Mowing Again!

A few days old, but I didn't want to leave the subject of the mower repair hanging...

Yay!  I got my mower back Saturday.  I was about to haul out the old push mower, but the repair guy called Friday and said the riding one was fixed.  The grass was getting a BIT high.  Here are some pictures of the first swaths I cut...

The grass was 10" high! And I keep the blade 3" high for good grass health and weed suppression.

Another view of the tall grass.

And another.  I would have felt embarrassed, but my neighbor's grass was the same height and HIS mower is working.

It took an hour with the old push mower to get all these corners and edges mowed clean.  I sure am glad to have it back working!

My next big yard project is to reduce the amount of lawn I have...

Finished The Pond

Not much to show.  My hands got too muddy to take many pictures!

Basically, I had a dozen pots that were fallen over in the pond with the Sweet Flag leaves growing curved toward the light.  I had a large pot of mixed clay and pea gravel to refill smaller pots, broken terra cotta and golf ball sized stones for weight in the bottoms, and a new bag of pea gravel to cover the soil on the tops.

I found the corner of the sunken patio a convenient height to do messy work...

Here is a stage in the procedure.  The 2 pots on the right have had the stones put in the bottom, some clay/gravel soil added, then rooted portion from the original pots.  I am about to add new pea gravel on top and move them to the pond.

This is the small pond with Sweet Flag around the ledge.  There are 5 hardy waterlilies in the deeper center portion and several on the outer ledge.  The lilies on the ledge (and half of the Sweet Flag) will be moved to the larger pond as soon as I replace the damaged lining.

I have a small water pump for the small pond.  After it has circulated the water and filtered out the silt for a few days, I will add a few small goldfish.

At least I know now that I simply MUST lift all the pots each Spring and cut back the roots.  And next year I will cover it with plastic window screen instead of clear plastic sheet so the pond can breathe but the Spring Peepers can't mate!

A Great Day To Be Out Yesterday!

What is so rare as a day in Spring?  Well in MD, they really are rare!  The average temp this time of year is 70F, but that usually means days of 55 intermixed with days of 80.  Finally, yesterday was actually in the upper 60s, which is MY kind of weather.

I spent almost the entire day outside.  The major project was to clean out the small pond.  I have a larger pond, but that project is for another day.

I have to mention first that I covered the pond with clear plastic because the Spring Peepers drive me crazy at night.  If there was 1,000 it would be OK because the noise would average out.  But I get just a few and there is a loud crok every minute or so.  Its like the Chinese water torture!  So, for sleepfulness, I cover the pond when they are mating.

The first thing I do in a major outdoors project is set up a rest station.   Hey, I'm 60 years old!  Chair, radio, beer.  In the shade...

Here is the pond when I uncovered it.  Live plants...

But purple sludge!  My first thought was "red algae bloom" (toxic).  I washed my hands frequently.  I made a hole in the muck to get a hose siphon started.

It's easy.  I just laid out one hose downhill and attached another from the spigot to it.  Fill the first with water, disconnect, and get it in the "hole" in the pond fast.  Here is the downhill end of the siphon hose.

It took an hour to siphon (hence the need for radio and beer), but it was finally done.  Look at the mess I saw!

Meanwhile, as the siphoning was going on, I weeded the garden.  I dug up quite a bit on some invasive grass.  Nasty stuff that spreads by long underground runners.  I used to know the name of it, but it escapes me now.  Suggestions welcome.

When the pond was drained, I mucked out the bottom silt,  Its great stuff for the compost pile!  A pond skimmer net is good for getting that stuff out.

Because of the red algae(?), I sprayed it with chlorinated water.  I don't know if that will kill it, but it sure won't help them any (search for WC Fields and moths).  I scooped the remaining water out with an old pitcher and poured the rich silt-water on the neighboring flowers.

When I had the pond about as clean as I could get it , I refilled the pond center about 4" deep.  That's so I can set the surviving plants back in some water tomorrow when the chlorine has mostly evaporated out. 

