...aka They Really Do Eat Socks!
I had a bunch of old rugs gets soaked by the water heater debacle, and I finally got around to washing them. Then I went to check on them, and the washing machine hadn't drained. It was still full of dirty water. Not really clear on what had happened, I tried to run it through another cycle. Nope, no drainage. The water was stuck inside. So I got the rugs out, found that nearly all the backing had flaked off of two of them, and started trying to figure out what to do next. I bailed the water out a bucket at a time, and in between runs checked on the internet. The most likely culprit was a clogged water pump.
So I kept bailing, and trying various things to get the "cabinet" open. This site was very helpful, but it's a bit too generic. Luckily when I (unnecessarily) got the control panel off, there was a schematic inside that gave instructions specific to my washing machine. It gave essentially the same instructions as the web-site, only it specifically said where the clamps were that held the front on. Incidentally, unless your putty knives are a lot more robust than mine, use a flat-head screwdriver to push the clamps in instead. The putty knife just bent, so that I wasn't even sure I was in the right place.
The water pump turned out to be an itty bitty thing, maybe 6" by 3" by 4", with two hoses coming off of it. I needed to disconnect the hose that drained the tub through the pump. I did not have a hex-tool that would fit in there to get the top clamp off, but I lucked into a good set for $10 at Fred Meyer. Then I discovered that the other wire clamp was much easier to manipulate with plumber's pliers, which I luckily had on hand. So I got the little hose off (it's 1.5-2 inches in diameter, but only about 8 inches long), and found that it was completely stuffed full of bits of rug backing. Yup. That was the problem all right. It came out fairly easily once it didn't have to go through the pump, and I ran a rinse cycle that drained just fine, so I think it's fixed now.
As for the socks, apparently it's not uncommon for socks to get into that drain pipe and clog it up. I didn't understand how until I had the washer apart enough to see that there's a gap between the drum (the part that the clothes sit in) and the cabinet. If a sock were on top, it could potentially slide over the edge, into the drain area, and eventually wedge itself in the pipe. My washing machine has not yet eaten a sock, however. I had a few other rugs in similar condition to the ones I tried to wash; they are now in the garbage bin. I'd just as soon not have to take the thing apart again.
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I put a bird feeder up in June, more for the cats than for me. They really like watching birds, and they have a clear view of the feeder from the west window. I think the birds are interesting, but the cats' reactions to them are far more interesting to me.
And, yes, the cats do try to catch them when they're outside. So far as I know, they've only caught two. One was a starling, who wasn't actually dead when Pouncer brought it into the house, so I had to catch the poor thing and put it back outside. Have you ever heard a starling scream? It's very loud and disturbing. Pouncer brought a smaller sparrow who was dead into the house another time, and got scolded for it. But those are the only two.
Two days ago, though, one seemed to be daring Jilly to catch it. It would sit on the clothesline, looking down at Jilly, and then swoop down just out of reach before flying back up. It did this repeatedly. I have no idea if the bird was really trying to tease Jilly or if there's some non-anthropomorphic explanation, but it was a bit bizarre to watch.
Anyway, I mostly have house finches and house sparrows (aka Parking-Lot Birds; you see them in parking lots around here rather often). There's one that I'm not sure of. It might be a female house sparrow. It might also be a different species of sparrow. It's got a distinct stripe running along its head through its eye. The female house sparrow here has a fainter stripe, and several other species of sparrow also have a stripe. I'll have to see if it/they have any of the other distinctive markings.
For a while, I had some starlings coming as well, but they were more interested in the suet cakes that I put out before putting up the bird feeder. Since they were the only birds I ever saw at the suet cakes, and I'm not a big fan of starlings, I haven't gotten any more of the suet. Admittedly, it was entertaining to see them trying to feed at the feeder; it's sized for finches, and starlings are almost twice as big. Picture a 7 foot basketball player trying to write at an elementary school desk; that's what it looked like when the starlings tried to use the feeder.
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My water heater died yesterday, in a pool of its own rust-stained water. Two days before, the hot water for my shower had been behaving erratically, like it does when I try to take a shower while the water is running on the garden, but there was no water running. I didn't think much of it at the time. Then last night, I discovered that there was no hot water in the house. At all. I went downstairs to check the water heater. There was a small quantity of water under it, but no other suggestions of a problem.
