Saturday, June 13, 2015
Paradise blossoms...
Paradise blossoms... These are all from our yard, today and yesterday. The most surprising ones to me are the wild roses, 25 feet in the air, blooming after climbing our choke cherries (last photo)...
Skyrmion memory?
Human ingenuity seems to have no bounds...
Progress in Paradise...
Progress in Paradise... Debbie is starting to back off on the pain medication. This took a lot longer than either of us expected, but we're taking that as meaning she's on the mend. She's got nearly full use of her right (injured) arm back, and all the swelling at various places in it is nearly gone. She's got a lot of bruising, though, and it continues to “evolve” daily. Her injured knee is still too painful to bend at all – almost certainly the meniscus tear – and she still can't put any weight on it at all. Today we're going to try to get her in the shower, for the first time in 9 days. We're both looking forward to that :)
Yesterday I kept busy with little things. First thing in the morning, while it was still cool, I leveled a few square yards of soil near the house, where we trenched last year to get water, gas, and network to the shed. This is the area where our air conditioner's compressor is mounted, and it's getting warm enough that we would like to have that working again. After leveling, I set four 18" square pavers in place to make a square yard base for the compressor. Then I set the compressor itself on top of the pavers. Early next week our HVAC guy (another of the wonderful contractors I found last year) will be here to reconnect it all, and recharge the refrigerant.
After I finished with that, I tackled a window screen and screen door in our bedroom. These both had falling-apart screen material in them, not at all cat-proof (and Jahar, our Savannah cat, lives in our bedroom). I replaced all that with pet-proof screen, plus installed new wheels in the screen door. This took a trip to Home Depot, of course. If there was anything that I wished was closer to us, it would be Home Depot :)
Just after lunch, a truck driver (with a comically stereotypical Mexican accent) called to warn me he was about to arrive. He was delivering my new log splitter – a 30 ton model that attaches to my tractor's 3 point hitch, and (more importantly) uses the tractor's hydraulics. The thing weighs 550 pounds, so we needed my tractor's fork lift to get it out of the truck. We had another little challenge first, though. The log splitter was laying sideways on a double-sized pallet, twice as long as it was wide. It was sitting cross-wise in his truck. Between the log splitter and the trailer's door was another pallet (not mine) with 1,500 pounds of paper products on it. The driver wanted me to offload that pallet that was in the way so he could roll my pallet to the back. My tractor can't lift quite 1,500 pounds, though – it's limit is 1,250. We tried, but it wouldn't budge. The driver thought we were stuck until I pointed out that we could rotate my pallet (so it was oriented long ways), then move the little pallet alongside and behind it with his pallet jack. It took me some talking before he got the idea, then he was smacking himself in the head for missing something so obvious. The scene was like something out of an implausible Hollywood comedy. Once we maneuvered the little pallet out of the way, offloading mine was a breeze – and now yet another project sits in my barn. Why is this another project? Well, because of course it's a kit – and in addition, I have to get custom hydraulic hoses made up to fit my tractor. Of course.
All you equipment manufacturers out there: it wouldn't offend me at all if you were to deliver the stuff I buy ready to use. Not one bit...
Yesterday I kept busy with little things. First thing in the morning, while it was still cool, I leveled a few square yards of soil near the house, where we trenched last year to get water, gas, and network to the shed. This is the area where our air conditioner's compressor is mounted, and it's getting warm enough that we would like to have that working again. After leveling, I set four 18" square pavers in place to make a square yard base for the compressor. Then I set the compressor itself on top of the pavers. Early next week our HVAC guy (another of the wonderful contractors I found last year) will be here to reconnect it all, and recharge the refrigerant.
After I finished with that, I tackled a window screen and screen door in our bedroom. These both had falling-apart screen material in them, not at all cat-proof (and Jahar, our Savannah cat, lives in our bedroom). I replaced all that with pet-proof screen, plus installed new wheels in the screen door. This took a trip to Home Depot, of course. If there was anything that I wished was closer to us, it would be Home Depot :)
Just after lunch, a truck driver (with a comically stereotypical Mexican accent) called to warn me he was about to arrive. He was delivering my new log splitter – a 30 ton model that attaches to my tractor's 3 point hitch, and (more importantly) uses the tractor's hydraulics. The thing weighs 550 pounds, so we needed my tractor's fork lift to get it out of the truck. We had another little challenge first, though. The log splitter was laying sideways on a double-sized pallet, twice as long as it was wide. It was sitting cross-wise in his truck. Between the log splitter and the trailer's door was another pallet (not mine) with 1,500 pounds of paper products on it. The driver wanted me to offload that pallet that was in the way so he could roll my pallet to the back. My tractor can't lift quite 1,500 pounds, though – it's limit is 1,250. We tried, but it wouldn't budge. The driver thought we were stuck until I pointed out that we could rotate my pallet (so it was oriented long ways), then move the little pallet alongside and behind it with his pallet jack. It took me some talking before he got the idea, then he was smacking himself in the head for missing something so obvious. The scene was like something out of an implausible Hollywood comedy. Once we maneuvered the little pallet out of the way, offloading mine was a breeze – and now yet another project sits in my barn. Why is this another project? Well, because of course it's a kit – and in addition, I have to get custom hydraulic hoses made up to fit my tractor. Of course.
All you equipment manufacturers out there: it wouldn't offend me at all if you were to deliver the stuff I buy ready to use. Not one bit...