Catching Up

Sometimes, you get behind plans.  Sometimes, there are just too many plans and too little time.  Sometimes, it takes all you have just to make the daily meals and do the laundry.

I've been lucky lately.  Kind of caught up on some things.  Still behind on others, but "catching up" is good.

On the good side:

1.  Picking beans now.  Yum!

2.  Picking wild blackberries in the backyard.  Yum!

3.  Went loose with the hedge trimmer and lopper.  Cleared out some big weeds and brambles that grabbed at me as I mowed the lawn before.

4.  This will seem weird, but my electric mower has 2 batteries and they don't last long (bought cheap - always a mistake) and they are difficult to remove.  So I tied a twine loop around them.  Those came loose, so I used duct tape to hold the twine in place.  Duct tape solves almost everything.

5.  Was missing hearing old CDs because my connections are all messed up (GOT to pull out the rack and fix that).  But then realized my portable multipurpose portable stereos can play them (DUH!).  Been enjoying Simon & Garfunkle all night.

6.  Gave the tomato plants a good soaking of foliar spray.  If that is unfamiliar, it means adding nutrients to the plants on the leaves.  It soaks in.

7.  Had some newly-leaking hose connections.  So I took every one apart and wrapped them with plumber's tape.  Thin plasticy stuff that gets squeezed into the hose threads.  Works great.  No more leaks.

8.  The cucumber and melon plants are beginning to climb the wire trellis.  

9.  I can expect a Tonkinese female kitten in mid September.

On the bad side:

A.  The back yard is "bramble city".  I HAVE to get the brush mower working again.

B.  I need to redo my Will.

C.  I need to get the car in for scheduled maintenance.

D.  I REALLY need to mop all the floors and they are SO clutterred.

E.  I REALLY need to completely redo the stereo/TV connections.  I mean I still have a VCR attached!

F.  I REALLY need to learn how to clip The Mews's claws.

G.  I am very overdo for a dentist visit, an annual physical, and a haircut.

H.  The kitchen ceiling fixture needs to be changed from attached-to-the-ceiling to "suspended".  It never works in Summer because of the hot attic.  Or maybe I need an attic fan.  I'm not sure which is easier.

I.  Weeds have taken over too much of the flowerbeds.  Periwinkle, English Ivy and Poison Ivy mostly.  Thanks to my neighbors...  I might just dig up the best and cover the whole area with black plactic for a year.

J.  The garden beds are probably infested with tomato-killing diseases.  One plant is already entirely yellow.  The solution is to surround the beds tightly in clear plastic for a year for over-heating the soil from trapped sunheat.  It's called solarizing.  I should have done it last year.

K.  I have old furniture.  Some  much of which is junk.  Time to get rid of a lot of stuff.  I've been living like a broke college student for too long (my desires are simple).  Not that I need "house beautiful" with rosewood tables and granite counters, but I could some better stuff.  

L.  Too many junk trees on the edges of the yard.  One day, there is a spling.   Next thing I notice it is 12' tall.  And the neighbor's maple tree roots are making mowing the lawn like driving over railroad ties.      I need to get them grinded out of my lawn.

Isn't there always more on the "To Do List" than you can do?  I'm just going to hire a general contractor to come in and do everything on the list I'm making.  3 bids, of course....  I think my major D-I-Y days are over.

Getting Illegible

I print now because even *I* can't read my own cursive anymore.  It is completely scribble these days.  Writing a check is a serious thing;  I have almost everything on autopay.  But the water bill has to have a check (or a $5 surcharge for online paying).  You should see me write that one every 3 months.  It is an exercise in "careful art"...

My signature is nearly useless.  It goes every whichway these days.

3 successive tries...

(Removed for security reasons)

Yeah, it is THAT bad.  The basic elements of the signature are still there.  The M, the looped S, the 2nd letter. 

Damn those DDT sprayer trucks in my youth!  It was supposed to be safe for humans.  Several of us kids rode our bikes behind the fogger truck because it was fun going in and out of the fog.

A year later, I discovered I was having trouble assembling simple model kits.  A couple years later, my teachers were saying I needed to practice my handwriting (cursive) more.  I hadn't had a problem before that.

When I was forced to try to learn to play a musical instrument, I failed completely.  My fingers and brain did not communicate well.  I couldn't learn to type.  By college, I could only write (legibly) slowly.  I would always get a "B" on essays because I didn't provide enough information".  Well, yeah, I had to deliberately form every word on paper but there was not enough time.