This morning, the heat coming on woke me up. I'd forgotten to turn it down from the cool-spell yesterday before going to bed. I got up to turn it off, and, since I was up anyway, went to check on the water heater...and this time there was a rather large quantity of water surrounding, and I could hear more water running into it to fail to be heated. The two largest streams of water came from either corner of a panel on the front. I managed to get buckets under the panel, and then tried to find a shut-off valve for the thing. I didn't find it until after breakfast, after scanning the connections diagram from the manual that had been taped to the tank. Then I knew which pipe to hunt down, and it was there, almost buried at the back. It didn't get rid of the water already on the floor, but at least no more would be collecting.
The plumber I called got someone out to look at the thing within a half-hour of my calling. He pronounced the thing dead, told me that if I wanted to switch from electric to natural gas it would more than double the price (as I had no hook-ups or flue), and indicated that the person with the new tank would be coming before noon, probably within the hour. In fact, he got there at about 1:30 pm, or about 4.5 hours after the first visitor. I found this very frustrating. Now, if I'd been told something like "There are three people ahead of you; it probably won't be until noon or so," I would be fine with it. But "within the hour" and "before noon" were both entirely misleading. I could have gone out and gotten some lunch or groceries had I had even a semi-accurate time estimate.
Okay, done ranting. The plumber was a decent enough guy. Somewhat amusingly, I didn't even notice he had a Japanese face until he mentioned his aunt visiting from Japan. When I looked for it, I saw it in his features, but he had a perfectly normal midwestern accent. I had noticed the black hair and not-quite-white skin, but there are so many hispanics in this area that they barely registered.
So, I now have a new water heater and a slightly cleaner (and damper) basement. Since I had to pull it out anyway, I finally got the cats' cheaper climbing tree repaired. It needed the bolts tightened and the rope for the scratching posts rewound and/or replaced. Princess seemed to like having it outside, though: it put her at the perfect height to watch the housefinches flying around the birdfeeder. Oh, when the first guy was there, Jilly was in the basement. She does not like strangers. She climbed into the ceiling and growled the whole time he was there. When the second plumber came, all the cats scrambled outside somewhere until he was gone.
Actually, there had been hints of a problem before this week, but I'd misinterpreted them. There was a little bit of water in the storeroom around both the furnace and the hot water heater. I had figured that the discharge hose from the furnace just had a hole in it and needed to be replaced (for those who don't know, modern furnaces give off water as a byproduct of the heating process). I never got around to it. If I had, I might have found a perfectly intact hose...and turned my suspicions to the water heater a month or so sooner. Ah well. 20-20 hindsight and all that.
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This is what I've been working on since Friday. I had started out thinking I'd just make a "mobile weed-killer", meaning some black plastic mounted on a wooden frame that I could set over the worst areas of the yard to kill everything off and start over. Then I got the frame made, and remembered that last year I'd considered making a primitive deck out of the old fence planks in the garage and figured, "Why not?" Well, there did turn out to be an answer to that: "Because it's no longer particularly mobile." However, I still have a few planks left, and I may put together another, more lightweight frame, that can be moved.
The planks have been in the garage since I bought the house. My best guess is that they were part of a fence blocking off the alley at one time. I have a suspicion as to why that fence was taken down, too. The ad for this house said "off-street RV parking." With a fence blocking the alley, there really isn't any such parking. So I'm thinking the realtor advised the former owners to take the fence down so they could put that in the ad. Can't say for sure, though.
Whyever the wood was there, this is the single largest thing I've ever built. It wasn't particularly complicated, as I just used the planks as they were without trying to cut them down at all. It was just "line up, drill, attach with screws." From this I conclude that the hard part of making a "real" deck would be the planning and cutting and leveling. The actual attaching part, while tedious and time-consuming, was very straight-forward. Particularly since I had a philips screwdriver attachment that fit my drill.
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I've always hated mowing the lawn. It's noisy. It's pointless. It makes my allergies act up. However, I have discovered that I don't mind it so much when using a "push-mower," meaning one without an engine (though since all but riding mowers are pushed, I'm not sure why this name is supposed to distinguish it from gas or electric mowers). I got one primarily because I've been unable to get the motorized one to start since late last summer. I suspect that the price of the new mower would be roughly equivalent to the price for taking the motorized one in to get it fixed. If parts were needed, the repair might be more expensive.
So I tried the non-motorized one out yesterday. It's awesome. It's not noisy, it doesn't put out fumes, and I don't have to worry about whether or not it will start when I want to use it. It's also not significantly more work than a motorized mower, except in places where the grass has gotten extra tall and thick. So long as I actually manage to mow each week, that shouldn't be an issue for the rest of the summer, and I'm more likely to mow regularly when I don't dread the fumes and noise of the ordeal. The only problem I had with it was that it does not do well with the small branches that tend to fall from the elm tree like dandruff; those I'll have to pick up by hand. It still aggravates my allergies, but there's not much I can do about that.
