This is a blog of all the ongoing maintenance, repairs and updates to the house my wife and I share as they happen. Owning a house is a lot of work, especially one that is on a working farm, and in a very swampy area. That's OK though. We like having projects to do and keeping busy. Plus everything we do adds value to the house and grounds, and just makes it a nicer place to live and entertain.

Entries in this blog begin a few weeks after moving in with my wife. We started on various projects almost immediately.

Newer entries are at the top, so if you want to read in chronological order, start at the bottom and read up.

08/23/22 - A New Roof In One Day!
Here I show a new roof installed on our Florida house in only one day. They started at the crack of dawn and were done before 5pm. Amazing! They also cleaned up behind themselves very well. Great job!

03/05/21 A new mini gazebo for the back deck
Today Leslie assembled the new mini gazebo for the back deck. Her idea was to cover the grill and smoker to keep them more out of the weather. Plus we'd have a dry storage area for some stuff she wanted to move off the back porch. She assembled it all by herself while I was busy doing yard work. My only contributions to the project were to help her lift it onto the deck, and then screw it down to the deck. Oh, and later I cooked us some tasty wagyu beef burgers for dinner on the now covered grill. That cover will come in handy. It usually starts raining as soon as I fire up the grill. No more trying to cook while holding an umbrella.

12/06/20 Replanting the raised bed garden
Leslie was recently attacked by the gardening bug again. Leslie decided it was time to replant the garden. A couple of weeks ago she showed up with the back of her jeep full of bags of potting soil and dozens of seedlings. She kind of short-circuted me on one of her Christmas presents this year. I was planning on buying her a pallet load of gardening soil and filling up the raised beds with it. Oh well, I have other ideas for her Christmas presents.

Most of the stuff she planted last Spring had died off. Most of it was planted too late in the year and didn't do so well over the blistering hot Summer. We did get a lot of Cucumbers and some herbs, but not much else really thrived. Everything except the tree collards and the herbs had pretty much died off by Autumn. She pulled out all the dead and dying stuff, and then spread out a new layer of garden soil. Then she replanted a mix of things. There are tomatoes, squash, lettuce, cilantro, snow peas, cabbage and cauliflower. Plus some herbs and the tree collards are hold-overs from the Spring.

This photo was taken only a couple of weeks later. Wow! That's some explosive growth. Everything has really taken off. The plants are really liking the cooler weather of Autumn. The heat of summer kind of stunted things earlier this year. We are already harvesting some of the tree collards, lettuce and herbs. The other stuff is growing fast too. We should be getting even more vegetables from the garden soon. Leslie has quite the green thumb.

08/08/20 A sign for the front of our house.
I made a sign for the gate of our Wyoming ranch a while back. It turned out so nice that I decided to make another for the front of our house. I planned on mounting it just below the house numbers. Looks pretty good if I do say so myself. I just love cutting stuff on my home-made CNC router.

So here is the sign mounted on the front of the house, right below the numbers as I planned. Now the never-ending parade of delivery drivers coming to our door will know they are in the right place. The sign is held on with four Tapcon screws. I hot-melt glued wooden plugs over the screw holes for a nice finished look. I can pop the plugs out and unscrew the sign to take it with us if we ever sell the place and move.

05/30/20 Raised Bed Garden Update.
The raised bed garden has really taken off now that the weather is warmer and the days are longer. The cucumbers in particular have just exploded. They have sprawled out in all directions, shading each other and some of the other plants. I decided they needed to go vertical to keep them from taking over the entire garden. So I built this simple trellis out of some scrap wood and some fencing. I weaved some of the plants through it, and they immediately began climbing it. You can see how many cucumbers we are getting down on the ground. We've picked and used some already. Most are pretty small, but I'm hoping that with the plants no longer shading each other, they'll have the energy to grow bigger ones.

