stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

the sewing machine was a good idea, but it just didn't work out. so after more attempts to get it working, phone calls to company headquarters, serviced (said nothing wrong with it), we were running errands a few days this week so we took the machine and sewing samples with us and went to the sewing center again. they said take it back to where we bought it as they wouldn't fix it. so we returned it and got a full refund.

then we went back to the sewing center and got a different one. i have to read through everything to make sure i can show Mom how to use it. this morning changed the needle because it wasn't going through the cloth easily enough. it is a very heavy and much simpler machine than what we got for her a few months ago. it is also very fast and able to handle sewing leather if needed. so perhaps for my own hobby in later life i'll take up making belts or something...

i'm waiting for her to put some quilts together with all the layers which was what was bothering her the most about what was happening with the other machine. last night i sat down with the new toy while she was watching tv and learned about the pin feed and how to thread and how to use the needle threader. i'd much rather do that sort of thing when she's not breathing down my neck. and she had sewn something earlier which didn't come out right. so i had some fun and figured it out and then had it sewing nicely even with the old needle. but this morning the fabric was really very thin and the needle wasn't sharp at all. i could tell just by looking at the fabric that was what was happening. new needle, it sewed great.

*crossing fingers when she starts doing these up*

will get outside today for a bit. dunno what for yet, perhaps chopping up bits of wild grape vines. 3-inch loppers with titanium blade are very nice... quiet and steady work for hours if i want...

 

[flowerbug]

ok, today, could have been bad day, neighbor chooses to burn his ditch across the road from us (i'm not even sure it his his property). i do have lung issues at times and smoke can do me in... i went out to pick up the recycle bin after the truck came by and emptied it and talked to the neighbor for a bit. i didn't get mad, i didn't even mention the lung issue, just said hi and talked a few moments. came back inside.

thought about it for a few minutes and then said, "hey, i bet this guy has a brush hog." so i went back out and talked to him again and asked him if he did and if he'd clear an area for me on the other side of the big drainage ditch. for a price. he said sure when the ground dries out a bit more. it's getting pretty grown up back there and i was looking to do it all by hand, but that would take me several weeks or a month of here or there picking away at it where he can do it all at once.

now i gotta tell Mom what's cooking when she gets home. she's gonna say something about the smoke/smell. i have to give it another hour to clear out there before i can go chop up some more grapevines and check the groundhog den plugs...

of course, we also talked about gardens, tomatoes, etc. he's an ok guy, i just think it's silly to burn ditches. he does it because he says it cost him 25K on the property tax bill at another place and that it's too hard for him to clean them out with his tractor if it gets too full of stuff. well, um, mow 'em once in a while, but don't burn 'em and for sure don't plow so close to the edge... which almost everyone does around here now - right up to the edge... *sigh* to me that means yeah you should be charged if the county has to come along and clear them back out again... makes sense to me at least. but of course, i didn't say it.

i smell like a smoke bomb.

 

[flowerbug]

a picture of the creeping thyme, i like the habit and color of it this time of the season, and am looking forwards to seeing how it flowers this season...

and one of some retired shoes...

 

[flowerbug]

current project coming along. moved all the rocks out of the way at the end and pried some large slabs of concrete apart so i could get a section of drain tube put down and then started scavenging fill materials to put back in there and get it all so well armored a groundhog would not be able to get through. done.

finally have a pathway over that now where i can walk or wheelbarrow and not have to deal with going across crumbling/rotting wooden pallets. we had some old chunk of flat metal that went over that. old black plastic layers and then move the crushed limestone back in place. other edge will have to wait until i have enough fill in there to hold something up.

the end drain tube section fit perfectly between upstream pallets and the heavy mesh i have at the other end to keep critters from going up drain tubes. kinda scary. none of this is measured or planned. just had section of draintube left from previous project that was sorta wrapped around a strawberry patch. i put metal mesh on upstream end of tube until i can get another section in place and start on that (not any time soon. it will be a ton of work to get what i've already got done filled in and covered and i have many other things that will be much more pressing soon... i just wanted the end done and a place to put fill. one project always involves a dozen others...

pictures when i have it cleaned up more...

yesterday got back to busting up old pallets, pulling rusty nails out of rotting wood. you'd think this is easy, but rusty nails are really in there! some chunks are so far gone and have so many nails/staples i'm just going to set them off to the side to rot and will pick out the metal when they're done. too much work and time's-a-wastin'...

have to get back to cutting up grape vines and start back in on weeding that garden i started on last fall...

daydreaming about setting up a collecting area for sediments flowing by in that large drainage ditch. could use all the sand i could collect, but it is heavy work digging and lifting. a small pump could suck up water/sand/lift it and then the water could go back in after filtering sand out. there's several yards of sand could be had every so often. not likely to happen but a guy can dream right?

 

[digitS']

Sometimes you just have to finish up the Big Chunks and move on. One of my better bosses told me that .