Except reduce the amount of grass on the property, but I need a day with little wind and little to no chance of rain for that. Those have been in short supply lately.
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I've reached my breaking point. I've had it. I'm going to kill millions and millions of innocent, helpless... ...quack grass plants. Okay, "helpless" is a bit of a stretch for a plant whose roots can grow through just about anything, and which can return from even a quarter inch of its root, but it made it all the more dramatic, didn't it?
But I'm fed up with grass. The stuff that's pretty drinks water like a drunken fremen, then has to be mowed, which wastes time, gas, and messes with my allergies. The quack grass just gets into everything. We hates it. So we, er, I have decided to turn large swaths of the yard into desert. I got a bunch of drought-tolerant plants at Fred Meyer yesterday; now all I have to do is slaughter the current residents. I'm looking forward to the carnage.
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I managed to get half my garden cleared out yesterday afternoon: cornstalks pulled out and stacked, weed mat pulled up and stakes gathered into a pot, semi-whole weed mat placed over the irritating weedy grass patch near the gate, and black raspberry branches planted. Yes, planted. They'd sprouted roots over the winter after being cut from the main plant, so I put them by the back fence. I may dig up their parent plant, as it is determined to be a climber, and that's just not a good place for a climber.
I've also nearly finished digging the grass out of the bulb patch. And the bulbs that I wasn't sure of have turned out to be hyacinth. For some reason, I had thought the daffodils were the hyacinth, but the big buds started becoming visible, and they had the many-flowered-heads of hyacinth, which, by process of elimination, meant that the somewhat grassy leaves were the daffodils.
Tonight, a cold front is due to move in, bringing with it rain and/or snow... I'm hoping it will be decent enough for me to finish cleaning out the garden and get the peas planted this week. I'm not sure if I'm going to plant corn this year. It takes up a lot of room, plus I keep getting that nasty fungus in it (huitlacoche aka corn smut). Yes, some consider it a delicacy. I consider it just plain nasty.
ADDENDUM: I just found some useful information on controlling corn smut. The two bits of advice most relevant to me are below:
Planting tolerant cultivars is the best control. Cultivars that show improved resistance over two years of testing in the Columbia Basin include: 'Elite', 'Chase', 'Conquest', 'Eliminator', 'Diva', and 'Marvel'.
...
Plant before May 15th.
The varieties that I've been planting are actually listed as some of the most susceptible to the fungus: jubilee and any corn that matures
early. Corn that matures later is, for whatever reason, less susceptible. At any rate, if I can find some of the resistant varieties, I may try planting some and see what happens.
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One of my biggest gripes with this house is the lack of built-in storage. The bathroom has no closet; the only storage in it is the very small under-sink cabinet. I'd been looking for one of those cabinets that are made to stand up over the back of the toilet, but I only had 23 inches of room, and most such cabinets are two feet or more. Then yesterday, whilst sneaking through Wal-Mart in the dead of early morning (the only safe time to go there), I discovered one that was 23.25 inches wide, and it looked like the extra quarter inch was from decorative pieces sticking out a bit from the sides, so I figured I could make it fit. I thought about going home and measuring again ... but there were only two such cabinets in the faux-oak finish—the rest were white—and the other oak one was an inch wider. So I looked over the design, decided if worst came to worst I could cut it up and force it to fit, and bought it.
...
Turned out I technically only had 22 inches of space there; I'd misremembered the measurement. However, part of that limitation came from assuming the cabinet would snug back against the wall, "inside" the boundary marked by the door-frame. This turned out to be impossible due to the floor, er, wainscotting (which is identical to the doorframe, but between the wall and the floor instead of between the wall and the door). There was no way the cabinet was going to snug against the wall. So I'm just letting it sit with one inch covering up part of the doorframe. It makes the doorway a bit crowded, but it more than doubled the storage space I'd had from a wall-mounted shelf; that had only two shelves, and they weren't nearly as wide as the wall-space. This has two full-width shelves, one full-width cabinet, and a solid top that I plan to use as a shelf.
So now I have to figure out what to do with the wall-mounted shelf and the toilet paper stand. I might be able to put the toilet paper stand in the downstairs bathroom, but I'd want to attach it to a wall this time. It's not made for that, but it's not too hard to find connective pieces that will support such things. I haven't decided about the wall-shelf yet.
