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Category: gardening

Mon. July 22, 2024 – pack is back together and I can relax a notch

Hot and humid, chance of rain. Yesterday was the same, but it never rained on me. Even though it was 90F+ it was ok in the shade with a breeze.

So that’s where I spent my afternoon and evening, in the shade of the overgrown trees and bushes in the back yard. I pruned. I cut. I stacked. I chainsawed… and it looks better. More importantly, the branches around the power, data, and telcom lines have been cut back.

That gave me access to the broken fence, and allowed me to do some half @ssed repairs. I decided to do something, since I had the stuff, and the neighbor (who owns the fence) hadn’t done anything. Took an hour and wasn’t hard. I used a metal post support thing driven into the ground at the base of two posts, and put some long fence pickets along the top rail and across the posts so as to reinforce and force the panels to be straight… It worked pretty well. If I could find them, I’d put in another post support or two. Eventually I’ll find them. Or the neighbor will decide to fix the fence. It’s far from perfect, but it will do for now, and it was cheap.

In order to do that work, I had to fix my string trimmer and pole saw. I put a new bump head on the string trimmer. And I think it was low oil in both power units that kept them from running. Changing the oil in the dirty one, and topping up the oil in the other got them both running. 2 stroke engines are easier to run, although the 4 strokes are supposed to be better. 4 strokes need the oil and regular gas. 2 strokes need oil IN the gas. I’d like to be standardized but I bought what was cheap in the auctions. Small gas tools are like PCs in that you need n+1 to keep n running…

I ended up cutting the grass in the back yard with the string trimmer again. Too long between mows, and I can’t get the mower through it. I pulled up the collard plants, and weeded the herb garden too.

All in all, a pretty productive afternoon and evening.

Today I’m doing indoor stuff in the morning, mostly auction, but also some hobby website work. I will continue with the office cleanup project as well. I’ve got jury duty Tuesday so I have to get some stuff done today.

Stay busy, work to improve your situation, and stack. The world is more unsettled today than it was a few days ago, and that trend is likely to continue.

nick

(title is because D1 was on a trip with a girlfriend and her mom to Florida, but she’s home now…)

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Sat. July 6, 2024 – another hot day, more little jobs…

Hot again. We might have gotten some rain overnight, it was in the forecast and there was some lightning in the surrounding areas… but it will probably still be hot.

Spent the day chatting with sibling and spouse. They are athletic and spent the morning jogging, and out on the kayaks. But it was HOT and humid so we spent the afternoon in the shade, just sitting.

I did do some more investigation into my sprinkler pump. It’s not holding prime. I may have to open it up and see if the impeller is worn out. The grass went from “could use some rain” to “dry and crunchy” in the last couple of days so I would really like to run the sprinklers.

The garden is still producing but if we don’t water it, or get some rain, it will be done soon.

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Today will be about spending some time with guests before they head to the airport. Then I’ll do some work. Probably. But it will be small jobs.

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It was great to have the community gather for the fireworks. Lots of people in the park, lots floating in boats to watch the show. Lot of flags and even some bunting on the houses I can see. Nice to come together.

Work on stacking some friends and neighbors. You’ll need them the most when things get tough.

nick

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Tues. Jun. 18, 2024 – starting at the BOL but ending at home

Hot again, with a chance of rain. It was crazy hot in the sun yesterday. I took my time, and went inside to cool down for an hour after working for a while. It was nice when the sun went down. Today should be the same if it doesn’t rain here. Houston had rain, areas around here had rain, but we didn’t get any and might not today either.

I got a late start, but I attacked several of the tree issues. I used a rope saw (chainsaw blade in the middle of two ropes) to cut down the huge dead branch of the tree closest to the house. It’s been worrying me for 2 years. It came down WAY too easy. Spent the rest of the day cutting that up and doing some trimming and cutting in other trees around the house. I got most of the ‘widow makers’ down, but there are couple hanging on, but not over the stairs to the yard.

I used the lawn mower with a trailer to move the logs and branches. Stacked some, burned a lot. Threw about a third of the “dry stuff” burn pile on the fire too. Big pile of coals, and there will be bushels of ash. Maybe I’ll add the ash to the garden plot. Can’t hurt, right?

