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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Got things going on in the coolness...

Got the paint and adhesive...
John Deere green for the cans in the solarium. I did up a test dozen at first and set them up. I like them quite a bit, enough so that I shot the next 30 cans- then I ran out of paint. So I will have to get another can to finish up that part of the project.
Flat white and clear adhesive for the Rose Petal Pavilion. I now have the bases glued to the mounting plate, and the thing sprayed white. Tiled in the hexagon rooms except the final outside row. I wanted to let it sit and cure in well before mounting in the roof poles and the final tiling- I'll fill in the two hallways then too. Still dithering around with how tall I want those roofpoles- I got 9 dowels, so I'm undecided as to how I want to cut them up to make my 18 needed for the three hexagons.
And need more adhesive- different stuff. I got E6000 clear, and it's working great for the mounting and tile setting, but is way too thick for the thinset I need to do to seal the tiles into the floor.
And I want to do a basic petal layout for the roof tiles while the whole thing is still flat enough to make it easy. It wont be so easy once poles are in place. 
The hardware store had glow in the dark paint too. So I tried it out on a couple whiskey bottles. Looks like we might have the glass border for the herb garden. I've been kicking around the notion of glow paint, perhaps some reflective too.. But I'm liking the glow alone so far. I think I might try a glitter and glow too for shits and giggles since I have the mats already to try that. It may be that a whole heap of bottles are getting moved to workspace rather than pole barn.
Now I'm tinkering around with other notions for this paint, like perhaps some hanging glow jars for trees :)

And hey hey, got the workshop cleaned up today- didn't scrub down the kitchen area yet, but the place sure does look a LOT better than it did yesterday. And just a note- I really want to install a kitchen sink up there. I did give a good eye to what exactly I need to scrub up and attend to in the kitchen- I really got to get that done so I can start using the cabinet space more effectively. I got stuff to store up there, and it's just sitting in the wrong place right now.
Also managed to overfill a big laundry basket of random crap that needs to come downstairs. Workshirts, empty hangers, books- and oohh, my off white ringwar cloak.

I'm getting all impatient about the gourds and pumpkins. The first frost has been reported by my favorite seed company, and I know October will bring us our first official frost too. So, whatever is out there once the frosts hit and the vines wither, that's what I'm bringing in. Everything. We shall see whats good and such from there. I got a bushel gourd that looks fantastic.. Accidentally broke the stem off the snake gourd a week ago- it's been sitting on the kitchen table being watched ever since to see if it will take to drying or if it will be scrapped. Have a whole handful of smaller shapes and sizes that are looking good, and a nice handful of batwing pumpkins are just starting to come into their proper color. So there will be gourds on the Halloween table that we grew :)
I dunno what's going to happen with the pumpkin pepper- it has a lot of green fruits, but none of them show signs of oranging up at all. I guess if worst comes to worst I can always pull them up and string them up like tomatoes. All those are still green too- I might try up a green tomato recipe with those.
I need to pull up and put away the milk jug waterers for the season.

Gotta do garage cleanup. I got stuff tossed around all over the frigging place. And I need to figure out how to dress the place up before the wedding. I want to do a tent between the garage and the house and clear out the garage for the event anyway for all weather party space. However, if the weather proves too crappy for backyard, we will have to set up the ceremony in the garage. The roof leaks, badly in some spots, the floors and walls are gross and the walls are full of nails in some places. So I really need to figure out some low cost fixes, and pretty damn fast.
I was thinking perhaps just strapping down some big ass tarps over the roof to temporarily fix the leaky roof problem. Cut up some of the plywood currently serving as my gardening bench to board up the weak and rotten vertical spots between the rafters. Probably would have to do it this fall to make sure the inside is dry enough for painting. I figure the floor can just be really well scrubbed, and we will have to leave it at that. Perhaps yoink a couple off carpets from in the house for the ends.
And recycle, recycle, recycle. The more crap I use up from out there, the less stuff that has to be moved around to do stuff in there. And yeah, still move a bunch of stuff to the pole barn.
I think a lot of my basic gardening paraphernalia can be stowed down there. All my strings of milk jugs, hand tools, tarps and bedding bits. And crap, I totally forgot about our tent being spread out in the pull barn- again. So lots of stuff this fall can be relocated to the pull barn, lol.