Besides the cucumbers, several other things are doing very well in the garden. The tree collards have just exploded upwards and leafed out amazingly. Leslie planted two varieties. The purple variety is growing so fast you can practically watch it happening. The green variety isn't doing as well because some kind of little bugs have found it and are busily munching on the leaves. Leslie is using a soap and water solution to keep them at bay. The sweet basil is also practically exploding. We are going to have a big crop of it. The broccoli, which kind of did nothing for a while, and then looked like it was ready to die out, has suddenly taken off. we'll see what develops from it.

Some things aren't doing so well. The zucchini that took off so promisingly in the beginning hasn't yet produced any fruit, in spite of much flowering. Some of the plants are starting to die. Others are looking sickly. Maybe we just don't have the correct pollinators for zucchini. I may try some hand pollination. The cilantro only just got going good, and then went to seed. I think we may have planted it too late. The kale is kind of in a holding pattern. It was looking good for a while, but then just stalled out. Maybe it's too hot for it?

Corona Virus Lockdown: During the time we were locked down at home for the Corona Virus pandemic, We got a lot of things done around the house. As Leslie says, it was her big chance to do all the things she'd been wanting to do around the house for 20 years. We stayed really busy the whole nearly two months we were stuck at home. Here are some excerpts from a Quarantine Diary I kept during that time that pertained to work we did on the house and grounds. As usual, newer entries are at the top and older ones are further down.

05/06/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 48
Today was a pretty slow day around the farm. The only big event today was taking a trip to the dump. I'm afraid that's about as exciting as it gets during Corona Virus lockdown. Our utility trailer has been full of debris from rebuilding the various decks around the property. We really could have used it a few days ago when we rented the trencher to put in the new sprinkler lines. We decided to take it to the dump and empty it before we needed it again for something. So bright and early we hitched the Jeep up to the trailer and headed for the dump. It only cost a little over $13 to dump about half a ton of debris. Not too bad. The dump was super busy. So the lockdown seems to be easing up.

05/05/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 47
Sometimes it feels like I'm living in some gender-swapped version of Green Acres. I'm a city boy who married a farmer woman. Who else but a farmer could get excited about a big pile of horse manure in the road and run to get a shovel so she could use it to fertilize her roses? I guess we are lucky being surrounded by stables and horse farms. We can get our manure for free. There are poor saps in the cities and suburbs who actually have to pay for it. Just goes to show that if you have enough of anything (even poop) that it's worth something to somebody.

05/03/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 45
Today started with lots of laundry. Then I went out to work on finishing the deck and walkway behind the rental house before it got too hot. I ran out of deck screws back when I was building the walkway. It only had enough screws in it to barely hold it together. We ordered enough screws to finish the walkway when we ordered the supplies to repair the back deck. So with the back deck done, I was able to finally finish screwing together all the pieces of the walkway. I also weeded the garden boxes while I was right there. After that I spent the bulk of the day working on projects in my workshop.

05/02/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 44
Today was another nice day. Not too hot or humid. This weather is spoiling us. I decided to hit the ground running this morning. I went to Lowes early to pick up some parts I need for some of my projects. We were in Home Depot yesterday, but they didn't have what I needed. They never do. I was hoping to beat the crowd. No such luck. Lowes was a madhouse. I guess everyone else has the same idea we do, of fixing up their house while on lockdown. When I got back, While it was still shady and cool over there, I tackled replacing some more rotted deck boards on the deck behind the rental house, using lumber left over from fixing our back deck.

05/01/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 43
We reached an important milestone today. We completed the last major project on Leslie's to-do list. We got the new line of sprinklers in on the north side of the palm grove. This morning we put on our PPE and went to Home Depot to rent a power trencher. It took me and three of their beefy guys to get the thing into my truck. That left me worrying about how just Leslie and I would get it out, and more importantly, how we would get it back in so we could have it back in less than the four hours we rented it for? The thing is heavy and awkward. After trying a couple of different ramp options, we managed to get it out without injuring ourselves, but it was a close thing. Once it started down the ramp, it wasn't wanting to stop.

