A Few More Measures

More than a month later and the swamper is still not installed BUT I finally got Perry tuned up to where I'm not going to get fidgety over rough cuts. I meant to do more sooner but life has a habit of throttling the living hell out of my intentions just about every chance it can. Also, although I hate to admit it, I get twitchy when dealing with new power tools. I have helped rig and fly pieces of metal larger and heavier than my house, I have arc welded Inconel in a nuclear power plant, I have used reciprocating saws and jigsaws and metal grinders the size of platters and, once upon a time in  my miss-spent youth, I learned how to hotwire a tractor. Circular saws scare the living hell out of me and I treat them with the utmost respect. Now, I have used a radial arm saw - about twenty years ago or better - and I have worked with a table saw sometime back when dinosaurs were still roaming around. There is a chop saw on the property that I use when I need longer metal bits to become shorter metal bits, but a miter saw is a new set of opportunities to lose fingers that I'd rather hang on to. I read the manual. It didn't make any sense. I read it again multiple times and multiple times it defied making any sense. I poked at the miter saw until the sentences in the manual started looking like English again. It told me I needed to bolt the miter saw down, so I went out and put the arm into play and thought, Oh yeah, definitely going to need to bolt this thing down because the last thing I need is for a sixty-pound power tool with a spinning twelve-inch blade to go over backwards. While I'm waiting for the lag screws to get here, I check to see if the blade is true and it is most certainly not. It's off a true 90-degree by nearly an eighth of an inch and I can do that particular trick with a handsaw, thanks. Suddenly the manual ceased to be in English once more, I drew an absolute blank on youtube, and I felt like a not-particularly-bright lemur poking at something with a sharp stick.

To my somewhat dubious credit, some of those pointy sticks have fancy names like phillips screwdriver and socket wrench, and I didn't go through a Boilermaker apprenticeship without learning a thing or two about where those pointy sticks can be applied for maximum effect. It took a while but eventually a light-bulb went off over my head and now, Perry's blade is true 90-degrees. I checked to see if everything was where everything was supposed to be, did a dry run to see if the blade was unduly wobbly, and then cut a scrap bit of two-by-four. The heavens opened. The angels wept. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir snuck into my back yard and sang a couple of rounds of the hallelujah chorus. And then I had to take everything apart and put it into the garage because it was starting to get dark. 

I don't know that I'll get the swamper installed this week. I've got Perry figured out and the Kreg jig nearly almost figured out, and if that was everything I had to do life would be peachy. However. I also have two birthdays, a frangipane tart, a baked Alaska, and an entire D&D campaign to get worked out this week. The swamper project will get further along but actually completed might be stretching optimism a bit too far for comfort.

Thank God for the Nerds (Jon Lajoie)

Over-complicate, Prune, Practice, Produce

All right. The low-down on the current project, which as of this writing is the installation of an evaporative cooler in the sliding glass door portion of my bedroom: This is not technically difficult and yet it's been about month since I bought the new swamper and it is not installed. Still. After a month. 

All projects involving me as a lead character involve a few dance steps, the first of which is

Over-complicate the living hell out of it.

Over-engineer. Put too many steps in. Get too elaborate. Think Taj Mahal when it's really just a four-by-eight chicken coop. This causes project paralysis because everything is Just Too Much. And it is Too Much. Because I'm trying to do way too much for a job that needs a couple of sticks and a sheet of plywood. I don't have the budget or the skill for the Taj but I can nail a couple of sheets of plywood together in more or less plumb and square and level fashion.

Prune the scope of the job back to sanity-inducing levels.

Plywood. Two-by-fours, nails, screws, rough construction, doesn't need to be pretty just functional. I did, however, add a step that doesn't always figure into the dance but wreaks its own level of destruction when it does:

New toy learning curve aka Practice Practice Practice.

I have a pocket-hole jig that I bought myself for Christmas and haven't had a chance to use. That added a couple of days onto the over-complicate phase. I finally got around to cutting all of the two-by-fours and stared at the jig for another week, then finally got around to using it.

