More random thoughts

For a variety of reasons I've decided to post even though for the same variety of reasons nothing much has been accomplished on the home improvement front. It's still pretty warm in these parts and I'm still not fully recovered from my cold ( I HATE colds ) . Working up a good sweat is one thing but having to cough , hawk , spit , and blow your nose every few minutes puts a serious crimp in getting anything prolonged or meaningful accomplished. It also doesn't help that the mosquito population has EXPLODED due to all the recent rain.
Still haven't come up with a design idea or plan for the 2nd part of the front yard revamp. I still think I should make a walkway of some sort from where the walk bends in front and then around the side of the house to our new gate that was installed when the new fence went up. Bought a plastic form like what I used once before to make a walkway in back , and a number of bags of quikrete to mix in the wheelbarrow. Part of what has me dragging my feet is remembering how difficult the concrete work was when I made the concrete  Texas and almost giving in to heatstroke. Don't think I'll do any more of that strenuous stuff unless Twila is nearby to check on me and maybe offer suggestions about how this part will go. I really WANT to get moving on this because I have so many more plans piling up in my head . A pallet boardwalk along the side of the house from the gate to the new shed I hope to construct out of used pallets where the garden is now , moving the garden to along the back fence , which will entail putting all the plants now in the garden into pots until the new garden is ready for them and digging up all the current garden soil into old trash cans for safekeeping until the new plot is ready. Work to do , work to do.
I'm getting to the point where I'm just gonna get after it , and whatever happens , happens. It's not like I can't change it if an idea occurs to me.
I've also been thinking about putting a low wall of some sort around the big oak in front and then filling that " moat " with some red lava rock. I've been looking around the subdivision at what others have done ,and by far the most common effort has been to build a circle of stones 2 high , fill the space with dirt and mulch and plant shade tolerant showy , leafy things. Twila insists that we not plant in this space as she believes neither the tree nor the plants thrive in that type of proximity. I'm thinking about making a small triangle ( just to be different ) out of a few cinder block I have and facing the thing with the red clay tiles currently surrounding the garden. Definitely different IF I can make it work.
Anybody wants to stop by to pitch in or just take a look at what's going on or discuss what COULD happen next - please feel free. Beer and wine available upon request.

I've mentioned before that some of my best ideas have come to me in my dreams. As a truly random thought , in my dream last night I stumbled upon what I thought was a remarkable item. When I was in the Navy from 66 to 72 I spent almost 3 years ( 68 to 71 ) as an electronics technician working in a program called DASH which stands for Dr one Anti-Submarine Helicopter . Yep. I worked on a drone aircraft more than 45 years ago , WAY before it became a cool thing. If I can figure out how to make it happen I'll try to post a picture or two  , which might also show what I looked like back in the day.

Did I mention that my wife left me recently ? For another woman ? I am thrilled beyond words that she has returned from spending this past weekend with our daughter in Boston , who today celebrated her 29th birthday.

random thought

No outside work at all this week. A lot of thinking and planning but no actual improvement to anything. There are quite a number of factors that come into play for such a disappointing week. In no particular order or position of importance , here are the facts. First , somehow last Sunday night I started with chills and coughing and sneezing ,etc. As of Monday , it was a full blown , raging head cold. I hate having a cold. If even half of my body could work as well as my mucus glands I would be a superhero with my own action figure doll and comic book. I'd probably even be able to stand up straight.
The next impediment was a wide ranging humdinger of a storm named Hurricane Odile. After ravaging Baja and the Gulf of California it became a massive area of disturbed weather which flooded a good deal of Arizona , New Mexico and far west Texas and absolutely drenched the rest of Texas. We managed a total of almost 10" of rain in the last 4 days which caused any number of flash floods and flooded streets with all the attendant havoc such events foster. Luckily , we just had lots of wet here which made driving miserable , but since I was sick and not going anywhere it didn't matter much to me at all. EXCEPT - all that wet allowed the mosquito population to grow almost exponentially. I've spent a lot of my down time trying to work out what work would come next and how I would go about it but i'm not going to set myself up as a bug buffet. It's still just a little too warm for long pants and sleeves so it might be a little while before I start any of the strenuous stuff that comes next.