Made up a big ass batch of chicken stew a couple days ago- we had it twice for dinner now, and I'm going to bag and freeze up the last 3 servings. I think I'm gonna make a big ass skillit tonight for dinner- I'm ravenous. I think potato, bacon, and spinach, yum.
I still haven't started up the smoker for pork bits. I realized since I'm using frozen hocks too I need to plan the smoking process for three or more days instead of an afternoon. Gotta thaw stuff properly and possibly brine it before smoking it.
Been drying lots of stuff- Based off their fresh hydrated weights, I got 10 pounds each freezer corn and mixed veggies, a couple pounds each of fresh from cob corn, peas, onion, and of course a few pounds of mushrooms. Got some slaw mixes and a couple pounds of kale still. Have a batch of celery in the dehydrator now- and the celery end soaking in water for planting in a day or two. I've also plucked quite a bit of tarragon, sage, rosemary, marjoram, pineapple mint, and a bit of winter savory so far. No thyme- I decided the pant really wasn't up to trimming yet. I've finally gotten to the point of emptying out the big jars, so I've started relabeling them for the stuff that's homegrown. I'm taking out all the nice glass jars I saved up- gonna use those for gifting since I got a lot- and I'm going to start using all my cool odd jars for herb mixes. This will really help streamline that area of the pantry. Kicking around the notion of putting in a shelf for the back row of bottle to sit on- and all my oddbit tiny jars to sit under.
Last time I was at the GFS, I picked up a giant jug of parsley, and big jars of oregano and basil, and a 5 lb tub of instant potato powder. I usually like the flake, but that was 3 lbs for the same price. And I've already used the potato powder to help thicken up the chicken stew, and I think I liked it better than using flake.

I'm a tad concerned for the holiday this weekend- forecast calls for a 50% chance of rain and temps in the 50's. It's supposed to be a getting stuff done, got some yardwork to do, want a bonfire kind of weekend, and I'm not sure if that is going to happen or not.
However, got good food prospects anyway. Making up a mess of spinach and beans, and some other contributions to the cook and bitch are scalloped potatoes and squash, and a cornbread stuffing.

And as a general yard hooray!! It looks entirely possible that at least the fenceposts, if not the entire fence will be set in place before the first snow between our property and that to the south. It's all in the east neighbors hands right now as to when it happens. We had a rather extra disturbing episode of the southern neighbors on our easement drive a couple weekends ago, so I am heartily glad that fence plans are moving forward. I don't care what those southern neighbors are doing on their property, but they sure as heck need to keep it off mine. Geez, this last time I saw one of their vehicles on our easement facing the street, and it burned out all the way down my drive. They were fighting and she was at the end of the drive- and at the moment I watched the vehicle move out I had a sudden horrific thought of I'm about to witness a vehicular homicide. It didn't end up that way thank goodness, but the whole thing was still icky. I walked up to the driver and asked them politely to not be on my property. Since they were outside by then already off on their whatever, I asked the father and son regularly staying there to please not let people of their property on my property. It was one of the most unsettling episodes to date since moving here.
I've been PO'd about some, er, right un-neighborly things that have happened. Flaked out with the whole looked like a nefarious deeds going on next door- and when it happened on my easement drive, that is what prompted the surveying of the fenceline. The whole thing with the call the police, and stabbing, and neighbors tripping over into my yard weird earlier this year was really.. odd. Whatever it is they got going on, we, and by this I mean us and the easement neighbors, don't need it on our property.
And, yeah, the deadwood fence still looks awesome. Not quite as perfect as when it was first constructed, and we took photos.. Anywho, it's now nicely grown in. After the main fence is put up, I was thinking about taking it down because it won't be as needed. Thinking of redistributing the wood along the easement ditchline to help give some hard structure definition to the cattail line. But maybe it will sit where it is and get more nasturtium attention next year.
I do need to do some serious tree grooming along that line- as in, cut down every effing one I see to the soil line. Can mow over some stuff, but not that. Figure if I stack it nice when I gut it, could have the first course row of wood to lay down on the ponds edge.  Since we got nice cattails coming up there, that's the area I cut my sisters cattails from, I want to encourage that to grow in all along the line. A thin line of ditch cattails in an easily harvestable space is useful in the long term and pretty.
I think next spring we will rent a tiller, and do a serious and large replanting of ditch lillies in the NW area of the roadside. The clumps we transplanted this spring did wonderfully well down in the corner. But it was a lot and long labor busting up and moving around with just spade and fork.

And as a gravelish, fillin, whatever... I want to start exploring around with using a little concrete to bind together recycled garbage bits into gravel or pavemently bits. Like the whole area along the southern fenceline so we don't need to mow there, around mailbox areas, that sort of thing. We end up with a lot of bottle caps of all sorts, and oddbit shreddibles that I think could end up being a goodly recycled mass for those areas. If it works well, trim out driveway edges with it. Cements are the cheapest binders I can find right now. I think if I really hunker down and start shredding up pulp paper that could work as well- but we would need to get a bunch more buckets with covers to do it.






1 comment:

  1. Hey, thanks for a seriously insightful blog, I wouldn't normally attach compliments but appreciated your weblog and so thought I'd say many thanks >
    Abigail
    My blog post - garden fencing

    ReplyDelete