They all need repotting.  I tried that last year and failed badly.  Some pots floated and some just fell over.  THIS time, I have gravel to mix with the soil and bits of broken flagstone for the bottoms of the pots to weight them down.

The repotting was necessary because, 3 years ago, I discovered that the entire pond was a mass of roots.  Stupid me, I didn't know that they grew roots out of the pots!!!  And it had been 5 years since I planted them.  I spent hours cutting the various pots apart (the roots were all intertwined).  And that was in the cold March water (I still shudder from the cold water)...

But this year, it is going better.  I have the stuff to repot them properly (read up on it at pond plant website).  And I am going to put a waterpump in there this year to keep the water circulating.  Does anyone know if those U/V filters really work?  I might try one.

Getting The Garden Ready

In between the near-daily rain last week, I got the garden beds prepped for the season.  I had some free County-supplied mulch in a pile for 2 years, and it composted nicely.  The stuff was like fine leaf-mould.  So I added 3" to each of my beds

I took pictures of doing one of my 6 raised beds.  Here is the composted mulch on top...

I added slow-release organic fertilizer.  I blend it from 2 sources, but it is about 10-10-10.  Then I turned the soil, twice, with a spading fork.

Then leveled it with a rake and tamped it lightly. 

Consider it repeated 5 times for the other beds.  I love the rake I found a few years ago.  Its not a "bow" rake.  This is a "leveling" rake.  It is exactly 24" wide (useful for measuring) and has a straight bar on the back to make everything smooth and even.

As soon as the weather is right (about another week), I am ready for the tomatoes, peppers, melons, etc!  Meanwhile, I am hardening off the seedlings.  One hour the first day, 2 hours the next, etc til 8 good sun hours.  I can hardly wait...

Marks (Murphy's) Law

I love my riding lawn mower.  But it seems to develop a new problem every Spring.  This year the choke knob broke off in my hand.

I'm one of those people who NEVER have normal problems.

My "Top 30" plant provider sent me the wrong plant 5 years ago and it turned out to be "wickedly invasive".

My twice-spayed cat STILL goes into heat.

Any repair problem is "Wow, I've never seen THAT happen before.

My "Murphy's Law" event is what "Can't happen",  does.

So, naturally, the choke knob problem was "that doesn't happen".    Well, it did.  I pulled the choke out as usual a few days ago and the shaft snapped right off.  I could feel it.  And it just came out loose when pulled.  You can't start an mower that needs the choke adjusted when you can't adjust it...  I felt around inside the engine compartment to see how it was attached, but couldn't see a clue to how to get at it.  It turns out later that the entire gas tank has to be removed.  "Not something I want to mess with".

So I called a guy who will come and fix mowers on site.  I've used him before.  He does good work and is honest and his deal is "fix on site".  But to be honest, he usually has to take the mower away.  But at least he will do that.  He did something neat that I will have to remember.  He bypassed the choke by spraying carburater cleaner down the removed air filter!  That primed the starter!  Hey, I didn't know.  Maybe you did.  LOL!  I'm a gardener and woodworker.  When it comes to engines, I'm lost.   I have 2 gas chainsaws in the basement and I can't make them stay running.  That's why I have an electric one.  It always works!


So he started it right up (Starting the mower was not the problem when the choke lever worked) and drove it onto his truck.  If I had known that trick before he came, I would have mowed the lawn first.  It is already 4" high and growing.  When I get the mower back in a week, it will be 6-8" high.  This time of year, you CAN actually watch the grass grow!

Mis-Labeled Plants

I ordered Coreopsis Golden Gain and got THESE.

Any idea what they are?

Busy Time

My apologies, I am a bit busy these days.  At day, it is garden time, so I am either working hard or recovering from it.  And at night I watch MSNBC or videos.  And have I got a great video...  I saw bits of it when it was on Cable, but I have the whole DVD set now.