The actual trenching went fairly easy and quickly, once we figured out how to start the beast. There was a non-obvious cutoff switch for the ignition. I didn't find it until I was blue in the face from pulling on the starter cord. The only fly in the ointment is that we cut through a water line in the first two feet of trenching and flooded the whole yard, including the trench as I dug. Ain't that the way it always goes? The trencher was throwing up a rooster tail of mud as I went that got all over the side of my nice clean truck. Leslie shut off the water while I finished the trenching. I really need to work on trenching a straight line. I doubt I'll get a chance to try it again any time soon though. Leslie blew off my crooked trench as nothing and said, "Don't worry, PVC pipe can bend." Then we washed the mud off the trencher (to avoid the cleaning fee we were threatened with). Then we broke for lunch to let the water in the flooded trench and field recede. Here is a photo I took as we were heading back to the house for lunch with all the trenching done.

Lunch gave me a chance to think about how just the two of us could get the trencher back in my truck. Our utility trailer is full of debris from rebuilding decks, so that was out. I finally decided to park my truck with the rear wheels down in a shallow drainage ditch cutting across the property. That lowered the rear end by a couple of feet. Then I cut a piece of plywood to go on this folding ramp we have, which is really more like a ladder than a ramp, with big spaces between the wide rungs. I was afraid the wheels on the heavy trencher would get into the gaps between the rungs and not want to move. With the truck in the ditch and the ramp going from the tailgate partly up the other bank of the ditch, it was actually a downhill start and only a shallow uphill finish to roll the trencher back into the truck. It only took us two tries to get it in. We had it returned to Home Depot well before our four hours were up.


After we got back from returning the trencher, it was time to put in the pipe. Job one was to first fix the pipe we cut through. Then we moved on to running the new pipes. Here is a photo of Leslie gluing together the pipe sections. Lines to sprinklers branched off this main line. We put the sprinklers up 10 feet high, like in the rest of the grove. That will allow for adding a couple more rows of trees, and allow for the existing trees to get a little taller without blocking the spray. As Leslie put the pipes together, I went behind her back-filling the trench. The gluing the pipe together part went fairly quickly and easily. There were just a couple of minor issues that had Leslie running back to the workshop to sort through her giant collection of pipe fittings to find just the right one she needed.

Late in the afternoon it was finally done. When Leslie turned on the water there were no geysers. Yay! More importantly, when she turned on the zone the new sprinklers were tied into, everything worked. Not too bad for a couple of amateurs. She still needs to adjust the distance and direction the sprinklers throw the water. That will be a job for another day though. By then we were both tired, sore and hungry. I made the executive decision to order dinner delivered from The Pinellas Grill again so nobody would have to cook. We had their fish & chips tonight. Yummy.

04/29/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 41
Leslie may actually be starting to run out of things to do around the house after more than 40 days of lockdown. We are getting down to the lower priority projects near the bottom of her seemingly endless list of honey-dos. This morning we tackled trimming a lot of tree branches that hung over the roof of the house and the back deck. We also trimmed some other trees and chopped back some of the vines and misc. stuff growing up and around the trees in the back yard and hauling all the debris to the brush pile. Our bush pile is getting really huge. When you own acreage in a tropical climate like Florida, it takes some work to keep it from quickly turning into impenetrable jungle. We were done with all that by lunch time.

After lunch Leslie started pressure washing the small storage shed and making it pretty again. Then she tinkered with the sprinklers in the back yard and in the palm grove. She finished out the day by spreading some more bales of pine straw around the west side of the house to suppress weeds. Now she's kind of wracking her brains about what to do next. it's probably good that she's finally running out of things to do since she may be going back to work in a week or so. The Governor is partially re-opening the state.

04/26/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 38
Today Leslie and I decided to divide and conquer a couple of jobs that needed doing. Leslie went back to raising the last of the sprinklers in the palm grove. She completed them by lunch time. Here is a shot of a row of sprinklers. They were originally about four feet high. Now they are about 10 feet high. High enough to spray over the tall palm trees and water more area. Leslie has been wanting to get this done for a long time.