Seminars were great.  I was always A+ in those.  Speaking was easy.  I learned to hunt&peck on the typewriter well enough but I had to look at the keyboard all the time.  I think I got to 40 wpm doing that.  

Same in computerworld.  I can type a paragraph easily.  But then I have to look at the screen and see the couple typos and go fix them.  And it is getting worse.  Typing looking at the keys is bad enough, but gradually getting older doesn't help.  I have some bad finger habits.  

If I start a sentence with a capital T, I get a capital H right after.  Guaranteed.  And the newest annoyance id the Caps Lock key.  If I go for the A, I add the Cap lock.  And I tend to think ahead of my typing.  So "wouldn't" get shortened to "would", and the same with many contractions.  You can imagine the problems that creates for me on discussion boards.  :(

I spend half my time fixing errors...

I'm "healthy as a horse' generally.  I matured slowly, and I seem to be aging slowly.  I'll probably live into my late 90s.  But it is going to be awkward and difficult.  My typing will get worse and I will be more misunderstood as time goes by.  

As Mom said "Getting old isn't for sissies".  She had Parkinson's, Dad had dementia, I have DDT tremors and vertigo.  

Life is good until the end.

A Good Past Couple Days

As the title says, a good couple days.  Started Tuesday grocery-shopping.  I'm not happy without fresh fruits and veggies, and holidays always throw my shopping schedule off.  People come out in masses for picnic, BBQ, and travelling supplies.  The lines are long.  So if I forget to shop 3 days before, I wait til the day after.  And I forgot that (since July 4th was a Sunday) July 5th would be an "observed Federal holiday" and govt contractors general follow the Feds (for the practical reason that there is no one for them to talk to).

So I shopped Tuesday.  It was nice to have broccoli, asparagus, and buttercrunch lettuce.  It was nice to have peaches, berries, cherries, grapes, and oranges.  

In the afternoon, I FINALLY planted a lot of flower seedlings in the newly-cleared bed where I planted pole beans a month ago.  The beans are 6' tall already.  But because they are on a trellis, they only use a 6" strip at the edge.  So there was all that extra space.  Those green things in the bed are pulled weeds, brushed off before I planted.

I had all these perennial and self-sow seedlings, so in they went!  I got 3/4 of all my flower seedlings in the ground.  It doesn't really matter if they do all that well this year.  They will be good enough for transplanting to more permanent spots in the late Fall.  After planting them, I watered them deeply.

I had done some repair work on a fan-sprayer a few days before.  The holes were clogged and poking a needle into the holes didn't improve things much...

So I drilled out all the holes.  Unfortunately, my smallest drill bit was larger than the original holes, so the water didn't spray very far.  But I realized I had made a high-volume, low-pressure fan nozzle.  That has been quite useful.  Had I realized the consequences of the larger holes, I would have done it deliberately before.  I still have 2 other fan sprayers that work as intended, so nothing but a gain in this.

Yeah, I built the tripod it sits on...  Very adjustable.  So I replaced the 2 nozzles with a stadard fan nozzle.  The drilled fan nozzle is great for raised beds as it waters from edge to edge quickly.  The round nozzle is on the deck hose since the round spray suits the round planter pots well.

Which left the next major problem the overgrown daffodil/tulip bed.  They don't care about the weeds, but there were blackberries and loosestrife invading the bed.  The bed is about a 30' circle, and there are daylilies growing along the edge, a sunflower bird-feeder in the center and a 4x4" post to level the stepladder I need to fill the feeder.  

So I took out the riding mower to clear the weeds and blackberries.  It was awkward guiding a large mower in a small space, but fortunately this new mower has a button that allows the engine to keep the blade turning while in reverse.  And the blade deck is slightly offset to one side so you can get at edges with the wheels getting in the way

I was able to (slowly) mow almost everything I didn't want down close to the edging.  There were places I couldn't get at.  That's where the hedge trimmer came out.  I was able to cut down the weeds and grass right up against the edging.

More importantly, I was able to slide the narrow hedge-trimmer blade between the daylilies and cut off the wild blackberries near ground level.  In a couple of days the cut stuff will turn brown and I will know what to rake out.  That will let me see which weeds and canes I missed for another go with the hedge trimmer.  The battery was running down and needed recharging anyway.