Today I’ll do my wrap up in the morning and try to be homeward bound by noon or earlier. I’ve got pickups in Houston at 2pm. Wife will work remotely, then head home with the kids when she’s done. Starlink is working out well for her. I’d stay if it wasn’t for the pickups. One of the lots was 500 count of needful things, and several of the lots will be good additions to the BOL.

Chatted with my buddy and he’s continuing to pick and pack the purple hull peas. I think he said we were up to 17 quarts and they still have blooms, so we’ll get more. The experience is eye opening wrt the amount of space a real food garden takes without a lot of tricks. I’ll have to put some more thought into our fall garden. It would be nice to have something grow besides peas. (he loves them)

I think I need to buy some fresher seeds too.

There’s always something, and many of the things have steep learning curves. Hunting, fishing, and gardening are among the steepest, and considering the importance of food, it’s past time to start climbing the curve if you aren’t already on it. Since I suck at all three, I’ll keep stacking food.

Stack some for you and your dependents…

nick

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Mon. Jun. 17, 2024 – at the BOL where there is work to do

Hot again, with a chance of rain. It was hot and clear yesterday, but cooler in the shade with a nice cooling breeze off the lake. We are very fortunate to be on the downwind side of the lake, and the breeze comes into our cove and up the hill past the house. That side is cool in the shade. The other side of the house doesn’t get that breeze and is stifling.

I had a nice breakfast with the family, then got to work. I knocked out a couple of easy and quick things to get started. One was adding a screen to the garage door opening. It’s not a complete seal, but if it blocks 90% of the bugs it’s totally worth it. It attaches with velcro to the bottom of the door, and has straps to the side rails. There is a seam held together with magnets in the middle that works very well.

I unloaded the truck, moved some things around, but I have some more to do today. The youngest child ran the pressure washer most of the afternoon, cleaning the driveway, a rug, and the side patio. She likes it, it’s “so satisfying” to see the dirt blown away. She was in shade for most of the work, and the mist is very cooling. Eldest child was mostly doing cleaning inside but also brushed all the spider webs off the outside of the house.

I spent the late afternoon and early evening running the string trimmer doing all the edging and cleanup that I’ve been in too big of a hurry to do the last three times I cut the lawn. The clean edges make a huge difference in the appearance of the property.

Spent some time floating in the lake to cool down and even did some fishing around dusk. Didn’t catch anything though.

Today my wife will be working remotely using the Starlink, while I do more cleaning and organizing. I think I’ll concentrate on the garage and shed. They may go home tonight, and I might stay until Tuesday morning. Mostly it will depend on if the weather is nice. Wife wants to stay up if it’s nice. The forecast has a chance of rain, but we’ll see. This area is outside the local forecast areas, and the lake and geography means we don’t get the same weather as surrounding towns anyway.

I’ve got a generator carb to clean before I put it away, and lots of tree limb stuff to do if I run out of motivation or parts, or decide to switch it up and work on other parts of the list.

Stacks provided a lovely Father’s Day dinner, kerosene for the lantern, cleaning supplies for the rug, and gas for the pressure washer and trimmer… They’ll help you too. Stack it up…

nick

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Sun. Jun. 9, 2024 – still got stuff to do…

Hot and humid, but less than Houston. Yesterday was clear, sunny, and although it started moderately it got pretty hot by later in the day. Ended up with a nice night.

I got a few things done. I did one last thorough vacuum and then spray down of all the parts of the dockhouse that got flooded. I scrubbed the 2x4s and the floor as well. W mopped and cleaned up all the muddy residue. It dried out pretty quickly with just the disinfection stuff sprayed on surfaces. I’ll still leave the walls open for a few weeks longer to be sure they are really dry.

I added back one electrical outlet, deleted one, and added a dusk to dawn uplight for the flagpole. The light is too bright and too wide, so I’ll have to do some sort of masking, maybe I can just lay a big washer on the top of the spotlight… it lights up the pole, rope, and the trees in the distance. Way too much spill light.

Had a nice dark sky but didn’t see anything too dramatic, I was mostly interested in the radio, with great DX on 20M.

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Today I’ll do maintenance like mowing the lawn, putting the cell booster antenna back up, and general cleanup. I might do another outlet in the dockhouse, if I can find the right box. I am moving all the outlets to about a foot above the high water line. Anything that got wet will be replaced too.