As for me, I tackled fixing the back deck. The wood for it was delivered about a week ago, but the deck screws we ordered only just showed up a couple days ago. The deck had developed some bad soft spots. I only had to replace a few of the deck boards, but lot of the structure underneath was rotted. I had to replace a lot of it and sister in some new 2x6 joists in places. I was mostly done with the deck by lunch time too. Just some cleaning up was left to do in the afternoon. It's a quick fix, but if it lasts a year or two I'll be happy. Maybe after the economy is up and running again and we have the money to spare, we can replace the entire deck in a couple of years. Leslie has grand plans for a new deck that would span the entire length of the south side of the house.

Anyway, the deck is now nice enough for an evening meal grilled and served outdoors, and later a romantic and relaxing fire in our chiminea. We actually got enough jobs knocked off her to-do list today that Leslie is willing to risk a little actual relaxation this evening.

04/25/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 37
I spent the bulk of the afternoon out in my workshop working on various projects. I finally have nice quality wood after our trip to Home Depot the other day. I made a lot of sawdust today using my CNC router. I took a break from working in the shop to go weed the garden boxes. The cucumber plants are just loaded with baby cucumbers. The zucchini plants will probably be next since they are blooming like crazy. The cilantro and kale are really looking good too.

After dinner we went back to raising sprinklers in the palm tree grove. Man, there are a lot of sprinklers in the grove. We got a lot done tonight before it got dark though. We are maybe 2/3 done, but the rest should go quickly. We have a system down now, and are knocking them out quickly. We are both sore from the work though. My knee and Leslie's shoulder. We may be on the edge of being too old for this sort of thing.

04/23/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 35
Today was a hot day. It was also super windy. There is a storm front coming tomorrow that may being us some rough weather. We started out the morning by working on sprinklers in the grove. The trees in the east side of the grove have gotten much taller then when the sprinklers were originally installed. Now they block the flow of water. So Leslie has been raising them all until they are about 10 feet tall. It's hard to tell it in this photo, but Leslie is on top of our tall ladder driving a 10 foot piece of rebar into the ground to give support to the lengthened sprinkler pipe. I helped her some with this project in spite of her wanting to do it herself because of my bum knee. Anyway, we were only able to get a few more done today before running out of the correct size of PVC pipe and fittings. About that time one of the grove workers broke a water line and caused a mini geyser of reclaimed water which flooded the east end of the grove. The next couple of hours were spent trying to fix that. It would have been relatively easy, but the broken pipe was an odd size. Leslie had to do a lot of searching through her collection of fittings, and do a lot of trial and error fitting to get something that worked. By then it was lunch time. We were both filthy. I washed up and changed into dry shoes. Leslie needed an entire shower after getting doused with lots of reclaimed water.

After lunch I started working on some projects in my workshop, and got in some day-trading too. Leslie had ordered more pipe and fittings for curbside pickup at Home depot. By mid afternoon she was ready to go get it. We took my truck to pick it up. I went along since I wanted to hand select some birch plywood for some projects I have in mind. I put on my PPE and headed into the store after they loaded up my truck with the stuff at curbside. I got some nice pieces of birch plywood that will become several telescope projects.


After we got home from Home Depot, we put the awning that Leslie painted back up over the side door. It looks great now that it is painted in the same colors as the house.

04/22/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 34
Leslie decided to dial things back to only 11 for a while this morning, and worked on making some Youtube videos about proper pruning and rooting of roses for her Youtube channel. That didn't last long though. By afternoon my knee was feeling good enough to head out and kibitz with Leslie and provide a studio audience for her as she filmed her video segments, then I headed on over to my workshop. By later in the afternoon, Leslie was itching to take on yet another massive project that she's going to feel horribly pressured to complete before returning to work. She's already taken on the chore of raising all the sprinklers in the grove by about six feet. Now she's started plotting how she (we) can run a new irrigation line and new sprinklers out to a row of recently transplanted coconut palms on the north edge of the grove. She started brainstorming how to do it, and inventorying parts in her massive collection of PVC pipe fittings. I could really hear the gears grinding in her head as she worked. We'll likely need to rent a trencher to put in the main line.