Just to kind of rough out my plans I know I need to do something worthwhile with the other side of the front yard. I have a stock of plants and some stone but the overall form things will eventually become continues to elude me. The plans for the boundary of that area however have begun to take shape ( in my mind anyway).

From the first picture in the series above I hope to extend the sidewalk in some form to the corner of the house and then through the ( new ) gate and down the alley beside the house to the site of what is now the garden . We were planning to move the garden anyway because the tree has grown enough to shade most of it most of the day. We hope to relocate the garden to the opposite end of the back yard and on the current garden site , construct a workshed out of used pallets and reclaimed lumber from other pallets.

In total , this is more than a little bit of work and I hope to be able to continue to chronicle all of it to completion. Although , at the rate we are coming up with new ideas and activities , I wonder which will arrive first - lack of ideas or lack of time / money /physical capability.

Phase 1 - c'est fini

For those of who either came in late or would rather not revisit earlier postings , here is what I started with when i began this yard art project.
And here is what I have accomplished so far :

For now , I plan to allow this to just be what it is. The plants all seem to be doing well and I like the idea of showcasing a portion of my frog collection. Some of the frogs will probably be migrated to the next phase which is the plot in front of the house on the other side of the sidewalk. Already have several pieces and a group of plants selected for incorporation into Phase 2.

Some of you might be wondering " why frogs ? " , and/or " where did they come from " ? It started a very long time ago when one of my father's younger brothers ( known as "X" ) was wondering what to give me for xmas. A female acquaintance was dabbling in ceramics and to help support her he had acquired the large frog which can just barely be seen in the far , upper left corner of the yard/picture. When it was presented to me , he said he wasn't sure how I would feel about it. I told him I thought it was great , and that I might start collecting others to keep it company. Luckily , when I was first dating my wife and presented her with various froggy gifts ( pins ,pendants , earrings , planters ,etc. ) she thought they were cute and even at times has encouraged me in the purchase of additions to the collection. Frog phone , frog lamp , frog cookie jar , frog pictures , doorstop , planters , candle holders , and so on in many different sizes , and materials. The smaller ones are in several display cases and many others are scattered as decoration throughout the house. My kids had frog toys when they were growing up and their housewarming gifts included frogs which they assure me have pride of place in their homes.

We really haven't come to a consensus yet on what to do with the other side of the front yard and I don't want to invest any sweat equity in it until we have a clearer idea of where we're going with it .Lots of other things to do while we think about it. My daughter's new coffee table made from the wood from used produce crates has sparked an idea. Our sycamore tree in the back yard has grown to a point where it overshadows a large portion of our current garden plot. We are considering relocating the garden to a less shaded portion of the back yard and using the present garden site as a space for the creation of a covered work shed type area which would be constructed using wood from used pallets. There are construction ideas galore for projects like this all over the internet - my wife showed me several THOUSAND ideas on just one site ( PINTEREST ).

As the url for this blog suggests : work to do , work to do. No one needs to fret that retirement will find me depressed because of feeling useless. What you DO need to worry about is hammer damage or strain from overuse of my Polish backhoe.

a fat old man should know better

I don't know what exactly prompted me to believe that I was still young enough and strong enough and capable enough to : 1st -mix several bags of concrete in a wheelbarrow , 2nd - get that concrete into my slightly misshapen form , 3rd - put a decent finish on all that mud.
Well - it is what it is and once I started it was too late to turn back . I'm not TOO disappointed in the finished product but neither am I satisfied with the way it turned out. It was just too much effort in too much heat for a fat old man who cannot get to things on the ground as well as he needs to for projects like this.
Learn to live with it. I plan to.
All that remains for this part of the yard is to remove the " form " and backfill around the concrete. As of this evening , none of the plants Twila and I put in have withered or died ( as far as I can tell ) so at least that part seems to have gone reasonably well. I hope all that newspaper my daughter and I put down acts as effectively as weed control as it SHOULD. Finished product picture coming soon.
The wife and I are still discussing various different plans for the other side of the yard . I have nothing definite in mind . I thought about incorporating a STEELER logo in different colored rocks and was informed in several different firmly but nicely expressed ways " do you really think that's such a good idea ? " which was wife code for " oh HELL no . She has stated a preference for something free form and colorful using either red or black lava rock and the marble chips or perhaps large black rounded mexican beach pebbles and the marble or some other abstract but colorful formations. Best I can say right now is that the jury is still out and it remains to be seen what shall be.
My lovely daughter Hallie shown here with my awesome wife Twila says she was inspired by my project to

create something of her own. A coffee table made out of used produce crates surrounding a small rock garden :

This prompted Twila to search PINTEREST for projects involving the creation of things ranging from boardwalks to wine racks to bookcases and tables using wood from deconstructed used pallets. I sense a series of projects stretching into the future after we have completed all the yard and fence art projects currently either underway or being actively prepared for. 

