Category: Projects

A wet spring

We have had rain almost once a week all spring. It’s great. No watering and all the little growing things are excited to be alive. Things have been moving right along in the garden. Several plants have started blooming and the tomatoes all have fruit on them though the Rutgers tomato only has one and hasn’t produced many blooms. The cherry tomato seems to be attempting to make up for this though. I counted today and there are at least 45 tomatoes on the plant and I may have missed some. The celebrity only has three on it but it is making blooms on its new growth and the three it has are pretty substantial.

All of the squash plants have been blooming this week. Unfortunately it seems they’re all producing male flowers right now so I’m not actually getting any squash out of it and also the storms we’ve had for the last two days have knocked many of the blossoms off. I collected between 10 and 15 from the ground this afternoon.

Last week I thinned the edamame and green beans. Since several green bean plants didn’t come up I just transplanted healthy plants into the empty locations and I ended up making a second row of edamame out of plants collected from the original row. Several of the edamame plants look like they’re going to start blooming and the green beans are not far behind them.

I haven’t thinned any of the other plants yet and I probably won’t until they actually start crowding each other. The only ones that seem to be crowded at all right now are one hill of cucumber vines. I will probably take the two weakest plants from that hill next week.

The flower beds in the front yard are doing their best to keep up with the garden. The new ground cover roses Mom gave me this year are all blooming right now. The red roses, purple butterfly bush and sage, yellow lantana and pink petunias are really nice. This is the best this bed has looked since it was created. Very nice.

All of the day lilies are getting ready to bloom too. The yellow one in front of the house has been blooming all week and the orange one in the back has a bunch of flower stems on it. The pink cone flower in the back also looks good though I wasn’t able to get a decent picture of them.

Almost a box

I now have cabinet carcasses. You could set a book on one if you wanted but it would look a little silly. I still need to stick the back boards on the boxes but I’ll hold off on that until I’ve painted the box. Bill was kind enough to loan me his paint spray gun. I also want to see if they actually fit in the room too in case I need to have a bonfire. Wouldn’t want to waste paint on kindling. So, what’s left? Backs on the cabinets, glue the book cases, backs on the book cases, make face frames and tops… on second thought let’s not go enumerating all of the remaining things so I don’t feel terrible. Let’s rather say that some day I will finish the shelves and perhaps books will not be completely obsolete by then. Yes, we’ll say that. Anyway, here’s pictures.

Also, I know I’m doing it wrong with the lap joints on the panels but I don’t care so nyah.

Signs of life

It’s been a busy day around the house today. I found the touch up paint that was provided with my house and went around cleaning up all the little scuffs and marks the walls have accumulated over the years. I also painted the recessed ceiling in the front entry way. I think some nice small mouldings would look good up in there too so I’m going to visit the Despot later and see what they have. I recovered my UT electronic ID so I could apply for a job there. Did a little work on the book shelves too though I only have one new piece cut to show for it. It is irritating when the table saw is too small to handle things. Being creative and improvising are fun but sometimes you just want to cut a corner off a piece of plywood and go about your day instead of jumping through a bunch of hoops. Oh well.

The big news today is that there are little growing things in the garden. I have four cucumber plants, three yellow squash plants, one acorn squash plant and something like ten corn plants that have all pushed their way up to smile at the sun. There’s also something growing near the edamame but it remains to be seen if that’s beans or weeds.

squash
yellow squash

cucumber
cucumber

corn
corn

Also the flowers are pretty. Here are pretty flowers.
red roses

white roses

white rose

amaryllis

Garden

The garden is finished and planted. I didn’t get any potatoes or sweet potatoes planted because it is a bit late in the year for that and I didn’t see any “seed potatoes” at any of the nurseries I visted. I do have cucumbers, yellow summer squash, acorn squash, onions (so many more than I could ever eat even if I liked them), tomatoes, green beans, corn, basil, edamame and some strawberries in a pot. Apparently I got started a little late on the planting but it’ll be ok. Here’s a picture.

Rocks are heavy

The rocks for my garden retaining wall were delivered yesterday afternoon. Oddly enough three tons of limestone doesn’t actually take up that much space. It wasn’t even two full pallets. Today I moved all of them into the back yard four at a time with the wheelbarrow. So tired. Tomorrow and Friday will probably be wall construction days. I need some sand to bed them on but I don’t think I’ll mortar them. Need to talk to people who have done this before though before I decide about the mortar.

There are a lot of flowers in the yard right now including some I wasn’t expecting. I suppose I should not be surprised that the maple makes flowers. After all, the trees produce seeds and there aren’t too many ways to do that. They’re pretty small but with my discovery of the macro setting on my little point and shoot camera I got a picture or two.

The macro thing is nice. It makes taking pictures of the pretty things in the yard a lot easier.