Later I hopped on the mower and mowed all the paths through the grove and the area around the new coconut palms to make it easier to do all the sprinkler work. I drove the mower until the vibrations made my hands numb. Even with gloves on the vibrations eventually get to me and I have to stop. Maybe the blades are out of balance? I'll need to check into that.

04/21/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 33
In the afternoon, Leslie (big surprise) found some more stuff to paint. Her aluminum primer finally arrived. So she primed and painted the awning that goes over the side door of the house. She also painted the Adirondack chairs from the front porch to match the new trim color of the house. I spent most of the afternoon working in my workshop on several projects, and making good progress on them. It was nice to be working without having to stop every few minutes and mop the sweat off my face. At one point Leslie called me out of my shop to see a pileated woodpecker that landed in one of our oak trees. We tried to get good pictures of him, but he kept flitting around. Leslie commented just a day or two ago that she hadn't seen any pileated woodpeckers in a while, and here one appeared.

Leslie wants to fix some sprinklers out in the palm grove after dinner. We may also try to catch the peak of the Lyrid meteor shower around 2am. We haven't decided if we are going to try to stay up for it, or go to bed and set an alarm.

04/19/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 31
Today was a banner day. At the end of the day, Leslie turned to me and said, "I think I'm done painting." I told her I should have got that on tape. The entire exterior of the house has now been painted. Well except for a few aluminum bits like an awning and the downspouts. She must have forgot about those. She ordered special aluminum primer for them that hasn't arrived yet. Anyway, the house looks really good. Leslie knocked out the last couple of doors and bits of corner trim today.

Meanwhile, I finished up rebuilding the shelves in the big garage. I replaced all of them except the ones that had the hurricane shutters for the house stacked on them. I did cut the lumber to size to replace them, but the hurricane shutters are just too damn heavy and awkward to move unless we really have to. I'll just store the pre-cut lumber until the next time we have to put up the shutters, then replace the shelves. And if I'm perfectly honest, I wouldn't mind if it were years, or even never, before we have to do it. With leftover lumber I even made some shutters for the garage windows. With the shelves rebuilt and sturdy now, I was able to re-arrange things in my workshop. It is now less cluttered and more open, and there is shelf space to spare!

Tomorrow Leslie will turn to an entirely new page of her honey-do list. I think it's about as thick as a phone book. Maybe the deck screws we ordered will arrive and we can start on the back deck.

04/18/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 30
Today was kind of a slow day. Leslie planted a couple of palms out front this morning, and I fixed the side door that was rubbing. But then the heavy weather rolled in. It really rained hard. Lots of thunder and lightning too. The cat was hiding in the bathroom like he was expecting a tornado. Leslie had a good idea just before the rain started. She said we should park our vehicles out in the open field next to the palm grove and let the rain wash the dust and pollen off of them. They have been in the garage for most of a month now, but they were dirty when we parked them. The wind-driven deluge gave them a nice cleaning. All the dust, pollen and bird poop is gone, and they just gleamed in the afternoon sunshine. By afternoon the sun came out and dried them off. I parked them back in the garage.

Since we were stuck inside for a good part of the day while the storm played out, we decided to hang pictures back up on the freshly painted living room and dining room walls. As a bonus we got our sofa back because all that stuff has been stacked up on it since the painting started. Later in the afternoon the rain stopped and the sun came out. Leslie worked on setting up sprinklers to water the planter. I spent some time in my workshop repairing shelves and building new ones.

In the evening after dinner, we all went for a walk up the road. Another day of quarantine done.

