Reprieve

Today marked the beginning of my 5-day countdown, but my landlady has now opened the door to the possibility of staying as long as necessary, until the Questa place is livable. We got a little more snow last night, but it looks like we may get a few days of sun now.

Here's the road at the top of the property a couple days ago, when I visited with my latest prospective big equipment operator, Redwolf (Ruben Martinez):

Above is Ruben's truck at the top of my driveway - no way were we driving down to the house in 18 inches of snow on top of a couple inches of slush...

And here are a couple before/after-the-snow pics, in case, like me, you've forgotten what it looked like a month ago:

The house......and

the driveway, looking up from the parking lot.

Incredibly, Ruben says he can begin Monday, assuming the main highway is ice-free. At least, he'll shovel the drive, but there's actually quite a list for the as yet unhired excavator:

1. Trenches for electric and water lines.
2. Septic system, including trench for sewage out, hole for tank, and dispersion field.
3. New addition foundation, in preparation for pouring the concrete pad.
4. AND, shoveling the drive...

Bah!

Looks like we got a few more inches of snow here in Taos last night, and they say we should expect another 5-10 inches today above 7500'. The property in Questa is at about 7777'...

It's been about 4 days since I attempted to get to the house, and failed. At that point I would have been the first to drive (my '97 Honda) on the nameless road that leads to my house. Now, I'm thinking it may be time to ask if I can stay put in Taos for another month, even though I'm nearly packed.

There's not much to do now but wait out this storm. Getting supplies in is going to be very difficult; big equipment, almost impossible. The roads will open eventually, then we can begin again. One of my excavators IS willing to come out and look at the job in Questa, maybe even tomorrow - we'll see...

The amount of snow we've received is just awesome. Bah.

How much snow? Maybe not as bad as much of the midwest, but we had major damage to a tree in our "zen garden," here in Taos. Here is it this summer:

And here's what happened this morning.

3 out of 6 major trunks hit the ground, under the weight of wet snow:

(This view is from the opposite side.)