stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

noice! yesterday i had an item on my list to take care of which meant calling the ISP to make sure the CC info was up-to-date and to also see about the antenna situation since my connection has been iffy at times lately.

the guy who answered the phone switched me over to someone else who said his secretary was out that day. it happened to be the owner. it was also the same guy who came out here and put the connection box on the antenna on the roof so he knew what i was talking about as he'd remembered.

he said no problem with coming out to fix it if there was a continuing issue, but i told him that it was ok for now and that i'd likely not need anything done until we get the chimney issue taken care of.

this also gave me a chance to talk to him about the proposed fiber optic cable that they are exploring along our neighborhood. i said i was somewhat interested but that i could not afford a huge installation fee or much more than i'm currently paying (which is good enough for what i am getting)... he said they were still evaluating and it would depend upon how many people wanted it - so i had him add my name to the list of possible connections for that.

working outside for a few days has helped me burn off my frustrations with the other stuff so i'm in the "Do Not Care Zone" as people wish to keep me out of the loop.

"Serenity Now!" <-- (Seinfeld Joke)...

 

[flowerbug]

the little spiders in the worm bins are still alive. i tried to move enough of them from one worm bucket to another so they can capture the fungus gnats. i wasn't sure at first that any of them had survived but now i see a few moving around in there. now i'm just curious if i managed to get both male and female little spiders because i hope they'll make a lot of babies soon.

the funny thing is that the fungus gnats are about the same size or a little bigger than the spiders. when they are crawling around the spiders pull back from them when they meet. i guess they need for them to get tangled in the web... i don't know if this will work or not, but since the spiders are still alive they must be eating something...

 

[flowerbug]

yesterday was nice enough to get out for a while. i didn't want to get into any big projects so i finally finished up one of my old projects. years ago i had piled up some dirt with grass roots in it thinking i was going to go through it all and then i got side-tracked and never got back to it. there were also some holes that needed filling in so you could walk without twisting your ankle back there. with all the rain in the forecast i figured it would be a good time to knock that hill of dirt back down and get it at least a bit more level back there. also did a little raking and weeding while i was out there. then the wind turned too cold and i'd had enough.

 

[flowerbug]

regained a lot of shelf space by paring down the bean collection:


Before:

After:

i still have way too many brown beans but i wanted to get ready for spring planting so the next round of that will have to wait until next winter.

i should be able to fit these on one shelf.

there is a lot of duplication left too because i wanted the first selection for planting and then a 2nd selection (or even more) for a backup in case the first selection didn't succeed.

i also have a bunch of those small containers which have multiple selections of beans in them as a blend in case in the future i decided i needed to grow those out again after all. i may not do anything with them at all, but just in case... hard to get rid of all my babies! yet i did send about 5lbs of beans to the pile that will be fed to the worm bins eventually and i also have quite a few containers now set aside and ready to go to the next seed swap. along with a large container full of mixed beans for cooking up and eatin'.

as an experiment one day i cooked up a handful of four different kinds i'd not cooked up before to see what they tasted like. good. there's few beans i've had that i don't like... then after those were done i made a small pot of yellow eye beans because we'd been eating a lot of dark beans so it was good to have some milder beans for a change.

 

[flowerbug]

ahhh!

Fair
78°F
Humidity 23%
Wind Speed S 18 G 24 mph
Last update 22 Apr 3:36 pm EDT

what a nice day! perhaps i am too late on planting peas, but today it happened at last. the ground in the garden i needed to lift up a bit was finally dry enough.

watered them in and a chance of rain forecast for this evening.

 

[flowerbug]

need to water peas this morning before doing other things.

in other topics, i got the approval last week to remove a bit of pathway along a garden inside the fenced area that is completely useless. it is so narrow you can hardly walk on it and it takes more time to keep weed free from the neighboring garden spaces/perennial plants that it's just not worth leaving in place. it isn't a big project either, but once i can get it done it will save time and simplify the process of keeping that area up. a small victory for common sense (believe me i need all of those i can get right now around here )...

the chimney roof fiasco is still on-going but i'm trying to talk Mom down from what she had her mind set on (stubborn but her interference has likely delayed actually getting the problem solved). the other day she was swearing because people weren't calling her back and so i hope i can just get her to stay out of the process and to trust me and the others to deal with it. my brother wasn't any help this past weekend so i need to get him out of it too because he doesn't want to stand up to Mom at all and he's not helping with the contractor (even if they work in the same office often enough that they could be communicating).

what has made things much worse is that Mom has not passed along information i've told her (to either my brother or the contractor) so now she's gone off on this wild hair sideshow and that's a huge waste of money, effort, will be a mess, can potentially damage the roof a lot more, introduce more leaks, etc. i'm trying to talk her out of it and think she finally might accept to go back to what we were doing before but that's likely confused the heck out of the roofing contractor enough (he's probably really happy and sees it as no longer his issue).

i hope i can talk to her today to get an agreement between us before i take the next step (to get an agreement with my brother to stay out of it other than what he's already agreed to before). if i can get those agreements in place then i can deal with the roofing contractor and his people to fix the leak.

i may have actually found the leak but i need the roofing people to come back, to remove the tarps and to inspect again (things have changed since the antenna came down). we can then test if i did find the leak and then we can get on with deciding what to do next if i haven't.

all sensible and could have been done weeks ago if she'd not stuck her fingers in it... *sigh*

 

[flowerbug]

an update, since we were able to walk around and talk about what we're planning to do.

