which he very politely pretended weren't a huge pain in the butt :)  It's amazing what you can learn simply by talking with an expert.  He's done thousands of these home inspections over the past 30 years, so I'm comfortable calling him an expert.

Today we have a bit of excitement on the home front.  After waiting months for them to be delivered, we're getting backup generators installed.  This is quite an involved process – the generators and associated propane tanks have to be set down on a concrete pad (in the case of our shed, we have to pour one).  Then an automatic transfer switch (a big electrical device) has to be attached to the outside of the buildings, and wired into the existing meter and circuit breaker panels.  The transfer switches each handle 200 amps (house and shed, separately), so the wires and conduits involved are big and bulky.  Then the generators have to be hooked up to propane and the transfer switches.  The folks doing the installation will be here for several days getting all this done.  I'll be helping a bit today, using my backhoe to dig out the pad we need to pour for the shed...