I'm obsessed with HackDotSign right now.

In the series, there is an interactive world-wide internet game called "The World".  Sort of a Sword and Sorcery world, but much more involved inter-personally than that.  The trick here is that there is one character who cannot logout and isn't sure what "the real world" is.  And he is a real jerk to most people.  Not in the mean or cruel sense but because he has no real-world connections and can't relate.

I think he may be in a real-world psychiatric ward or involved in an accident (in the show). 

And he has problems, a mystery he is trying to solve, and some mysterious friends no one else can see.  And some he can who are trying to help him but he can't understand that.  I watch a couple hours of that each night, but I think there are at least a couple of week's worth.

So I am kind of preoccupied for a while.  Sorry...  I'll visit when I can.

The cats are happy, they get to sit on my lap for hours.

If you ever saw the series, let me know that you liked or didn't like it.  OK either way.  And for whatever it means, I sure would like to be like the character "Bear".

And I don't know how it ends, so please don't mention anything about that.

Mark

A Bit Of A Report

Sorry I haven't been posting here regularly.  I get more involved in the Mark's Mews blog about the cats.  Their pictures are more interesting.  And I haven't been very active with home projects lately.  Weeding the gardens is not very exciting, and everytime I want to go to the local project store to get wood, it starts to rain.  So (for example), my plans to build new plant light shelves is still on hold...

And my gardening work tends to end up on the cats' blog.  I'll have to find a way to balance that.  "They" get to show off the results, so I will have to start posting more about the weeding and digging here.  Fortunately, I have a few dozen new plants on order, so I will have some new things to show soon.

One major effort is too enlarge the areas of successful plants.  When I started flowerbeds, I ordered "6 of this" and "9 of that".  The results were a bit chaotic.  I am moving more toward larger areas of the ones that have done best.  And bringing several small plantings of one plant together.  For example, I have 18 astilbes in 3 places and I think it would look better to have them all in the one place where they seem happiest.  The two other places, they just struggle to survive.  One place is too sunny and the other is too shady.

The back of the flowerbeds has always been unsatisfying.  I originally planted 5 butterfly bushes, interspersed with 2 euonymus shrubs, 2 spring flowering almonds, and some nandina.  And the butterfly bushes are so old that the yearly prune-back has made them weak.  Even perennials don't thrive forever.  The euonymus shrubs are twice the claimed size and are shading everything.  Plus they send up shoots everywhere.  It is time for a clean sweep of the background shrubs.  That is going to be a job removing them all, but it will be worth it.  And I may be able to use some of them in other parts of the yard.

I plan to plant new smaller red butterfly bushes, put nandina in between for winter color, and move the euonymus along front creek for privacy and erosion control.  They can grow full size there.  I haven't thought of a good place for the spring flowering almond shrubs, but they are only interesting for a couple of weeks each year  so they may not be much of a loss.

Meanwhile, I did do a lot of weeding the past week.  Every location has their own annoying weeds, but mine are purple deadnettle, some creeping grass that spreads through runners, and some damn little plant with tiny white flowers on it (and the seeds jump away when the plant is touched.  The good news is that I think I got at them this year before they could go to seed.  There are others like thistle and dandelion, but they never get to seed here, they just grow from windblown seeds in other yards and I can't stop that.

I don't have many weed problems, usually.  This was a great year for the purple deadnettles though.

They are all OVER the front lawn.  I'm never seen this before.  They apparently love sunlight because they only grew beyond the shadow of the house.  Well, they only live a few weeks, so it could be worse.

They do annoy me though, because I maintain the yard organically and it mostly works.  I apply corn gluten each Spring and Fall, and that stuff supresses initial root development, and mowing at 3" usually shades out most weeds.  Here's an example:

This is a view down my property line.  My yard is on the left.  My neighbor uses synthetic weed killer  and major fertilizer stuff and mows his lawn down like a pool table.   I mow my yard to 3" and use organic stuff.  Biggify the picture to see where all the dandelions and crabgrasses are... And my grass IS greener without anything added but the 9-2-2 corn gluten.