1. i don't need to do anything about the tv antenna other than take down a few clips and reroute the cable. it picks up all but one channel and she's been able to live without that channel since the antenna fell down anyways so she's ok as it is. so we put the antenna on the ground along the side of the house and she's happy with it right there.

2. she wants me to work on the north garden next (as i'm also weeding other gardens and doing whatever).

3. reaffirmed where i can run the fence. not where i want it but at least it will provide a partial barrier to groundhogs, rabbits and deer - it's just not a full enclosure (which would be the most effective). over the longer term it will be part of a complete enclosure. if i stay here longer term i'd do it - i hate to work on a garden only to have it eaten up.

4. we walked through the NE garden so she could see the plants i'd like her to mow around (bergamot, grape hyacynths and butterfly weed). she'd not seen what i'd done back there recently to remove the dirt/grass pile and to fill in some holes. we found a hole i missed so i'll fill that in today.

5. walked through the fenced gardens and figured out what we wanted to plant where (this can change, but it's an initial plan we can refine).

6. in the fenced gardens i only thought we were going to take out one small pathway, but she wants to remove two other small pathways that are near the garden she wants to work on next. i'd mentioned it to her before but i didn't think she cared or was going to want to do that.

this will get rid of work/time that i previously have to spend to keep those pathways cleared of weeds and simplify the edges a great deal so save time there too in how easy it will be to keep up.

as we were talking about those pathways she is talking about getting rid of the perennial garden between those two pathways. i thought it was staying as it was, but she wants to take it out (because of the lavender and weed problems). it will mean that space can be used for veggies and will be much easier to take care of. in the process it means cleaning up the edges of a neighboring garden too so those messy spots will be brought back to her standards of sterility

most of this fits in with my themes/desires of making things easier to take care of around here and also was a better interaction which helped me feel like we were being more of a team. that is all i really want, i'm here to help her and what she wants to do, but i also want those efforts to be effective and have the most benefit. i can plant beans and work around her as needed for what i want to get done and i'm good with that aspect of things.

ok, off to lunch and then to work.

 

[flowerbug]

peas are starting to poke up. i'm so used to warmer weather germination times i sure didn't expect to see them take this long, but since it was raining so much i wondered if they'd even come up at all.

yesterday was nice and so i had to think about getting the mower ready for today's first mow of the season. oil change (which didn't get done last year), and take it apart and oil the spring for the pull cord and then replace the cord. at least i knew the flying spring hazard and was ready for it this time to go zinging and i also knew how to put it back in and wind it back up.

i do have to say one thing though, that little 4 stroke Honda motor is doing just fine after all these years as it started up on the first pull (once i had the spark plug reconnected and the choke off). i had pulled it some to get the oil moving and even rinsed out some more of the old oil with new oil because it was looking pretty bad...

small blue weeds, ugh! annoying buggers. i want them out of the pathways out front so i spent some hours yesterday weeding them. they can be used to detect where there is a lot of dirt in the pathways and also can be used to remove dirt from the pathways, but the stench of them makes my nose run. keeping them out of gardens is not easy because they are in the grass/lawn and in other places and hard to eradicate. the flowers and plants are so tiny that it is easy to miss one hiding under another plant until you see all the seedlings come up downstream/downwind the next round.

took a few pics of some ferns starting - we'll see if they turn out (i'm picky so i don't think many pictures do)...

 

[flowerbug]

finally got warm enough and the roofing guy K was able to stop in (before we had some other guy who did the reflashing job around the chimney cap).

as K and i are talking he tells me that S is more of a carpenter and not as much into roofing. ok, this works for me as K lives not far from here and so now that i have his number we'll just call him instead.

we removed the tarps, straps and large stepping stones holding it all down and inspected and we didn't find anything obviously a problem. this gave me a chance at last to see the results of work we had done up there last summer that i could not inspect directly because of trouble with my leg. it really looks fine and K said it was in great condition compared to some things he's seen.


so we caulked anything along those edges and made sure it all was ok. the nail hole i found last time i was up there dealing with the antenna may or may not have been the problem (for all these years - that too was sealed up).

the intermittent and small amount of the leak could have been coming in from a number of places. it it was more of a leak or not so intermitted we'd have figured it out by now.

while we were up there he got the caulk out and we sealed up whatever we could find that may have been even questionable.

in a few spots where nails were coming through some hips along the ridges. i'd asked the previous guy S to deal with them when he was here last summer and he didn't. they should not have been doing that to begin with but they were also not getting worse from what i recalled from the last time i was up there - they were not a major issue - but i still wanted it dealt with and to just to use up the caulk while we were up there and this way it can prevent a further problem if it was going to become one in any of those locations.

now we wait.

i was talking to Mom a few minutes ago and gave her an update. she thinks it will leak again. i sure hope not, but as this leak has at times gone more than a year between it happening again - well, we'll see.

i'll have to enforce my "Stay out of it." agreement if it does because she's going to be really upset. i told her i'd put up an umbrella but she didn't like that bit of humor. i'm sure it will be a big fight but i'm going to try to head that off tonight by talking to her when she gets back. we have some rain in the forecast but it will likely not be enough. the leak has only happened under conditions we've never been able to isolate well enough to understand what is going on.

i have the next steps figured out if needed, but eek... i sure hope this is the end of it.

ok, other than that, back to working on the fence the rest of today - as much as i can get done.

 

[Trish Stretton]

I have enjoyed reading through your blog!!