My buddy brought me the first 2 quarts of peas from our garden. There will be a bunch more over the next few weeks. And whatever was eating all my peaches last year has left me a few this year, so I might actually get a peach or two. There are a couple that are almost ripe, and good sized. I might grab them before I leave and ripen them at home. Better than letting them fall…

Next time we’re up will be the 4th of July weekend and we’ll have guests so I will want to leave the place ready for that.

I might get a chance to try the irrigation pump. It was under water, but I’m hoping that since it’s a pump, and rated for exposure, that it might be ok. If not, I’m seeing them in the auctions and I’ll bid a bit more aggressively. I’ve got two spares, but they are both smaller than the current pump, and it was barely getting the job done. I could go bigger, but I really don’t want to go smaller.

When you are providing most of your own infrastructure, and building backups for the rest, there is always more to do.

Of course, there’s always more to do anyway…

like stacking!

nick

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Sat. Jun. 1, 2024 – Saturday, in the dark, I think it was a month to July….

Cool to start but surely getting hot later. Unless it’s pouring down rain. Which is apparently a possibility. ‘cuz that’s what we need today. More rain.

The ground is getting saturated, and the trees are falling over whenever the wind blows.

I started yesterday with the best of intentions, got thwarted by my own procrastination, and ended up just doing auction stuff anyway after wasting the whole morning. Then I did some grocery shopping and loaded the truck for the BOL.

Now I’m up here, and my day will be dependent on the weather. I’ll either clean up debris, and load the truck for a dump run, or I’ll hang out indoors while it rains. I’m tempted to stick around if it’s storming, in case the power goes out again. Locals say the number of outages and the length of the outages are unprecedented. I say it’s probably the new normal for one reason or another. Some sort of automatic failover to a backup power supply is nearly at the top of the list now…

Infrastructure is awesome when it is intact. Lots of ways to break it, and only so many ways to fix it. Plan for losses.

Stack what you need to be 80% or more of what you are now. You’ll be better off than almost anyone else, and the 80/20 rule of thumb says you will be maximizing your result vs effort and resources.

Or choose a different path, but I think our choices now will be the major factor in how we live 1,2,5,and 10 years from now.

Stack.

nick

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Fri. May 17, 2024 – well that was a big one…

Cool and clear at the BOL for the moment anyway. Should be clear all day. I’m more interested in Houston today though.

Yesterday we did have some time in the morning without rain. I was able to do some more cleanup in the dockhouse, and spray a cleaner/disinfectant/mold killer on most of the affected walls. The rain started and I went up to lunch and didn’t get back to remove some furring strips from the last wall. I didn’t want to soak that with virucide and then have to touch it, so that has been left undone for now.

While I was watching all the afternoon rain come down (about 3 inches), Houston got HAMMERED. Lots of wind damage, rain, limbs down, power outages, etc. Some really dramatic damage like high tension power lines knocked over…

SO today is in flux. Wife and kids were due to come up today anyway, and school and work have been cancelled.. but there wasn’t any power at the house and no indication of when it might be back on. There were also a lot of limbs down, and cleanup that needs to happen. I’m best suited for that, so I might swap places with my wife and kids. They come up here and do what there is to do here, I go down there and do storm cleanup.

I’ll take a gennie and most of the fuel I have here. There are plenty of places in Houston with power to pump gas and fill LP tanks, but it’s probably better to just bring what I’ve got. This storm caught us off guard. I haven’t done my seasonal hurricane preps yet, like running the gennies, rotating out fuel, and filling the extra jugs…

That’s assuming power is still out. I might head home even if power is restored, just to do the cleanup. It might even make sense for us all to be in Houston this weekend anyway, although my wife was looking forward to being up here, and we’re having family over for Memorial Day so she feels the need to clean and do more “getting ready.”

In any case, this storm reinforces the idea that disasters don’t happen on a schedule and you need a base level of preparedness all the time. All the stuff I have is in place, it’s just not as convenient or well laid out as it is at other times. And I’ve put off some maintenance that I should have addressed right away. There’s always something that needs doing, and never enough time.

But hey, we’ve got food, water, shelter, power generation, medical backup, and the tools to recover.

Because I stacked them up when times were better. You can and should do the same…

nick

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Thur. May 16, 2024 – I may be flooding again…

Forecast apparently calls for up to 5 inches today. That would probably raise the lake back up 10 inches. And that would be close to flooding me again. Yesterday was nice. Even got hot in the sun. Still very damp so not much dried out.