Yes, he doesn't have the purple deadnettle.  I have to think about that one...  But I bet if I took a core sample of his lawn and mine that the soil is richer many inches down in mine and almost dead in his.

And here's something else.  I have honeybees in MY yard.  I don't think they live IN my yard, but they sure come here to feed.

In fact, it was becoming hazardous to walk around the yard before I mowed the lawn deadnettles down.  Don't worry, they still have plenty to feed from, there are large unmowed areas.  But I have difficult childhood stinging issues and the memories remain...  So where I walk, it is mowed.

Oops, I Completely Forgot...

...to post about the storage/cat room.  I KNOW I wrote about it, so I must have deleted it somehow...  Or I transported to an almost-identical alternate universe AGAIN and in THIS one I didnt post about it (This seems to happen a few times a year - LOL!).  ;)

Anyway, at least I intended to (see here at  Feb 16th Item 4), and I DID do the project on March 9th.  So here is the missing post...

When my parents stopped traveling, I sold the guest room furniture to make it a storage room.  But when I got my 3rd cat (Marley), I decided they all needed a playroom.  So I decided to combine the two ideas.  The long sold wall of the room would become storage and the rest a cat play room (The "Mewsroom").

I checked for the depth I needed for boxes, vacuum cleaners, the carpet cleaner, etc; located the wall studs that would accept those things.  Naturally, the nearest stud was 2" too narrow, so I had to move out to the next one.  That was more space than I really needed to store stuff, but I will probably appreciate it in the future (if I'm IN this dimension in the future).

So, the concept was to take about 2' of the room and hang drapes to make a storage space and make the rest of it a cat playroom.  I tried to find drapery rods that could bear the weight (I have some old but nice drapes), but rods are not designed to float 2' out from the walls and I didn't want to go into the stipple ceiling for vertical support.  I checked out a few other ideas at home stores.  But what I ended up with was a 1" iron pipe.

Now, the iron pipe comes in 10' length and the walls were 10' 3" apart.  Pipe couplings only add 1/2".  So I thought about that.  The 2 ideas I came up with were"

1. Attach 1.5" boards to the walls (1.5 plus 1.5 makes up the 3"), or
2. Hang the pipe from 3" corner braces

If I had used the boards, I would have have to fancy them up.  Plane them to size, sand them, chamfer corners, stain and finish them, etc.  I just didn't feel like doing all that.  Maybe I will next year.  I went with just hanging the pipe on corner braces.  Hey, I had other things to do, and the gardening projects can't be delayed at this time of year!

So, there I was deciding to hang drapes from a 1" pipe.  I decided that wouldn't work.  Drapery hooks don't slide over pipes.  But shower curtain rings do!  Which gave me a further idea.  Why not get some nice light outer shower curtains?

I attached the corner braces to the stud.  The board was there to hold the other end of the pipe.  I couldn't be at both ends. 

When I maneuvered the pipe onto both braces, there was enough movement for the pipe to slip off one.

So I added wood blocks on both to keep the pipe from moving.  I'll screw the wood in place one of these days...

Here is a clear picture of the shower curtain pattern.  Not to plain, not too busy, not too cute.

And the closet is looking better.

The lamp will be hung up soon.

Games I love, using some freed-up space!

Here are a few pictures of what I wanted to hide behind the curtains...

Here are some of what it looked like afterwards...

 That cats loved the changes...

Isn't that a nice curtain to hide stuff behind?

Plans

I have my tomato seedlings started.  Plus peppers, celery, lettuces, and a bunch of flowers.  More to come fast on the schedule!

But it bothers me that my plant stand only has 2 bulbs over each shelf.  I use daylight and/or plant light bulbs in them, but it seems my seedlings are always "leggy" (long and thin).  So I decided to change to 4-bulb fixtures to increase the light the seedlings get.