Oh, there were two oddities in the instructions for putting the new shelf together. (1) In one place, it instructs you to attach the decorative cross-piece to the top of the unit. There are screw holes through the top, but no holes in the cross-piece. I skipped that and got the rest together ... and discovered that there were no screws leftover for such a connection, either. So I ignored that step. (2) On the last page, there are instructions for connecting a support strap between the top of the unit and the wall to keep it from tipping over. At the top of the page it reads, "It is imperative that unit be fastened to the wall for safety reasons." In the instructional picture, there's an arrow pointing to the screw being set into the wall, labeled "Not Included". ^/^ Also, there was no hole drilled in the top to accommodate even the one screw that was included. Now, I will often leave off the wall straps, but in this case, the unit is guaranteed to be top-heavy, so I just dug out an old screw and a drill and a stud-finder.
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I've been trying to get my at-home office cleaned up before the new semester starts. Part of that involves going through a file drawer full of maps and getting them in something resembling "order". They were divided up, roughly, by state and/or country and/or continent. I found a few out of place ones, several boxes of maps that hadn't been filed yet, and a few folders containing only one map that I grouped together. I also got some of the hanging folders with flat bottoms for the larger sections: Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming... i.e., the places I've been to most often to collect maps.
I have 11 maps of Wyoming, all different. 9 of them are the freebies put out by the state. I have about that many maps of Jackson Hole. I don't have quite as many of Idaho or Colorado, but we stop less often at the places that have the freebies available. On the way to Colorado, we always stop at the port of entry at Kemmerer, and they almost always have the official Wyoming map for that year available. Whenever we see one of those kiosks of tourist fliers, I hunt through them for any that have real maps. Sometimes I'll grab little cheapies that are just sketches on a page, but I much prefer the actual maps, with street/road names and scales.
To be honest, I'm not sure why I find maps so fascinating. Maybe it's because they represent a piece of the earth being squeezed onto a little sheet of paper. I did finally break down and throw out some of the duplicates. I didn't really need three copies of the 1999 Official Wyoming Highway map, for instance. It bugs me to get rid of them, but I'd prefer to have my collection remain confined to a single file drawer. The flat-bottomed file folders help with that. I can line the maps up side-by-side, "standing up", and make them take up half the room that they did before.
So... if anyone needs an obscure map from the intermountain west, it's quite likely that I have it. I've also got a few oddities, like a map of Yugoslavia when it was still called Yugoslavia. I found it on clearance at a little bookstore in Brush, CO. That's something else I like about maps: they represent a slice of history. That country no longer exists. Its borders are probably different. But the map records what was.
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I planted tulips this afternoon! And daffodils, and crocus, and hyacinth. I found some deep, deep purple tulip bulbs at Fred Meyer, and some yellow ones with red highlights, and some purple hyacinth, bought those, and also planted the bulbs I bought last fall but never planted. Yeah, I know: probably too late for those. But I'll give 'em a chance anyway. The cats liked that I was outside so much, since that meant they got to be outside, too, but they didn't care for the rototiller for some strange reason.
Then at Wal-Mart, I finally found Dexter, Season 2. I thought it was supposed to come out in August, but I've been checking and this was the first time I saw it in a store. At any rate, those discs should keep me occupied for a while.
As for the teeth...
My mom IM'd me last night to tell me she needed help with a dental problem. Based on prior experience, I assumed this meant she needed to be driven someplace for an appointment. After several mutually confounding exchanges, I figured out she wanted me to do something or other to her "flippers" (insertable teeth to cover the gaps in her mouth until she gets the permanents put in). Which was weird, but okay. Turned out that she was having her picture taken this afternoon, and wanted the front-most gap covered, but with the posts in (the metal things that they'll later screw the new teeth onto), the flippers didn't fit any more.
She had me cut the tooth of interest off of the thing, and then we needed to get the excess material off of it. Mom wanted to cut it off with a paring knife. I knew from experience* that was a bad idea, but I remembered that Grandma had a sander down in the store room, and I was pretty sure it was still there. It was. That got all the excess off, then Mom used the paring knife to cut a groove where the post was. Turned out to be futile, as she couldn't find a way to get the tooth to stay in place. I suggested denture glue, but she didn't want to buy a $5.00 tube of it when she'd only use it once. *shrugs*
*Not with teeth of any sort. In college, I didn't have a nutcracker, but I had bought some hazelnuts still in the shell. Opening them with a paring knife sort of worked...until the knife slipped. I still have a scar on my left index finger from it.
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Amazingly, the rhythm on that scans. Anyhow, my Theory of Knowledge text got left outside for a while on a little side table. Given the past month or so, this was perfectly safe. Unfortunately, I forgot about it when it did start to rain this afternoon. It was not completely drenched, but it was rather bedraggled. On the plus side (sort of), I've had to deal with this sort of thing before. Usually I find the book after it's had a chance to dry out. I'm hoping that since I found this one while it was still damp, it will straighten better.
