Cover Me

We have most of the garden put to bed for the winter, and what a relief it is.  This past weekend we bought a silo tarp and did our best to pack Castle Aaargh up for the winter, too.  It's really hard to stuff a building with things sticking up like door-frames and poky conduit underneath a tarp, but it's under wraps for now.

We had covered the building site back in 2005 when construction first started, too, but didn't realize how heavy snow and ice become over the course of the winter.  Talk about saggage.  (Is that a word?)  The plastic tarp caved in under the weight of the melting snow which formed icebergs a foot thick and tore the cheap tarp and in the end, we had a round circle of stones full of ice.

So, the next year, we tried putting a center pole in the middle like a circus tent so the snow and ice would simply slide off the high spots and glide to the ground.  That didn't work either.  Our circus tent collapsed after the tarp tore around the point of the central pole.  We'd had a blizzard with very high winds and I woke up one night to the sound of something making a tremendous amount of noise only to find the tarp in pieces and flapping away with great gusto.  That was in 2006.

Winter 2010--no cover.

  From that point on, we just gave up trying to protect the building for winter.   We didn't cover it because there was really no point.  The snow and ice would find their way in anyway.

For the next four winters, it sat open to the weather, filling up with snow.  Freezing and thawing, freezing and thawing.  And wet.

But this year is different, this year we got a whole lot accomplished (according to Optimistic Carl) so Pessimistic Karen thought it best we try one more time to protect our hard work from the elements since we didn't get far enough; there's still no roof.  I don't know if the tarp does any good, in reality it may do more harm by holding in moisture or blocking sunlight or this or that and a hundred other calamities known only to professional stone masons, but in my mind, covering stonework with a tarp calms me down.   And anything that calms me down is bound to make Carl's life easier, so he went along with my Plan on Saturday.  Rain was forecast for later in the day,  so we had to hurry.

My plan was to take a whole bunch of pallets and stack them up inside Aaargh and form a solid base for the tarp to rest on that could take the weight of the snow and ice with a slightly higher center for pitch.  Carl went out and got started on Saturday morning while I was dealing with some housework and by the time I got there, it was clear his ideas and mine weren't the same.  He had the pallets in there alright, but they weren't stacked.  He more or less tossed them into a jumbled heap which he said would be more conducive to holding up the tarp and resulting snow load.  I looked at this pile doubtfully.  

"Ok...... if you say so,"  I grumbled, after restating my original, neatly stacked idea.

(That statement didn't make him very happy, by the way.).  We ended up cramming the rain barrels, weed pails, and anything else that looked sturdy enough into the holes and the crannies that the tarp might rest against and finally Carl decided we were finished.  (Mostly because it started to rain.)

So, here's the unveiling of the beautiful structure we will behold until at least April:

Oh, my. 

Isn't that just the loveliest sight ever?  I bet you're glad you're not my neighbors.  We ended up using two tarps in festive contrasting colors to break up the monotony of the tarpage.  Note the very slimming addition of the rope around the middle and the rocks tossed randomly on the skirt of the tarps to keep them from flapping in the breeze.

Oooooops...... appears our belt may be slipping in the back, we're going to need to do some adjusting.  I took these pictures this morning just to see how the tarps are faring with the rain we had.  Carl said there will be very few pockets to catch water and ice if we did it his way.

Ahem...........

Well, there's the windowsill on the left and I do agree, it doesn't look like a 'pocket' per se (more like a lake)  but that's definitely water and

would you look at that?   There's some ice.

Apparently we have some fixin' to do.

We still have some time to make this better since the temperatures are supposed to be mild for a few days.  Will we restack this?  I doubt it.  But I will say something about it and point out the problems to him and be generally annoying.  

I just have to remember, this is hunting season.  I don't need to have my husband gunning for me.

Cover me, OK???