The stand for the seedlings is an awkward size.  Prebuilt shelf systems are 4' long.  But the fixtures are a couple inches longer.  So I have to build one to suit the fixtures.  The important considerations were strength, cost, and ease of construction.  I'm fine with general carpentry, so I sketched and priced several designs...

1.  All plywood - I can make it all 1/2" or 3/4" plywood with a good sanded outside surface.  The "pro" is that it is all same size solid pieces.  Stainable.  Three easy 16" wide sides, top, bottom, and shelves per sheet.  And plywood is stable.  Cons:  Would need 1"x3" board attached to the shelves to resist bending under weight.  And lots of ugly (to a woodworker) plywood edges.

2.  1" board - 1" board frame and shelves.  Pro - Easy wood to handle and cut.  Stainable.  Easy to make dado cuts for solid shelves.  Cons - Have to join two 8" boards to get the 16" depth I need for the 4-bulb fixture on all pieces (sides, top, bottom and shelves).  I can do that and it would be strong, but that's a lot of extra work.  And dado cuts into 1" nominal boards have to be shallow.  Boards more likely to be "unperfectly straight" in all dimensions.

3.  2" board - 2" board frame and shelves.  Larger "glue and screw" edges.  More solid in appearance and actuality.  Little support needed.  No concern about shelves bending under weight. Dadoes can be deeper, so more solid.   2" Boards are usually straight.  Cons - Heavier and inelegant.  Wider dadoes needed.  Bulky-looking.

I considered combinations of 1", 2", and plywood cases and shelves, but didn't see any advantage, and the imagined results were practical but ugly.  The cost of all the above ideas turned out to be from $105 to $128 so the cost is not a concern.

I have decided to go with a solid 2" frame and shelf design.  True, I will have to join 8" boards at the edges, but I have a joiner edger machine and biscuits to attach them flush.  Not as easy as plywood or 1" boards, but stronger.  And something I will be happiest with in the long range.  Those 2" boards will never sag under the weight of the 4 fluorescent bulb fixtures!  I built a plant shelf once; I don't want to have to build another!

The shelves will be of graduated heights.  Shelf #1 is 3" below the lights, shelf #2 is 7", shelf #3 is 10", shelf #4 is 13", and shelf #5 is 16".  That lets me move the seedlings to only a couple inches away from the lamps as they grow.  And with 4 bulbs, much sturdier seedlings anyway!

Oh, and the existing 2 bulb fixture plant stand?    I bought 2 new 4 bulb fixtures.  That will take care of 2 shelves.  The 2 bulb fixtures on the old stand will be removed and doubled under the other shelves so there are 4 bulbs under each one.

The old stand is destined to be moved to the Mews Room to become a cat exploration area with cat-sized holed cut out randomly in the shelves...

Pictures to follow as I build the new plant shelves this week!

Eyeglass Fun, Part 3

Writing yesterday's post reminded me that I had had 2 pairs of the previous prescription and ruined one.  The frames had a tendency toward loose screws.  I brought the previous back to For Eyes several times for that (after searching the office carpet for lost screws at least twice).  They simply re-installed screws (Duh, I can do that).

I finally decided to epoxy the lenses to the frame and end the problem.  Now, I'm a reasonably "ept" repair person.  But I sure chose the wrong way to do it!  With my slightly shaky hands, attempting to apply epoxy inside the frame rims and then getting the lenses back in while also trying to tighten the frame scres, I botched it big time!  I had epoxy smears all over the lenses...

I contemplated the disaster.  It wasn't the frame, it was the simple little screw.  On the OTHER pair of glasses, I dabbed the tiniest bit of epoxy into the screw hole with a toothpick, tightened the screw and the problem was solved forever! 

Man, I can be stupid sometimes!!!

I will do that with the new frames as a pre-emptive measure...