Nothing worked. Wood splintered and shattered, the screws didn't fit and wouldn't sink properly and, even with my inability to cut straight lines taken into account, everything was a crocked-up crooked mess that looked just awful. Which is why there are no pictures and no video to show my friends: I burned all of that in a huge bonfire using the ruined two-by-fours it's damned embarrassing, folks. I'll have to see if I can overcome the sheer idiocy of the whole affair. Also, I have yet to determine if the video camera actually caught any of it beyond the cussing. On the other hand, I finally figured out what I was doing wrong and have been giggling about it for the last forty-eight hours.

Which brings us to:

Produce.

And...um. Well, we aren't quite there yet. I have to cut more two-by-fours because the last batch was ruined, at least for this application. I have two-by-fours available because of other projects that never quite got off the ground - a long rant for another day - but yayy! for surplus. Anyway, remember when I said I have issues cutting in a straight line? 

Meet Perry:

Perry is a reconditioned Metabo 12-inch blade compound miter saw, named after a pair of generous benefactors who made Perry's acquisition possible. I'm going to have to finish setting it up and making sure it's true but Oh My Goodness, the prospect of actual 90-degree cuts!

Anyhow, that's where I am in the general scheme of things: Almost three-quarters of the way through my new project involving learning new skill sets dance. Looking forward to getting this done because I already have another project waltz lined up.

Ain'tent Dead

Just. You know. Dormant.

The story of my life is that I make plans, I get part way through plans, I get distracted by life, and lo and behold, a couple of years go by before I remember my original plans. Sort of an attenuated ADD.

Yeah. Here we are again.

I have hoops, but no hoop houses as of yet. However, I have a new friend who is Not An Enabler. She's something far more dangerous and delightful to have around. She is an actual real live Instigator. She is the sort of person who hears of your plans and says: "How wonderful! When do you want help putting that together? Is two months from now doable?" And before you know it, you've scheduled a hoop-raising for mid-July. Which, of course, you ignore until mid-June and think, wait a minute. Having a hoop-raising means having people over who are expecting to raise hoops which means I need to have the layout done and that means I need to clean the yard omgomgomgomg!!1!!

Cleaning the yard, around here at least, does not mean picking up the lawn toys and digging up the stray dandelion. It means finally disposing of those tree limbs I cut down three months ago and burying them, scraping the weeds off and burying them, and building the GooseHow so that visitors don't have to deal with wandering geese. My geese are not intemperate, but they do leave offerings around that I wouldn't want anybody to step in, especially when guests are there to help me put up awkwardly shaped projects.

So naturally I played with my soil blockers today. It's a more productive hobby than playing yet another Big Fish Game, and has the added bonus of being an incentive to get geese penned, as they will eat any seedling they set their beady little eyes on. Keeping plants alive until they produce something useful to a human is not a goose's concern.

I like my soil blockers. Heck, I love my soil blockers, even as I ruefully acknowledge a few limitations. They're best when they have a misting situation. 3/4" soil blocks don't take a heck of a long time to dry out, taking that just-barely-sprouted seed with it. 2" soil blocks split very easily under the demanding root system of a winter squash, and while they can handle a bottom-up soaking better than the little blocks, too much water and you have dissolving lumps of potting mixture. I'm still working on my pacing via the watering situation. Still, I have to say that I love the blocks better than working with plastic pots. If the soil block is damaged it can be recycled either back into the potting mix or into the garden for soil amendments. Plastic pots just gather in sad black drifts until I get around to tossing them. I'll stick with the blocks for now, with an eye toward convincing my nearest and dearest that a 4" soil blocker would be a very appreciated birthday, anniversary, Mom's Day, Xmas, or arbor day gift.

I also threw caution to the winds and decided that now was the perfect time to plant something, anything, no matter what time now happened to be. I know this is crazy and likely to land me with a whole bunch of out-of-season planting issues, but I also know that I have spent my whole life fussing to the point of immobility about getting things wrong. Of course I'm going to get things wrong, but if I don't get in the habit of at least trying to do them, nothing will get done at all. At least if I'm in motion, I'll get better at hitting targets. So I have tomatoes started in mid-June, and I've also sprouted dandelions (they're edible for both me and geese and they reseed crazy, so bonus), as well as some elderly California Poppy seeds and grocery store red lentils. I like the look of the lentil plants so far. Whether they produce or not at this point is moot - we'll get to productive after practice - but the plant is very pretty so far.