While grappling with the frustration of trying to transfer pictures from my phone and Twila's phone into this blog I came across something I wanted to share. A meatloaf .But not just ANY meatloaf. This one used shredded potato instead of bread and was wrapped with bacon. And SMOKED.

Smoked , bacon wrapped , and absolutely , utterly delicious.

almost done part one

Several hot , muggy , rainy days have gone by since my last update. Twila and I made a run to for more materials and we are ready to put in the last of the plants for this first area. It is really starting to look like a real ( almost ) finished project and I now have only the concrete Texas to complete to do to finish the first part and it actually looks pretty good ( if all the plants actually take hold and start to fill it in.

First part today was unloading all supplies from our last trip to Lowes.They are starting to really love us there. Then took my file and sharpened the shovel and the trowels. Even with all the recent rain , the clay is still not that easy to work through

Then we started putting smaller succulents along the edge. Hard to see in the pictures ,but they are there.

Moved a lot of the removed material from the rock garden and relocated it around the tree which prompted all this effort by killing all our plantings .

Next work area . May in fact start on this before doing the concrete. Kinda depends on the weather.

Still trying to decide if I will blade off the sod and relocate it or just cover it all with newspaper and let it die . Stripping it off is really a pain , but I have a large bare area on the side of the house where it MIGHT take root if I first spread a layer of mixed garden soil and sand and then put pieces of the stripped off sod on top and water it good.

I'm starting to really feel comfortable about being retired. I have to admit it is really nice being able to just roll over and go back to sleep when Twila kisses me and leaves for work at 6:30. I get up (eventually ) and take a shower and make some kind of breakfast - sometimes full blown , sometimes just a banana or a bagel. And then sometimes I either just spend a while reading the paper or SOMETIMES I take a nap. SWEET .

This has been a tough week to deal with emotionally. It's the anniversary of my father passing away and I got a text from a friend in California telling me my first boss when I went to work at COMPAQ had passed away after a long bout with leukemia. He went through chemo and radiation treatment and within the last year he underwent a bone marrow transplant which just didn't fix the problem.

Neither of my parents ever could be persuaded to learn how to use a computer and it is highly doubtful that either of them would have ever attempted to read this blog or my son's blog ( jacobswellproject.blogspot.com ) about the projects we are undertaking. I truly believe they would have enjoyed seeing the pictures of our efforts and would have been proud of what we were doing and what we were trying to achieve. My mom especially felt I got a raw deal because I was born almost 2 months premature  because of the effects on her of the DONORA SMOG of October 1948 ( I was born that December ) . I wasn't expected to live because of how small and  - let's say "unformed " - I was at birth. All the way up through high school I was one of the smallest in my class , and suffered from respiratory problems , allergies , bouts of pneumonia , and chronic ear and nasal infections. When I finally hit my twenties I started to attain my full growth and stature . Then an inherent arthritic condition , a form of rheumatoid arthritis ( ankylosing spondylitis ) , flat out began to kick my ass. In it's initial assault on my system I had severe back pain and muscle spasms and neck pain due to the growth of spurs on my cervical vertebrae. To put it simply , I developed severe scoliosis as my spine and all attendant structures calcified from hips to head and everything was reshaped as my back muscles pulled things one way or another. An x-ray of my spine taken during my physical exam for disability had the appearance of a river road ,twisting back and forth. I went from 6'1"to my present almost 5'9" , although , since I can't stand upright , that's like as close a guess as can be made to my actual height. Although the chronic pain has subsided , I still am fairly limited in my physical activity and capability. I do my best to take meds as seldom as possible , but muscle relaxers and Ibuprofen are sometimes welcome additions to my diet.