Technique: (skip this step if it's a book with staples or metallic decoration) Put in the microwave for a bit. Pull out. Put the damaged book on top of a solid book that is larger than it is. Stack a whole bunch of heavy books on top; the heavier the better. I'll check it tomorrow and see if it needs to be "nuked" again. (Why in the name of Colonel Potter's toenails is putting something in a microwave, which excites water molecules and has nothing whatsoever to do with fusion or fission, called "nuking"? Someone please explain this to me.)
Random items, potentially of interest:
I replaced a light fixture yesterday. Most of the light fixtures in the house were plain ol' 2-light boxes with glass covers, which would be fine, except they all seemed to have the same short: One bulb invariably burns out much, much sooner than it should. I've replaced all but one of them now (the last one requires either a longer ladder than I own or for me to climb into the attic; I'm not thrilled about either option). I lucked into a halogen light fixture on clearance for nine bucks at Lowe's for this one. It's got three aim-able lights on it. I haven't decided how well I like it yet, but so long as the bulbs last, it's preferable to its predecessor.
We had a fuller house than usual at taiji yesterday. Melissa's back in town, and Travis has decided to join us...which means we pick him up, since he can't drive (insurance vs. money issues). He's actually only a few blocks from me. But it's good to have a fresh face in there, especially one who's a bit rusty. Don keeps insisting that Melissa and I have very good forms, but I'm sure we'll pick up on stuff we've missed or forgotten as he walks Travis through things.
I finally have tomatoes attempting to turn red. My plants, both this year and last, just wanted to produce more and more vines, and leave the fruit green for a very long time. I looked this up. Apparently it means I put too much fertilizer on the garden. This is a bit puzzling as I have never put any fertilizer on the garden. So I guess my soil is "too good" for tomato plants. According to my dad, if I keep growing corn, it will get worse and require some sort of supplementation. Perhaps the tomatoes will produce more tomato and less vine then.
Lastly, I've taken to walking to campus on MWF mornings. I drive for my evening stuff, but it's actually easier and saves time to walk in the morning. How does it save time, when it takes 35 minutes to walk and maybe 10 to drive? Because I don't have to leave in time to get a decent parking space, nor leave myself extra time in case there isn't one. Instead of leaving by about 7:10 am, I can leave any time before 8:20 am to get to Chinese (which I'm loving, btw). I generally don't get any more done in my office when I get there at parking-time, so that time has been mostly wasted. Now it's spent in a pleasant physical activity.
So I suppose I'll stop rambling now, as I've lost the thread of my own thought process. For anyone not paying attention, the title really only applies to the two paragraphs above the fold.
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On the fourth of July, I helped my mom put a porch-swing together. Okay, it would be more accurate to say that I put it together and she occasionally ran to grab me tools. The directions were poorly written, but I got most of it figured out due to good packaging and decent labelling of the parts ... with one exception. I got the arms of the swing on the wrong sides. There were, in fact, labels on them: "left" and "right" respectively, but they were on what would be the top of the arm, and I was attaching them up-side down and hence did not see them. A few things were going together oddly, but the reason didn't become apparent to me until we got the bench up-right and suspended from the frame. Then I saw the labels, and the odd angles things had connected at suddenly made sense.
So on Sunday I had to take the bench apart again. Because of the mistake, two of the bolts had bent, and even if I could have gotten them back through the holes (getting them out was difficult enough), it didn't seem wise to rely on bent screws to support the swing's weight. So we went to Lowe's to find a replacement. Naturally, the size we needed was not in their inventory (2.75" long, 1/4" bore). There was a three-inch set of two nuts and bolts with the correct bore, so we got those.
This afternoon, I went over and re-attached the support arms, using the two non-bent original screws and the two replacements. It seems to work just fine, and the arms are not going out at funny angles this time. So if anyone else happens to be putting such a swing together and sees bizarre angles, STOP and make sure that you've got things on the correct side(s). Oh, a ratchet is a good tool to have around for it, too. The set came with itty-bitty wrenches that fit the bolts, but it's much faster to get them most of the way with the ratchet.
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I suspect that the style is no longer being made, as I've been unable to locate a picture on the web, but it's described as either a "Morocco sideboard" or a "Morocco three-drawer console table." What's particularly Moroccan about it, I don't know, but it fits nicely by my front window and gives me a place to put some boxes and my shredder, as well as a nice platform for some plants:
On the left are my palm trees, procured from Wal-Mart when they were about 6 inches high. They were just leaves then, no trunk visible at all. In the middle is a dragon I got for a song, 5 or 10 bucks at an antique store*. I could swear that I saw a similar style dragon on the mantle in an episode of the Addams' Family... On the right is my ficus, which was sent by a business to my grandma's funeral.