Here's to Inspiration, Enablers, and Instigators, without which I would never have half the fun I'm having now.

24 Hours Late is Better Than Never

My spouse took a glance at my bending table yesterday and said that it would be a lot easier to work on if some of the monster Chinese elm branches were trimmed away from it. So that's what he and I did today with the help of the Banshees. Chinese elms are river trees as best as I can tell and if there's a water source nearby they will grow quick and they will grow big. The one we partially trimmed today was one we tried to cut down four or five years ago. Not that you'd be able to tell. It takes a lot to kill these trees and this one thumbed its nose at us and grew back. I used to despair at the thought of ever being able to get rid of these trees for once and for all, since both poison and nitroglycerin are out as potential tree-removers. However, I did find through trial and error a method that will probably work for us. It goes a little like: A. Remove as much of the tree as possible, B. Move a flock of ducks and geese into the area for a year or two. Our flock loves to eat Chinese elm leaves and so far I have seen no evidence that the tree can go without leaves for very long without giving up the ghost. It takes patience but I'm just happy I've found a method I can live with.

I haven't gotten to bracing the hoop jig quite yet. I'm still puttering about cutting up whippy long branches so we can stuff them into the trash cans without a shade of remorse. However, that should be done in about an hour and the jig table won't take too much trouble. Yayy! By this evening or tomorrow morning I can start bending hoops again and driving stakes and setting up for the next big push at the Goose. Or rather, the next two major projects; poultry pens and the first phase of the enclosed garden. We have a massive population of ground squirrels in the back yard, so rather than deal with them using poison, traps, or pellet guns, I've opted to remove their food source. They're fat and sassy and here because it's so easy for them to access the ducks' food and water. I'm going to make that access less easy (I'm hoping for something closer to impossible) and hopefully they'll move on. Even if they don't I will no longer be spending money to feed the extra maws. So that's good.

A friend who got into ducks at the same time I did (but who actually kept her head about it) is down to the last duck of the original trio. Since her life is moving widdershins to keeping ducks, I have offered to adopt her duck and she has graciously agreed. Now you know why, although I have needed to get the hoops up and running for the last eternity or so, suddenly it has gotten sort of urgent. The extra duck is being provided with an extra drake I happen to have but they're going to need their own place. Hey presto, I happen to have the means to so provide, but it means getting up off of my duff and actually getting some of the plans I've been twitching with done.

So I guess I know what I'm doing tomorrow!

Plans for the Day

Finish bracing the hoop jig table.

Bend hoops.

Soak ground so I can drive the hoop house's rebar anchors without feeling like I'm trying to hammer a fence post into a solid block of concrete.

Possibly settle a couple of hoops and their bracing into place.

Manage Banshees without losing what's left of my sanity.

Remember that #5 is pretty much a lost cause.

The Goose Starts Planning Again

Once again I find myself among the non-paycheck-earning population. It's a long, bad news/good news sort of story and I've told it far too often lately for it to be of much interest anymore. The stories I'm actually looking forward to ruminating on as follows:

Bad news: I didn't earn enough to get us out of debt, much less get seed money for my manifold projects.

Good news: I'm home with renewed enthusiasm for the sweat-equity portion of those manifold projects.

I didn't get to play with my newly-acquired soil blockers before I was spirited away to my tower realm, so there's something to look forward to. I lost all of my potatoes and all but two of my tomatoes (and those survivors aren't looking too happy right now) but there's autumn planning and planting to look forward to. I still have to weed, but look at all of the ground I can now put to use.

I'm down one duck. There is no upside to that one: She was my most favorite quacker and I'm going to miss her horrendously. R.I.P. Sir Edmund, my blue-eyed, white-feathered, web-toed, small quacking siren.

No good word on the Trout hatching eggs; the one source I could find this year reports spotting laying and even spottier fertility. Importing from England is beginning to look very good, if not at all logical or feasible.

My friend and local source for Buckeyes has a trio of pullets waiting for me. I just have to go get them some time in the next week or two.

The next few posts are probably going to be stream-of-consciousness ruminations on what I'm thinking about doing, what I should be doing, and why it's really important to get off of the computer long enough to get it done.