Skystrideria

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

I usually don't try to make excuses for low posting rates, but the excuses I am going to make also happen to be good subjects for a post. So, here are the reasons I haven't put out any significant posts recently.

1. We moved at the beginning of July. All 200 feet from one side of the creek to the other. There's only a few things I can say about that. For one, I am now quite good at tearing down and setting up bunkbeds. Another factoid is that enormous waterbeds are a real pain to move, you could move four or five bunkbeds in the time it takes to do that job. Oh yeah, we still need to move some computers.

2. Since then, Dad has had me do quite a few other jobs. The first was a repair to the irrigation pump. The filtering cage broke off awhile ago, letting rocks into the impeller. Dad pushed the rocks out with a piece of wire, while I built a sleeve out of chicken wire and window screen material to replace the old cage. Now it is keeping the lawn nicely green.

3. The second major project, which I completed sometime in July, was extending a flower bed along the driveway. There used to be one flower bed along part of the driveway, with an island further down. The space inbetween had a strange shape, making it difficult to water and mow. Dad decided that we could use a gentle curve in the edge of the lawn to fix this problem. (Since even I can't understand that sentence, I will get a picture soon) So, I laid out some sticks in a proper looking line, and started to remove turf. That same turf seems to be doing pretty well on a bare spot under some trees. After the grass was removed, we ran into problems. Most of the area had been a gravel driveway before the current concrete was put in place. Dad decided to roto-till it, so that we could sift the rocks out. When that was finished, I built a sorting box out of an old speaker box and chicken wire. A little experimentation revealed that the wide Kitty Litter sifter worked better, though. After a day or two of casual sifting, the dirt was ready. A quick planting of some perennial flowers and several bags of bark dust finished the job.

4. On the last week of July, we heard that one of our business superiors was visiting the area and wanted to do some training at our office (the house we moved out of) We had about three weeks to get the property up from summer project mode to presentation mode. But, we were able to pull it off well, and even did a hike two days before zero hour. Everything worked smoothly during the meetings, and we got along well with the manager.

Since then (the 20's of August) we have basically been coasting when it comes to outdoor projects. Just keeping things ready to entertain people on weekends, and then restoring the yard afterwards. However, greenhouse construction is on Dad's mind.