04/17/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 29
Today was a better day than yesterday. There were no major tragedies, and lots of stuff got knocked off the to-do list. The day started early with Leslie going to Whole foods while they were only letting in 60 and over shoppers. She wore all her PPE, and the store was not at all crowded early. $300 later, we are restocked with frozen food again, plus we once again have a lot of fresh stuff.

Later in the morning Leslie went back to working on the big planter at the edge of the driveway. Late yesterday the plant nursery delivered some potted plants and a bunch of bales of pine straw. Leslie put the plants in the ground and spread some of the straw around. The rest of it is for weed control on the west side of the house. Finally she pronounced the planter done, just as rain clouds rolled in and a drizzle sent us inside.

Here is a link to a Youtube video Leslie shot when the planter was finished.


As for me, I decided to spend the day helping Leslie. She is feeling time pressure because her office now at least has a plan for returning to work. She's afraid a lot of what she wants to do around the house won't get done before she has to return to work. So while she was working on the planter, I took over the painting. I got the northeast corner trim and the garage door painted before the rain started. Looks good. And yes, that is a pile of Amazon packages that were delivered while I was working. Today was another major package delivery day. We are soon going to need someone directing traffic at the end of our driveway to deal with all the delivery trucks coming and going.

Amazon, FedEx and USPS weren't the only deliveries we got today. Lowes also delivered another big pile of lumber. It is earmarked for repairing the deck off the back porch, which has developed some spongey spots. Unfortunately the also ordered deck screws haven't arrived yet. There is also some plywood in the delivery for repairing shelves in the big garage, AKA "my loafing shed," which were originally made of particle board and are falling apart. After the rain let up in the afternoon, I started cutting up the plywood and replacing the rotted out particle board shelves. I worked on that until it was time to go in and get a shower before dinner.

Leslie looked around at all that got done today and said she was happy. Happy wife, happy life, as I always say.

04/16/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 28
Tragedy! Leslie went out to the freezer in the garage to get some stuff out for lunch. She found the freezer off and all the stuff inside thawed and warm. At least two weeks worth of frozen food was ruined. The freezer controls are right at ground level. The power switch must have got kicked or bumped just enough to make it turn off. Just a slight turn of the power knob made the freezer restart, but it was too late for the contents. It all had to go in the trash. The freezer must have been off for days without us noticing for everything inside to be thawed and warm. I remember thinking when I uncrated the freezer that the controls were in an awkward place and might get kicked or bumped, especially since the freezer is located in a high-traffic area between the kitchen door and the outside door, and right next to the washer and dryer. I should have done something about it then.

Well, after we got over the shock of losing all the food, and then cleaning out the freezer (at least nothing had spoiled to the point of stinking yet), I decided to make sure this doesn't happen again. I fabricated a clear plastic shield to cover the freezer controls. It should prevent us from accidentally bumping the control knobs, plus the power light is plainly visible through the clear plastic.

Ok, that fixed one problem. The next problem is that we now have almost no food remaining in the house. Leslie is going to go back to Whole Foods early tomorrow morning and try to get us restocked. She spent the day sewing up face mask coverings anyway, in anticipation of having to go back to work in a couple of weeks. She'll get the chance to try one out tomorrow.

The weather matched our mood today. It was dark and gloomy all day, with intermittent showers that kept us indoors all day. Amazingly, it was also chilly. Yesterday must have reached 90, and we sweated buckets working outside. Today I doubt it got out of the 60s. I had to put on jeans and a jacket to venture out through the drizzle to my workshop to fabricate the above shield.

04/15/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 27
Today was a day that revolved around the animals. We started out first thing this morning by having to catch each of the five rabbits and apply flea and tick medicine to them. It's always a three ring circus when we are chasing the bunnies around their enclosure. Eventually we got all five of them treated.

