Tom Knobloch's Blog

I took the kids up to the house for a long weekend and Denise got to have a weekend alone with her friends.
The kids were so excited to see their old toys, they didn’t want to leave the house but we did manage to get in one small “hike” up to the superpipe.
On a different note, it was interesting to see what happens when the temperature barely breaks the freezing mark for the day’s high after several weeks of way above normal temps. This happened the week prior. Because the trees leafed out early, the severe frost did a number on the aspen and rock maples. The aspens grow much better at lower elevations and are pretty sparse by us and now I know why. We had the same problem last year but not to this extent. 3/4s of all leaves are black and shriveled up.
The maples didn’t fair much better with about the same percentage of dead leaves. I think the maples will recover even though we are just about at the max elevation for these tree too because there are some really old maples up here (unlike aspen). Most have many dead branches and look ragged, but they’ve made it through at least a couple hundred years and must have experienced this in the past.
We’ll see what happens over the next couple of weeks to see if the trees can recover.

Just 2 days earlier, we had up to a foot of snow. Since the ground had thawed out beforehand, it didn’t stick around long though.
I went up by myself and skied a few runs in the morning then did all kinds of yard work. I put an arrangement of Balsam Fir trees out front, moved the lawn back about 4 feet to provide more room to put the giant snow banks in the Winter. I also started some mugo pine shrubs in front of the house but need to figure out how to spruce that up a bit. Lastly, I fertilized the lawn and over-seeded it with creeping fescue. Although still very brown looking in the photos, there was a lot of growth and you could see all the fine, little grass blades about an inch long working there way out. Hopefully things will green up in the next couple of weeks. Hard to believe we’ve been mowing the lawn for almost a month down home.

We skipped skiing this weekend and stayed near home for a birthday party and some fishing (the girls went shopping instead).
We are fortunate to have a couple native brook trout brooks near the house. One has a pond in it that is amazing – there are fish rising every single time we go. Today was no exception – blazing sun at high noon and the water was very active. We landed about 6 and missed about 15. We had a great day and it’s nice for the change of season.

After taking a little break, I worked a little on the house this weekend putting up a few lights. Ya, we’re going with the moose theme – hopefully it won’t get old.

After almost 2 months with little new snow, the clouds finally let go of all they had been holding back! The best skiing of the year by.

We left our house in Wells tonight and it was windy. The entire drive up was windy. When we got to the house, it was a hurricane without the rain (it was -7 degrees). There were roof shingles everywhere. Over the master bedroom, the shingles were flapping very loudly.
It was a long, long night.
To top it all off, one section of flooring had no hot water running through it. A quick check showed 0 pressure going through that zone. It took all night to thaw it out (and a little help from pulling back the insulation and a hair dryer. I think this happened because the drastic drop in temperature and the high winds. Since the heat didn’t need to kick on for so long there wasn’t any water flow and the wind got under the sheathing and froze enough of a section to stop the flow when the heat finally turned on. I guess more insulation (now R25) and some caulking will fix it from happening again.

We had our first company in the completed house! My parents and Denise’s parents along with Denise’s sister and family.
Everyone was up to celebrate the kids turning 5 and aside from all the snoring, it was a great weekend.
I also got 1 garage door opener up and I feel like a king now. It has battery backup, a keypad on the outside to let you in if needed and a motion detection lighting system for the inside. Very cool and it will sure makes bringing the kids into house a lot easier Friday nights.

Started hanging things on the walls this long weekend – pictures, toilet paper dispensers, shower curtains and hooks. Also attempted to put in a garage door opener but quickly realized I needed an 2 extensions because the door is a little taller than normal. Maybe I’ll get it by next weekend – it would be a crowning moment getting to just press a button and drive right into the garage instead of running into the house, opening the garage door, driving in and then carrying the sleeping kids up to their beds every Friday night.

Jack hitting the bumps on poleline

We spent most of this weekend skiing despite the brutally cold weather. We also spent a lot of time shuffling the kids back and forth from Bubblecuffers – not sure how long it’s going to take to get a good routine in place but we’re not there yet.