I did get stuff done. Got more cleanup in the dockhouse. Mowed the lawn, and made some adjustments to the mower. Still need to do something else to the deck, as it’s cutting unevenly. Might have to watch a vid or read something… heaven forefend.

Today’s list of stuff is going to be entirely dependent on the weather. I’ll do what I can to keep moving forward. And hope the forecast is wrong. I can work on my hobby website… thanks again to Rick for sharing his knowledge.

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Meanwhile the world is getting even crazier. No matter what it’s gonna be bad, and it’s gonna suck. Having some preps and someplace to go will help it suck less. Do what you gotta do. Stack.

nick

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Wed. May 15, 2024 – another day to work.

Weather is supposed to be partly cloudy, but still warm and no rain. I need that so the lake can continue to drain, and the dockhouse can dry out.

Despite my late start and casual approach yesterday, I did make good progress. I was able to clear some of debris left behind as the water receded, and I got the walls opened up in the dockhouse. I removed the lower third of the wall, which was cheap paneling, and found sopping wet insulation behind it. The trim all got put outside to dry out too. Old boy made the baseboards from pressure treated 1×6, so that is good. And some of the door trim was cedar. The outside sheathing is cedar board and batten, so that will dry out fine.

Today will be treating all the wet wood with bleach and a mold/mildew killer, and continued cleanup. I’ll take the time to mow too, as we are supposed to get rain Thursday and/or Friday. The weekend should be nice. As long as we don’t get inches of rain, the lake should be ok.

I have to decide how to refinish the walls when they dry, but I’ve got some time to decide as I want the walls open for a while. I’m thinking vertical tongue and groove wood as the nice option, and plain luaun plywood as the cheaper, less sturdy option. It will look like wainscott because I’ll put the chair rail trim back in place. I’ll probably replace the insulation too. If it floods again, it’ll be ‘rinse and repeat’ but we could go another 30 years before seeing anything like this again. That’s how long it’s been since the last time. It might be smarter to leave out the insulation if I think flooding could re-occur.

So far, I’ve pulled everything I need out of the stacks.

Stacking is good. Having what you need close at hand saves so much time and stress. Knowing what needs to be done helps too.

Stack the knowledge and skill along with the stuff you need to do the job- whatever that job might be.

nick

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Tues. May 14, 2024 – slightly better day ahead…

Well, today is supposed to be warm and clear with a breeze to help dry things out. That will help with the land, but it won’t make the lake go down any faster…

At the current rate, it’ll be late today before all the water is out of my dockhouse, if there aren’t any more showers, and if I guessed at the depth correctly.

I can’t even start remediation until the lake is down.

In the mean time… I saw some monster fish while I was cleaning the area around my dock, so I spent some time fishing. Standing on my dock, knee deep in water… warm comfortable water… was odd to say the least. But by the afternoon I was going nuts with not working.

So I got the mower together and running. I mated my old 46″ deck to the ‘new’ Cub Cadet with the bad 42″ deck. The manufacturer is the same so I had hope, even if the brand was different. And it fit with only minor adjustment. I had to fix my deck once I thought it would fit. Whatever I hit that took out the motor broke one of the spindles too. 3 of the 4 mounting tabs were broken off. I had replacements in the shed.

After a test cut and some adjustment, I started swapping wheels and tires around to get all good tires on the Cub mower. I didn’t know there were two axle styles so I have a set of brand new rears that I’ll have to sell. I moved the decent rears from the old mower over. Lubed everything, and that took me to nightfall. I still need to do an engine service and replace the drive belt with the new parts I bought for it, but it runs, and mows.

Not sure what I’ll do today while waiting for water to dry, but I’m sure it will be another thrilling adventure!

Prepping saved me a whole lot of trouble with the mowers. I had spares and replacement parts, and was easily able to swap stuff around and get back to running. Even counting the parts that were wrong, I still saved a bunch by buying early and at auction. And since the BOL is set up for use, I don’t have any problem being here for 10 days even though I’d only planned on one.

I’ve got pumps, dehumidifiers, mold killer, tools, and skills, so as soon as the water recedes I’m ready to go to work too.

Prepping works. Stacks help and give choices. Stack!

nick

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