*I got the impression that the lady who ran the store didn't care for it and was pleased to be rid of it. There's no accounting for taste... `/^
Before, I had three pieces of furniture in the same spot, storing less, though there was room on top for a few more plants. The space feels much more open now, and the usable space underneath is quite nice.
As for the window treatment, those are curtains I got on clearance somewhere (either Linens'n'Things or Bed, Bath and Beyond). They started out as white with purple striping. I threw them into the washer with seven packs of Rit Dye (either three wine and four purple or vice versa) to get that color. The blinds came from Pier 1, probably on clearance as well.
Incidentally, this was Pouncer's idea of helping me put the console together. For reference, the table is upside down, and he's sitting in the space that now holds the drawers.
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...it's just that this past week, I've been either busy, exhausted, starving, or some combination of the three. On the busy front:
- Got the desk from my mom's office out of the pickup (with some help from Fibonacci) and got it into my office. Then I discovered a rather nasty, musty smell emanating from it and have spent much effort attempting to remove said odor. It's a metal desk, so at least I don't have to worry about rotten wood, but there are inner surfaces that I can't get to to clean. Oh, and between the mustiness and the bleach, I've come down with a sore throat and a few other symptoms, which seem to be going away now that I have a decent air purifier in with the thing.
- Moved a rather large roll of carpet into my mom's office, with help from Fibonacci and everyone at the office. That was interesting. My dad thought the thing might have weighed 500 pounds or more. It was 10 or 12 feet long and probably 3 feet thick. Lifting it was out of the question. Mostly it was a shoving match.
- Tea with Matt, when I should have been cleaning to make room for the musty desk. Incidentally, this post came out of a bit of our discussion. Good illustration of how massively fast exponential growth really is.
- Philosophy club. I started on a post about Aristotle based on last week's meeting, and gave up due to need for food and sleep. Not sure I'll get back to it at this point, but next week we're on stoicism and Epictetus. Anyone in the Pocatello area is welcome to join us Wednesdays at 5:30 pm at Mocha Madness (Corner of 5th and Halliday, though the map makes it look like it's in the middle of the block).
- Putting up a fence/gate. I'll probably post pictures at some point. Last spring, I put up a temporary chicken wire fence between my driveway and the back yard. It was intended to be temporary, so it's not a huge surprise that it was a bit, er, the worse for wear. I replaced it with some metal fence sections from Lowe's. I couldn't afford to do a very large fence with them, but for that section they worked nicely, and they look much better than the chickenwire did.
- Tiny bit of hiking/exploring yesterday. I was hoping to find Crystal Summit Road. I think I did, but it was closed (and labeled 006). So I wandered further south along Bannock County Highway. Once it goes out of Caribou National Forest, it seems to be farms as far as the eye can see. I turned around at Wright Lane (yes, that was really the name) and headed back and stopped at Beaver-something-trailhead. It doesn't seem to get much use by humans. There was no clear trail from the parking lot. I wandered up a semi-clear patch and eventually found an obvious trail. I suspect that it's primarily used by cattle, though. The only places with clear trails were in among the trees. In clearings, the trail tended to die off. Also, there were quite a lot of cattle up there grazing. Incidentally, one of the signs of overgrazing is hillsides covered in mule's ears (a kind of sunflower with leaves that look vaguely like donkey ears), as the cattle don't care for them. One of the signs of mismanaged land is cattle still grazing on such hillsides. I did find something that might have been an old beaver dam along the little creek, which probably explains the name of the place.
- Then I headed back down and explored a dirt road off of the highway that I'd never gone down before. It seems to follow Mink Creek. There were a few potential places to hike as well as some nice vista spots to get a good view of the creek. It was also bloody narrow, the kind of road where when two cars meet, one pretty much has to pull off the road. But still an enjoyable (and pretty) drive for all that.
- Okay, exhausted and starved again. So I'm done writing for the moment.
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I discovered the coolest weather map a week or so back. It shows me exactly what the conditions are in the Gibson Jack/Scout Mountain area before I decide to hike up. I can't remember if I saw the reporting station near Wild Horse Divide (near the upper turn of the Gibson Jack trail) or not. I have a visual image...that could just as easily come from other weather reporting stations I've seen. The one at the Arco rest area comes to mind.