The riding mower was set at 3" height (there is a path of  pavers and I didn't want to chance hitting one with the mower blade) .  Now that most of the weeds are cut down that low (and I can see where the pavers are),  I can use the small electric mower set at 1" to cut them down further.  Then I will will cover all the non-daylily area with permeable black fabric to kill the weeds by next Spring when the daffodils want to emerge.  

I covered it with solid black plastic a few year which worked OK except rain pooled on depressions and mosquitoes grew there so I kept having to poke wholes in it.  THe permeable fabric will solve THAT problem.

The transplanted flower seedlings seemed a bit beaten down by the sun,  so I watered them again.  It is amazing how much water dry soil needs sometimes.  The first watering a couple days ago had an inch of water pooled on the top before it soaked in.  Even then, my moisture meter today showed it was dry 6" down.  So another full inch of water on them.

And I put up a shade cloth for them.  The pole beans provide some dappled shade in the morning, and a couple of trees provide late-afternoon dappled shade, but mid-day is full-on sun.  So I stuck a a couple of 6' stakes in the ground and clipped a shade cloth on them.  Covers most of them.  By complete lucky coincidence the seedlings that want the most sunlight aren't covered.

I wish I had more pictures to show.  I forget when I'm doing gardening stuff.  Too-focussed, LOL!  If the transplanted seedlings survive the shock, I will have pictures to show in a few days.

I have a dozen Balsam flowers and a few Maltese Cross to plant.  I have a few places I can put them, but haven't decided where yet.  I think about that tomorrow.

Repairs

The vaccuum cleaner suddenly sucked.  By which I mean it failed to.  It's not like I overuse the poor thing.  :)

But I vacuumed the bedroom carpet and was still stepping on "bits"  (Ayla likes to eat in the bedroom).  So I checked the bag.  Empty.  I disconnected the hose and checked it.  Empty.  It's a cannister vacuum so I checked and I disconnected the tube from the head and hose.  Empty.

"SIGH*  I know what that means.  The Power Nozzle (that part on the floor) was clogged.  So... I took it of the push-tube and examined it.  There were 6 bolts holding it together.  I coudn't see what the heads of the bolts were but guessed at phillips-head and was right.  

Took a while to loosen them.  The 2 halves of the power nozzle still didn't want to separate.  Well, usually anything that is put together can be unput together, so I examined it for a while.  I could see the different halves of it (different colors made it sort of obvious) but I couldn't get them to separate.

I finally realized that 2 bolts I thought were loose weren't.  I went at them harder (they didn't want to release at first).  But succeeded.  And it still required some prying and pulling.    It gave a liitle, so I knew it wasn't locked in place with catch-pins (those evil things that are designed to connect together once and never to be unattached except with special tools).

I got the final 2 bolts ("machine screws" technically as they don't have nuts on the other end and are more like untapered screws).  And finally the 2 halves of the power nozzle can apart.

It was packed full of cat hair.  I shouldn't have been surprised, I suppose, but isn't that what a vacuum cleaner with a powered brush is SUPPOSED to remove successfully?

Talk about a mess!  The entire thing was packed with cat hair (and around here, that is what "dust bunnies" ARE.  It's not like *I* shed much.  :)

The brush roller looked like a cat hair brush used too often.  And when I removed that, I discovered the entire 10" of tube leading to the hose was packed.  The cat hair wasn't even GETTING into the sucky tube, nevermind the collection bag.  

I was amazed at how much cat fur I pulled out of the power nozzle.  I think there was a "Marley-volume of fur".  But with pulling some out with needle-nose pliers and pushing at the back end with the handle of a screwdriver, I got it all cleaned.  There were some deep corners with fur and the pliers got those too.

But to be sure, I took the power nozzle out on the deck and banged it on the rails.  Bits of dried food and grit came out!  Quite a lot.  So I took it back in to reassemble the power nozzle.  

The brushbar didn't want to stay in place.  So I thought of what the part HAD to look like and went back out the deck to find it.  I did, and was exactly what I thought it would look like.  Fit back perfectly.

I screwed all the machine bolts back in but was missing one.  Damn, more searching.  Finally found it on the lawn below where I banged the grit out on the rail.  Whew!

Then I re-vaccuumed the bedroom carpet.  Worked perfectly.  So I tied a label to the hose "Not Working?  Clean power nozzle".  I don't have the world's best memory, so reminders help.  10 years from now, when I've forgotten about this, that will give me a clue!