All of this is to say , as long as I don't over exert myself or try to " reach beyond my grasp " I am capable of doing things my parents might have believed were beyond me . It's taken me a long time and sometimes been a very rough , tough ride to get here. But I'm not done yet , and I believe they would have both appreciated that and urged me to keep moving ahead. I hope they would have enjoyed seeing me through this.

By my reckoning , almost kinda sorta halfway there

So here it is , Saturday afternoon of Labor Day Weekend and I have been out of work / retired now for about six weeks. Getting used to it. Doing fairly well keeping up with the laundry and planning menus , making Twila a meal every now and then , cleaning up the kitchen , loading and unloading the dishwasher . Not yet a full-blown domestic god but kinda sorta edging into it . I've also been working on unemployment , Social Security , and I just got a letter that says I'm now signed up for Medicare A AND B - so it would appear that I now have a permanent seat on the government ride. Yay me.

Twila is still working for the school district and school has already started here for this year. Even though she said she was looking forward to a relaxing , 3 day holiday weekend , she graciously agreed to help me with planting some more cacti and succulents in the front yard work-in-progress. We compromised on a number of locations for plants to be put in the ground and she decided to take some pix of me working up a sweat. I'm starting to believe this is actually going to look pretty good when we decide it's more or less complete.

Anybody looking at the dates of these posts or comparing the various states of progress ( some more apparent than others ) might be prone to note that this is slow going. True. But I am an old guy with an arthritic condition and it is very hot and humid here in August and I am in no hurry to be done . Slow but steady wins the race but I am not in competition here in any way , shape , or form and it will be done when it's done . Y'all can get behind that , right ?

The stone edging is still only half done , there are a number of plants still to be put in place ( my wife vetoed my idea of leaving some in decorative pots and planters because there would then be a need for a much more aggressive watering scheme than what we were trying to achieve ) and let's not forget the concrete centerpiece which is still waiting to be completed , plus there will need to be about 20 or so more bags of marble chips to be spread around over the newspaper we spread to try to keep weeds down. Whee doggies but aint we having some fun now ?

In the last picture above you can see ( somewhat ) the smaller flower bed on the other side of the sidewalk in front of the house. That may or may not be the next project - it's most likely to be either that or the back yard ( I am SO wanting to get started on filling the new back yard fencing with all of my ideas. Like - that plywood Texas silhouette currently sitting in the rubber edging form in the center of the yard ? It's going up on the fence somewhere after being painted or varnished or flame-washed and varnished . Also plan to stand it up against the fence and overspray it to create a paint outline of the state . We got this Texas thing going on.

Got to organize my thoughts about getting some DONORA and STEELERS stuff going on too. Twila is talking about a TEXANS logo but I am a black and gold boy and think THAT should come first. A quick story. When I first moved to Texas , my first REAL job ( not counting the 6 months as a Wendy's manager) was with a company that made downhole oil well tools. The stuff made there , when completed , was painted Columbia Blue , which happened to be the team color for the then Houston Oilers. I had been working there for about a year when I went back to my hometown of Donora, Pa. for a weeks vacation. At the time ,my mother-in-law worked at a HALLMARK store there and when I went to see her there to say hello I picked up just over a dozen refrigerator magnets and small pencil sharpeners in the shape and black and gold colors of the PITTSBURGH STEELERS complete with their logo. When I returned to work I went in early on the first morning back and put either a magnet or sharpener on the desk of every co-worker in my wing of the building. One of my duties every morning was to make the rounds of the plant ,collecting reports of work progress for all the different departments , then making copies of all those reports and distributing them to my co-workers. As I was making my rounds I was paged to report to first one  shop and then another , and then another . This sometimes happened as they updated the reports of work in progress so I thought nothing of it - until I got back to my desk. Where I found every single one of my " gifts " lined up on my desk, And they had all been painted Columbia Blue.

