Interesting Day

 1.  My Credit Union (only existing in the building where I worked) has become too inaccessible being 25 miles away now.  So I went looking for a local one a year ago.  Eligibility on their website was too confusing.  So I finally just visited them today.  

It was damn easier than their website!  It is a military credit union, but I had 3 uncles who served active duty in WWII, so I hoped that would get me in.  That didn't, but actually anyone can join if they become a member of a "no obligations" charity organization.  Seemed rather strange...

But they enrolled me and then I was a new credit union member.   Nice that it is just 2 miles away instead of 25.  I set up a basic savings account and bought a 12 month CD offerring 4.94% interest.   Beats my regular bank .01% rate.  I will be switching all my regular checking/savings to the new place as existing CDs mature.

2.  Pleased with my success at the FCU, I went to the meat market and bought some Delmonico steaks (on sale), a chicken breast to poach for The Mews and myself, and some meatloaf mix.  That stuff is better than hamburger though it takes some effort to mix up thoroughly.

3.  Picked a couple of Cherokee tomatoes before they were quite ripe.  The squirrels or groundhog get at them if I don't.  If I catch the little varmints in a Have-A-Hart live trap,  I'll dump it into a large tub of water and bury their butts near a tree as fertilizer.  I have no tolerance for anything that eats my few heirloom tomatoes!

4. But the tub of "water of sudden departure" has tadpoles!  I don't know whether they are toad or frog.  A yard can't have too many toads.  If frogs, I will dump them into the storm drain that leads to the swamp across the street where they will be happy, and thrive.  A lot of toads are fine, but a lot of frogs get noisy.

But I'm feeding them ground-up fish flakes and some algae from the pond.  When I see the first legs, I'll put a small tree branch in the water to help them climb out and another attached to it to lead them down to the ground.  If I don't, they will just start eat eating each other (they turn carnivorous at leg-stage) and I'll just have one big fat frog or toad.  And I want a lot of toads.

5.  I need to rent a thatching machine from the DIY store.  Not that my lawn actually has thatch (few lawns actually do), but Summer was brutal and there are patches of dead (not just dormant) grass.  I need to re-seed next month and a de-thatcher will tear those up to expose bare roughened soil perfect for new seeds.

6.  Figured out the gas can problem.  I feel like an idiot.  There is a pull-lever to release pressure.  I've used it 100 times, how did I forget that?  Yesterday, I couldn't make it work.  Today I just grabbed it and automatically pulled the release lever and it worked fine.  I'm getting old...

7.  Time to go out and mow the lawn.  The flat mower tire has been replaced and what grass is still growing (in the shade) is 5" high. What is dead is dead.  What survives needs attention.  LOL!

Mowing The Leaves

So, yesterday, I was ready to mow the leaves to add to the compost bin.  It went easily, though I thought the mower would shred the leaves more than it did.  It acted more like a vacuum cleaner that a shredder.   I expected some bulk but not so much.  But to avoid carrying the collection bag to the compost bin every 5 minutes, I brought out a big trash barrel to collect it in and drag that to the compost bin.  

A path of mowing from the barrel and back filled the bag.  The barrel held 3 bags.  So I would bring the barrel to the bin, dump it, and spread it evenly (about 6").  Then added kitchen waste from the other bin on top.  Then added 4 buckets of the grinded tree roots on that.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.  Literally, 3 layers of each!  I filled the 2nd bin to the top.  At 4'x4'x4", it should heat up nicely even over Winter.  

The 1st bin (where I had been dumping kitchen scraps for 2 years) was almost emptied.  There is some stuff left, but because of tree roots, I have to get the last 6" loose with my mini electric tiller.

So, all in all, it turned out great!  It has been a while since I collected enough plant material to fill either bin.  I'll check to see if the temperature is rising in a couple weeks (it takes a while to get going).  I might have usable compost by Summer.

Mowing The Lawn

Sometimes mowing the lawn is not so easy.  In early April, I pulled up some chicken wire and laid it to the side of the garden.  I wedged up some 4'x4' posts to and set them on the chicken wire.  On top of that has come a series of dug-up carpet (still solid after 25 years) black plastic, landscaping fabric, and at the lowest level there was synthetic burlap (also un-degraded).  I can't imagine I ever used some of that stuff.

The removal of all that stuff has been brutal!  Each layer has required spade work under each layer to pry it up then yank it away from the intruding vine roots by hand a few inches at a time.  Each exposed layer has had tree roots running through from the neighbor's yard.  It terrible!

But the grass was growing throught the chicken wire and I had to do something about it.  I pulled the chicken wire up, and it was like ripping asphault off the driveway.  Each 25' piece took 15 minutes of hard pulling up from the grass.  And then there were all the previously pruned pieces of thorny rose bushes and tree trimminings.

It took 45 minutes before I could even mow the overgrown lawn area.

And then it took multiple mowings over the overgrown area to get them down to height.  The grass won't like that.  The rule is never remove more that a 1/3 of a grass height.  I removed 4/5ths .  I'll have to tend to them kindly for a few months.

I am so far behind this year...