My hat nearly blew off several times yesterday but I may have reached a quitting place on the picket fence. The "intermediate" panel I just wired in place so that it wouldn't look funny from the neighbor's front yard while the posts dried from all those daily sprinkles we had, until I could paint the posts. Rehabbing the remaining (nearly out-of-sight) fence panels will likely wait until '19. They just take too much time and I should have other things to do - altho that greatly depends on the tractor guy getting to his job.

My job in yesterday's wind was pouring concrete around 3 posts and repairing the walk to the front door. I think that I have done an okay job. I'm not sure what is going on with that walkway. It's as though the ground is sinking near the house. It's always looked more to me that the house is sinking ... We couldn't have much better "soil" for foundations than exists around here. Gravel and dirt, I suppose, do shift some after 100 years.

The next home task could be replacing the front porch roof supports. They are tapered, blocky things - probably made from extra wide cedar boards, now under many coats of white paint. Setting the wood directly on a concrete floor has finally resulted in enuf decay that it will be the roof holding up the supports soon rather than the other way around. I could get down there with the reciprocating saw and remove just enough of the bottom of each support to slide something like a square cap block under them. That's what should have been done when the roof was built to keep the feet out of the snow, rain and Steve's sprinklers ...

Steve
edited to add:
https://qz.com/1257090/heres-how-fast-a-glacier-can-slip-into-the-sea-once-its-destabilized/

 

[flowerbug]

Sometimes you just have to finish up the Big Chunks and move on. One of my better bosses told me that .

My hat nearly blew off several times yesterday but I may have reached a quitting place on the picket fence. The "intermediate" panel I just wired in place so that it wouldn't look funny from the neighbor's front yard while the posts dried from all those daily sprinkles we had, until I could paint the posts. Rehabbing the remaining (nearly out-of-sight) fence panels will likely wait until '19. They just take too much time and I should have other things to do - altho that greatly depends on the tractor guy getting to his job.

My job in yesterday's wind was pouring concrete around 3 posts and repairing the walk to the front door. I think that I have done an okay job. I'm not sure what is going on with that walkway. It's as though the ground is sinking near the house. It's always looked more to me that the house is sinking ... We couldn't have much better "soil" for foundations than exists around here. Gravel and dirt, I suppose, do shift some after 100 years.

The next home task could be replacing the front porch roof supports. They are tapered, blocky things - probably made from extra wide cedar boards, now under many coats of white paint. Setting the wood directly on a concrete floor has finally resulted in enuf decay that it will be the roof holding up the supports soon rather than the other way around. I could get down there with the reciprocating saw and remove just enough of the bottom of each support to slide something like a square cap block under them. That's what should have been done when the roof was built to keep the feet out of the snow, rain and Steve's sprinklers ...

Steve
edited to add:
https://qz.com/1257090/heres-how-fast-a-glacier-can-slip-into-the-sea-once-its-destabilized/

without knowing the history and your area better hard to say what is going on with the walkway, always a lot of possibilities. here we've had some issues of settling, but that is because the cement contractor did a rotten job of it...

congrats on fence progress.

temporary props come in handy for such surgery, too bad feet/knees are a bit more difficult to correct...

i'm hoping one more day of chopping and i can have the pile of grapevines moved. there's also some creeper vines in the pile and i'm finding a lot of still viable vines so it will all be left up on top of where i've been scattering the pieces - where i can keep an eye on things. i sure don't need any more vines to contend with back there.

 

[flowerbug]

today, beautiful out there. hot even... went out to work on putting edges around bean garden and neighbor with brush hog came over and wanted to do back field. showed him the property boundaries and went back to help out. interesting that he was able to just run over most of the bushes with his tractor and then the brush hog would chop them up. some of the larger things he had another neighbor bring over his backhoe and he ran those over or dug them up. also, he was able to get most of the bushes growing out of the edge of the large ditch. kinda a mess, but it will all be green back there soon enough and having all that brush knocked back is well worth it.

would have taken me a month or more of hard work to do that manually. many of the bushes were thorns. would have been a fun time...

we found some groundhog dens back there and one time he drove up to ask me a question and i didn't notice where i was stepping and went right down in. luckily just a small scrape, but nothing broken.

then got back to putting edge on garden. another day or two to go on that project...

 

[flowerbug]

almost finished expanded garden space... remind me to put glasses on when taking pictures. didn't notice edge had fallen over until i was editing this picture this morning. lol

bee and flower

daffodil and beetle - didn't notice beetle until this morning. glasses off...

 

[flowerbug]

finally a few moments to add some pictures:

of the shed at last:

not bad for using scraps/leftovers, winging it on the design and the first time i'd done wall tile. we're happy with how it turned out...

 

[digitS']

???

You put tile on the interior walls ..

. of a shed? Is the gonna be one of those "garden office" sheds???

Steve