Later in the morning we let our giant Sulcata tortoise Yertle out to graze on the grass again today. Here is a video of the last time we let him out. We are once again out of fresh greens for him. Fortunately there is plenty of grass and ferns growing just outside his pen that he can eat. He likes to follow Leslie around. So she had no trouble getting him to follow her down the ramp and out the gate of his pen. Once he got into the tall grass, he was in tortoise heaven. He spent the next hour and a half or so just gorging himself. Leslie took the opportunity of him not being under foot (or stepping on her feet) to rake out his pen.

When it was finally time for Yertle to go back into his pen, well let's just say he was reluctant. I tried getting him to follow me back in, but it was a case of him taking one step forward then stopping for a few bites of grass, before taking another step forward. I could see this was going to take until about midnight. So I called Yertle an Uber ride in the form of our garden wagon. He just fits in it, and he's one heavy boy. It's about all Leslie and I can do to lift him in and out of the wagon. I was surprised at how calm he was once we got him in the wagon. He seemed content to ride wherever we wanted to take him.

After getting Yertle put away, Leslie went back to working on the big planter area next to the driveway. There was a lot of ground-cover stuff growing there that she cleared out, plus a lot of roots and tubers from the shubbery that we dug out of it a while back, plus about a ton of fallen oak leaves. Then she ran a sprinkler line out to it. Then she started artistically arranging rocks. Lots of rocks. I snapped this photo just after we cleaned up the monumental mess she made cleaning out the planter. About a dozen wagon loads of stuff went to either fill in low areas in the back 40, or onto the growing trash pile. Leslie ordered a bunch of stuff from a local plant nursery to be delivered. Some of it will go into the planter and some will go in other areas around the house. It should be delivered tomorrow.

As for me, when I wasn't helping Leslie, I cut up several large fallen oak limbs into firewood for use in our chiminea. I weeded the garden boxes. I also worked on several projects in my workshop, as usual.

04/14/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 26
Today was trash day. I hustled the cans out to the street yesterday afternoon. You never know when the trash men are going to come. They will come late in the afternoon on trash day for months on end. However long it takes to lull you into a false sense of security that you can wait and put the cans out on the morning of trash day. Then when you do wait, WHAMMO! They come at 0-Dark Thirty in the morning. Then we either have to run the cans out to the street barefoot and in our PJs as soon as we hear their obscenely loud truck turn onto our street, or else we just have to wait until next trash day. Fortunately, I got the bulk of it out yesterday afternoon. I had some more boxes to throw away, but figured I could wait until today to do it. So sure enough, they came early. Oh well, not that much got left behind. Just yet more Amazon boxes. They delivered three times to our house yesterday. Plus we got packages in the regular mail. I don't know why, but something just seems wrong about living through Amazon deliveries. I never thought I would miss actually shopping in stores, but I kind of do.


Today dawned cloudy and gloomy. Leslie was worried it might rain and ruin any outdoor trim painting she planned on doing. So she set up for painting inside. There were just a couple of interior doors she hadn't painted yet. She knocked those out. By then the weather turned hot and sunny outside. Rather than going back to outside painting, she pivoted over to landscape work. She's reworking a large planter next to the driveway. That kept her busy the rest of the day, and there is still more to do. Here she has dug out a lot of the stuff that was there, then arranged a bunch of rocks and fossils around the base of a Chinese Lantern Hibiscus bush she's keeping in place. She still wants to plant some heirloom rose bushes that have been in her family for generations, and some other stuff in the planter too. That'll be a project for another day.

04/13/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 25
After lunch the painting bug bit Leslie again. She's been itching to paint the outside doors and corner trim on the house. She's been wondering how the color she picked out for it was going to actually look on the walls. So I set her up so she could start with the front door and front porch trim. I dug out one of my mini rollers and started doing the corner trim while she started on the door and frame. Pretty quickly I had the corner trim painted up as high as I could reach. Leslie then told me that If I had something else I wanted to do, I could go do it. I think she was implying that the job was getting done a little too quickly and she was going to have to find something else to keep her occupied if we finished too quickly. About that time she also pointed out that I wasn't really wearing painting clothes either. That part was true. I hadn't dressed in already paint-stained clothes this morning in anticipation of painting. On the other hand, I generally get more paint on the walls than on myself when I paint. Leslie often tends to get it the other way around. It's hard to tell what color some of her painting clothes were originally. Anyway, I can take a hint. So I went and weeded the garden boxes and then to my workshop to work on some projects. Here is a photo of the start of painting the front porch door and trim. I had already rolled part of the corner trim, and Leslie was brushing in the joints.