Still weird weather here. We had a solid week of 80-90° weather, then a cold front moved in and it hasn't gotten above 60° since Tuesday. It's also been raining off and on through most of it. So we had some July followed by April. *shakes head* At any rate, I now have my garden roughly 75% planted. I would like some orange bell pepper plants, but otherwise all the peppers are in. I still need to find a tomato plant. I might buy some herbs that have already been started, especially if most of them don't come up. Last year, only the basil came up. And I suspect that one of the seed packets I had was contaminated with some weed seed. Cutleaf Nightshade, to be precise. I wasn't sure what it was, but then it bloomed. Its flower was quite similar to that of a tomato plant, which told me it was probably in the nightshade family, and then I was able to find it. This has the best picture I was able to find quickly. It produces fruit that looks vaguely like a small, green tomato, but that is poisonous. As soon as I figured out what it was, I pulled it up.
Anyway, I've got the peas, peppers, corn, radishes, carrots and zucchini planted, with a few herbs keeping them company. I hope it stays relatively cool for the next few weeks, as the peas will do better then. I may plant another row of corn, and I'll probably plant a few more herbs. If I get cutleaf nightshade again, I'll know that I have some contaminated seeds. I think it grew where I thought I planted rosemary...
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When I bought my house, the backyard had obviously been badly neglected for many, many years. Every spring, the dandelions would crop up: more dandelions than grass in many places. I tried, somewhat half-heartedly, to put a dent in them, using a so-called "dandelion digger" and herbicides mainly. The herbicides didn't seem to do anything at all, likely because I didn't want (and couldn't afford) to use them in large quantities. Using a dandelion digger actually made it worse, as it left multiple pieces of root in the ground for each dandelion. I didn't know this at the time, unfortunately.
So last year I took a different tack. I got out a good, solid shovel, and just started digging in an area that I thought might be good for a garden. I dug and dug, and got all of the root at least 75% of the time. This spring, for the first time, I see a reduction in dandelions over an entire area. There are still plenty—more than I care to count—but that one area was largely clear. There is a downside, however. Digging in this manner also disrupts the grass. Now, in the garden area, that's fine. I'm thinking that I may as well cover the rest of it with black plastic and just start over, if that's what it's going to take to clear out the dandelions. They are quite pretty little flowers... but a bit too much like tribbles in some regards.
For the moment, I'm taking the "if it's near or in the garden, dig it" approach. Also if it's near or on the walkway I made last year, though I'm hoping vinegar will be sufficient to discourage them on the walkway itself. When I rototill the garden plot, hopefully tomorrow, I'll also dig up the area next to it and put weedmat on it, and keep prioritizing by nearness to the garden and walkway for digging. I already covered the area next to the elm tree in weedmat, partially because mowing there is such a ruddy pain, and it's rather refreshing to see a nice, empty spot. I ought to dig down a bit there and fill it in with bark or something over the weedmat...or maybe build a bench around the tree. That would be fun.
The interesting bit is all the stuff I've found back there whilst digging. Rocks, of course, and I pull them out for later use whenever I find them. Bits of trash that have gotten buried in the dirt. Old toys from residents of decades past. Lots and lots of charcoal; that might have come from the time this house caught fire due to Christmas lights shorting out, some years before I bought it. Broken glass. Most annoying, loads and loads of rusty spikes. They're generally 4-6 inches long, and about a foot down in the earth. It seems strange that there's so many of them, and they don't do the shovel a whole lot of good.
I think that's why the thought of digging up the whole back yard doesn't bother me all that much. I'm curious as to what else might be buried back there. Oh, I also found a paving stone that I put in, buried under about two inches of dirt and forgotten. As I'll likely use paving stones to hold the weedmat next to the garden down, I call that a nice score. And the kittens (now nearly cats) seem to like the dug-up areas better than the grassy ones; more places to hide, dig and play. ^/^
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Between the air purifier and the pseudo-ephedrine*, I've been functioning much better. Especially considering that today the pollen levels were in the "high" range (link). We've also, finally, had a few warm days...set to end Wednesday, which is okay as I'm stuck inside for 90% of Wednesday. But I've started work on my little garden plot, digging buckets of dandelions and mallow and pulling out some nasty grass roots when I find them. What I needed to do was cover it in black plastic before the winter set in, but that should have been done, say, October, which was when I got sick for the first time that school term.
I think my digging of dandelions in that area last year made quite a difference. I haven't found nearly as many with deep, two foot tap roots. Actually, I haven't found any. FYI, dandelions are perennials. I did not realize this until I started trying to decrease their numbers in my yard. Also, I'm pleased to note that I have none in my front yard, while my neighbors to the north have some actually blooming already. Last year, I was quick with the shovel whenever I saw any in the front yard. It seems to have been effective.