Those last two are the wisteria out front. It smells really nice. A young man came to my door just now and informed me that he could stand next to this lavender (wisteria) all day and that also he wanted to give to me a security system for free (except, you know, monitoring and options and taxes, etc. etc. not that he mentioned any of that). Apparently crime is on the rise out here in the Oort cloud. We’ve had five homes burglarized and the mad scientist up on the hill is nearing the completion of his death ray so on and so on. I don’t appreciate the scare tactic nor the hard sell. I also don’t understand why everyone wants to come in the house. You know a good way to keep people from robbing your house? Don’t put on public display that you have a bunch of stuff worth stealing. Not that anyone would be interested in my 15 year old analog CRT television anyway. That’s the second free security system I’ve had offered to me within a week.

More flowers!

Finally, there’s the matter of the unknown pink flowing shrub in the back. My new found camera feature allowed me to get a close up picture of one of the few remaining flowers and some of the leaves so if you know what it is let me know.

le sigh

So there’s this old woodworking adage, “Measure twice, cut once.” That’s super. I did all my maths and then did them again and decided that the rabbet in the back of the bookshelves to accept the back sheet of plywood should be 3/8″ X 1/4″. That would allow the plywood to be recessed into the case by 1/8″ and fit snugly to make sure the case was square and did not rack. So I set up my saw with the dado cutter to do 1/4″ wide cut, 3/8″ deep and ran the pieces through. Oops. That should have been 3/8″ wide and 1/4″ deep. See illustration. I think I know what I’m going to do to fix this without buying new plywood but man, what a pain in the ass. I would propose an amendment to the rule to be “Measure twice, cut once, don’t be a dumbass” but I think that last part is supposed to be understood.

oops
A:Reality B:Design

Is it furniture yet?

No. It is not. But I’m making progress. The bookshelf project has benefited from my sudden surplus of free time. All of the wood has been cut to size and the hardwood blanks got run through the jointer this afternoon to remove the saw marks and try to square them up a little. Pictures!

I will need to spend a little time getting the various dadoes and other milling things well defined and written down before tackling the next part but that’s ok because it’s time to get the garden ready so I’ll be able to think about that whilst carting around rocks and dirt. Now that it seems spring is here to stay more flowers have appeared in the yard. The wisteria in the front is blooming again and the bumble bees are fighting over it. Also, the daffodils in the back bed are blooming and there are more of them this year than last which is encouraging. There’s also a pink shrubby thing in the back by the sago palms that is very pretty but I can’t remember what it is called and I haven’t managed to take a decent picture of it for the album. More pictures!



Wild Kingdom

When you’re retired you have the time to do the things you always wanted to do. Things like clean the yard. Yay cleaning. Everyone loves cleaning. I’ve been rehabilitating overgrown, under-loved flower beds for the last two days. In the front this meant cutting the butterfly bush back down to a reasonable size, pulling a ton of grass out, putting in a few annuals and heavily mulching everything else. In the back it has been removing the sticks from last year’s asters, cutting off or pulling out the runners the rough leaf dogwood sends out and raking out piles of dead leaves that just don’t seem to ever decompose. Gotta love those live oak leaves.

I got a few pictures of some yard critters. First is a bumble bee in my mountain laurel. When the wisteria bloomed last year I had a ton of these guys flying around all day. It’s good to see they’re back.

I also almost bumped into this lizard cleaning out the back flower bed. Either this lizard or one like it has been hanging around in the back yard for a long time. Probably longer than the house has been here actually. I see it every once in a while but this time it actually stayed still long enough to get a decent picture of it. In fact it just hung out on the fence the whole time I was raking leaves and cutting runners.

Two more beds to go and then it’ll be time to start worrying about the new garden.

Mountains and molehills

I took a few pictures of the mountains as we were driving back to Denver from vacation. I wish we got just a little bit more snow here but at the same time I appreciate not having to drive on it.

The yard is starting to come back to life after a fairly mild winter. I don’t think the cherry is going to bloom much this year but I’m fertilizing it in the hope that I can fool it a little. The viburnum we planted in the front has been growing and looks very nice right now.

Also, the agarita bush which was probably four inches tall when it was planted is much bigger and is blooming for the first time. I don’t know if I’ll get any fruit off it this year but it’s encouraging.

I went out to inspect the garden plot this afternoon and it’s holding up well. There’s one place where the roof drip line has broken the paper but the grass in that small place can be dealt with using more thorough methods. It’s 26 feet long and 13 feet wide. After I leave a little space on the fence sides and build the retaining wall it’ll be 24.5 feet by 10.5 feet. After I measured the slope of the yard and did some math I determined that I’m going to need to have 10 yards of garden dirt brought in. I think, all in all, it’ll be about $750 worth of supplies to be ready to plant and then I need to get the actual plants. I still need to decided exactly what I’m going to plant too. I have been reconsidering the “tangle” plan and I think I’ll cut back on that and have more of the garden be a traditional layout. That will make it easier to treat diseases and pests and it’ll look better too.