some random stuff

It's Friday 8/29 and finally raining , so I get to slack off. Not a busy week , but I got some of the plants in the ground and on my last trip to Lowes I got the quikrete for the state form. Maybe do that next week after Twila and I get a few more plants in the ground. Things are starting to shape up , but using a Malibu to haul the materials is slow going . Lots and lots of bags of marble chips and plenty more still to go.According to the weather man it should start to cool down ( to the 70's and 80's ) in about 4 to 6 weeks. Fall can't get here too soon to suit me . My list of projects both large and small continues to grow , but I'm going to finish this monster in the front yard before I tackle anything else.
Now for that random stuff.
I told in an earlier post about my uncle in West Virginia encouraging me to keep after this project. He was at one time ( long ago ) the Acting Dean of Students at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh , and for a variety of reasons left that and moved to 40 acres in the mountains of West Virginia near Buckhannon. His acreage was essentially 20 acres like / and 20 acres like \ and when he first moved there , he was 7 miles from the nearest paved road. Maybe a little exaggeration there - but actually , not much. Initially , he and his wife and some friends lived in tents and cooked over an open campfire as they used hand tools to build a one room cabin. Their place has evolved and grown considerably over the years and I will try to get some pictures because now the place is really something. They very graciously allowed me to spend several spring breaks with them while I was going to college and I have very pleasing memories of earning my keep by helping them with a number of chores. I helped collect truck loads of old sawdust from the site of an abandoned sawmill by the Buchannon River. Lay planks in order to back up to the 50 foot pile of leavings , shovel it into the bed of the truck until the tires started to flatten out , and then shovel in into wheelbarrows and transfer it to the garden for mulch . Getting there was somewhat of an adventure as we had to travel on what I would have to call wilderness tracks , not really roads , which would switchback up and down over a number of ridges before getting to the river.The track actually continued on the other side of the river but it was fast flowing and deep enough that the only way across was by amphib or boat as far as I could see. We made several trips and saw deer , wild turkeys ( you should see those things RUN up the side of a hill that you could barely stand upright on ) and the hillside beside the river was where we went to gather wild ramps which I highly recommend to anyone who has never tried them. BUT - they will make you stink.
 One year  , my "chore" was to help clear trees and brush from the right of way for their power line ( yes -they finally got electricity ). If they didn't clear the power line , the electric company would spray along the right-of-way with defoliant which would then get into the garden and water table ( ALL water was hand carried to the house from several springs ) so this was pretty important . The stretch I was tasked to clear was about 100 yards up one side of a hill above the house and then another 100 to 150 yards down the other side. Using a scythe ,a brush hook and an axe( and a file for sharpening ) I spent the best part of the first day working my way up this steep , overgrown hill. The next morning when I got back to it - and I was getting pretty good at hacking through the 2" and 3" thick saplings with that brush hook - I finally crested that hill and looked down at a FOREST. This side of the hill got most of the sun and was sincerely and severely overgrown. Endeavor to persevere. It took me most of the rest of the week but I did finally get to the road at the base of that hill.
This is getting kind of long and not what I wanted to talk about , but  - what the hell - one more memory. On another spring break we went out to the site of where they were drilling several gas wells and had cut down all the trees to clear the drilling site. All of the cabin heating and cooking was done using wood stoves - several of them , and one of the first structures erected other than the cabin , was the woodshed. We spent a couple of days collecting truck load after truck load of logs from these clearings.   The logs had to be cut into 18" sections using a bow saw and then split with a maul and then stacked. I spent several full days in the woodshed sawing , splitting , and stacking while it SNOWED . Not your typical spring break.

NOW -what I wanted to tell you . We were recently together for a niece's wedding in Seattle and I got to talking with my uncle and aunt and reminiscing and I asked if they still were doing those things I had done while on break. They told me that the garden had been essentially abandoned because the trees on their place had grown to such an extent that they were kinda sorta living in the woods now. When I talked to them recently my uncle said he now had proof that they were actually living in the woods. He had been sitting in what is now his "den " and looked out the window to see a bear nosing around on the hillside below the cabin. He called to his wife , " come look , there's a bear out there. " She opened the door and went out on their deck and made motions and noises , encouraging the bear to depart , which the bear did in somewhat of a hurry. But not before leaving a large deposit as a reminder of it's presence. My uncle said " this proves two things : one - your aunt can and will scare the crap out of a bear. And two - we are definitely living in the woods now , because THAT IS WHERE BEARS POOP."

This has certainly gone on for longer than I intended ,so I'll suspend here and when next we meet I hope to tell you about further yard art progress AND another uncle - this time my mom's younger brother who at one time was a big deal at NASA.