Oh, and my hollyhocks are coming back. The two biennials are definitely going to make it. The perennial seems to be slower, but I think I saw a new leaf this week, so it might make it.
I don't think I mentioned it, but my garage door got stuck this winter, on a day when I wasn't up to dealing with it...and it didn't get dealt with until last Saturday, as a matter of fact. It is now closed. And if I can figure out what I did with the other opener cable, I think I can fix it without calling in any repair peoplings. The only issue is how, exactly, the cables fit into the grooves on the reel. If I get them in right, then I should be able to click "open" on the opener and it will wind itself back up properly. For anyone else with a low-clearance garage door that gets stuck: Unhook the cables from either side of the door. That will allow it to close. You can then detangle the cables at your leisure...so long as you haven't misplaced one of them.
Hmmm... One more. My last sets of in class tests are now graded. I have a few more homeworks to check-off and/or grade, and then nothing but final exams. I've even got the spreadsheets ready so that grades will be calculated automatically as soon as all the scores are entered.
*I've also tried the newer phenylephrine. Basically, it will clear out the nose but not the sinuses, at least for me. So if I've got a sinus headache, the phenylephrine doesn't do a thing for it but the pseudoephedrine takes it out almost instantly. *shrugs*
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There are two windows in my meditation room/ashram/dojo. The kittens like to get up into both of them, and, of course, managed to knock several items off of the side table in front of the north window. Two of them broke. I have since rearranged, so that there are no breakables near windows. They broke... more than a month ago. I was gluing the Buddha back together a piece at a time before I got sick, then gave up for a few weeks, and finally finished this week. The new tableau is in the corner, away from the kitties:
I honestly don't know if I got all the pieces to the Buddha. The glue filled up some of the room for the pieces, so that at the end I had an irregular piece, not quite rectangular, about half an inch by three quarters of an inch, that was too big to fit in the remaining empty spot. I wound up breaking it into smaller pieces to fill up the room as best I could. Then I filled in the remaining gaps with wood-fill. Incidentally, I discovered that the statue wasn't wood, as I had thought. It was plastic. As it was fairly cheap and came from Target, this wasn't a huge surprise...except that they did such a good job on the paint finish that it had never occurred to me that it might be plastic. Below is the patch-job:
And here is the undamaged side, for comparison:
So why fix it rather than replace it, since it was cheap? Sentimental reasons, I suppose. The statue has been there ever since I started my 108-days thing. Replacing it, even with a look-alike, wouldn't feel right. *shrugs* Besides, it was kind of fun trying to get it back together. And the other thing that broke was an onyx bowl. I think it was onyx. Some rock, anyway. It was much easier to fix. I had all but one piece, and that blank spot I filled with clear glue tonight. You can kinda see it, maybe a dime's diameter below the dime. It's up-side-down so that the glue can dry without sticking it to the little fair-trade bead-bowl it's sitting in.
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Whilst cleaning over Christmas, I managed to misplace my Tibetan mala. It's much easier to keep track of chanting with it, so on Saturday I wandered over to the craft store in Idaho Falls (Michael's; we used to have a branch outlet of it here in Pocatello, but it got bought out, and the new place isn't even a quarter as good). I found some decent wooden beads, and even lucked into a sale. Instead of $4 for a fourteen-inch strand, it was $3. Overall, including the beads I have leftover, it cost me about $13. I did wind up wandering over to the local excuse for a craft store after getting 99.9% done, just to get some beads with a larger bore to finish it off:
I had planned on using the disc-shaped beads every 36 or so, but it didn't look like I had quite enough round beads to make that pan out. They're currently every 12, though I think I could have gotten away with every 18. It's kind of nice to have a marker to go past on the mala. When I had to restring the other one (which will probably show up this week now that I've made a replacement), I put a knot every 36 beads for the same purpose.
I wound up using green garden twine to string it...primarily because I couldn't find my plain white cotton string. Naturally, it turned up a few hours after I was done. ^/^ Anyway, here's a closeup of the twine:
It adds an interesting color, even if it is a bit rattier than string would have been. To close it off, I tied a knot, then unwound the twine, rewound halves from the opposite ends together, then wound both of those together, put the larger bore beads over it, tied another knot, and frayed the end. Finally I put a drop of glue in each of the knots. The unwinding/re-winding wouldn't have occurred to me if I hadn't run across a show on rope making at some point in the last few months. I have no idea how well this twine will hold up, but I'm pretty sure that my finishing will hold together for a good long time.
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I'm attempting to make it so that you can get a new random quote by pushing a button, a la John's... At the moment, I've succeeded in creating a button that does nothing. So click on it if you want, just don't expect anything to happen.
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