Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Adjustments were made…

We had intended to extent the wall across the entire back fence, but it became obvious that it would overwhelm the flower garden to the west of the maple tree.  So I re-engineered the wall, and ended it at the maple tree.

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I built a wall around the spruce tree at the west to bookend the flower garden…

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and also built a wall around the other maple tree…

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Today, the winds have picked up, and a big storm is coming… we will have rain, snow, and freezing temperatures over the next 4 days.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Weekend Projects

The cool and rainy weather at the end of last week forced me inside, and was a demonstration to me of how little I have to do right now if I cannot get outside.  It is a good thing that I had Char’s basement to work on during the winter months, but that is now a done thing (except for putting up the closet doors).  Right now, if the weather keeps me inside, I don’t seem able to keep myself productively preoccupied.

So the sunny (and almost warm) weather this weekend was very welcome. 

First project (which really could have been a rainy weather project) was the building of the tomato cages.  I have built cages over the last three years, and now think that I have found a formula that will work to produce sturdy cages that will last several seasons.  They are now made out of redwood and with much more substantial dimensions than in years past.  And I double staple (with one inch staples) all of the joints.  The raw material for the cages were 12, 8 foot 2 x 6 pieces of redwood.  Josh helped me make quick work of cutting these into the pieces to make the 24 tomato cages which will support this years tomato crop.  We cut them on Friday afternoon (rainy day) and on Saturday I put them all together.  Since I have no other place to put them, I put them in the garden, where they await their client tomato plants.  The tomato plants are doing very well in Josh’s greenhouse.

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The second project involved extending the wall I had built around the extended garden.  Carolyn liked the looks of the wall so much that she asked me to extend it around the rest of the garden beds.  I got about another 50 feet done on Saturday afternoon, and Sunday.  It is no small matter to haul all of those stone home from Home Depot.

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I also cut all the capstones, so there are no more ugly gaps.

So that was my weekend.