And here is the finished product later in the afternoon. Leslie had gotten a couple of coats on the door and frame, brushed in all the joints and cut in at the top and bottom of the corner trim, and moved on the the northwest corner of the house and was rolling the corner trim there. We both think the new trim color really looks good. If there is enough paint left over after painting all the doors and trim, we are going to paint the Adirondack chairs on the front porch the same color so they match.

04/11/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 23
The alarm went off a little later this morning. Even on days when we don't have any particular reason for getting up early, we are trying to stay in the habit of it. This has to end someday, right? We don't want the transition back to normality to be too rough on us. Plus Leslie is always raring to go with some project or other, and frets about wasted daylight while we lounge in bed.

Today we painted the east side of the house. It was the only outside wall we hadn't painted yet. So finally the entire house is painted, inside and out, with the exception of some corner trim and doors. We'll probably do them soon. Here is an action shot of me rolling the East wall.

While I was rolling, Leslie cut in at the top, bottom, around the windows and electric boxes. We have a lot of outside paint leftover. Leslie is talking about painting outbuildings and the inside of the garage to use it up. I really hope the lockdown ends soon.

The rolling always goes pretty quickly. So I was finished way ahead of Leslie. So I tackled another job. I took down the old outside lights on either side of the garage and installed new ones. The house is really looking spiffy after all the work we've put into it.

04/10/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 22
Leslie had plans to hit the ground running and do a lot of work on the landscaping this morning. That got put on hold when the skies opened up and it really poured down rain. That was unexpected. The forecast only called for a small chance of rain later in the afternoon. We really needed the rain though. It's been really dry the last couple of months. Later in the morning the rain quit and the sun tried to come out. Leslie finally got to plant a couple of trees and re-arrange a bunch of rocks in the planters out front. She also pulled down some vines and did some general neatening up of the yard.

04/08/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 20
Later Leslie decided to do some pressure washing. She did the pavers in the driveway, and the east side of the house so we can paint it next. Boy, did she get dirty, and soaking wet. I took this photo of her before she got really dirty and drowned-rat soaked. The result though was beautiful. The pavers look like new, and the east side of the house is paint ready.

Around midday Leslie ran and jumped on the mower to clear paths through the tree farm so some spraying could be done. The spraying contractor arrived a day earlier than she was expecting. She was in such a rush that she forgot her respirator that she normally wears while mowing. Fearing she might have another bad allergy attack without it, I ran after her with it. It must have been quite comical to watch me trying to chase her down as she ran the mower at top speed up and down the rows of trees. Naturally she couldn't hear me yelling at her either over the roar of the big riding mower. Eventually I caught up to her and made her put on her mask.

Later I took a turn on the mower after Leslie went back to pressure washing. I started out mowing the lawn of the rental house and the south part the grove out by the street. That's where I ran into trouble. A split second before I ran over it, I saw some cloth in the tall grass by a drainage ditch. Then the mower ground to a halt and the engine died. Whatever it was had wound itself around the blades and totally seized them up. Fortunately I could restart the engine with the blades out of gear and the mower could still move under its own power. The prospect of pushing that heavy beast all the way back to the workshop in the afternoon heat was not appealing. I parked it in the shade. We jacked it up and began unwinding and cutting the cloth off the blades. There was a lot more of it than I thought. It turned out to be a bed sheet. Sometimes homeless people sleep in the tree farm. So that may be how it got there. Eventually we got it all off and the mower was good as new. By then though it was late in the afternoon. We quit for the day and sat on the steps up to the deck and had a cold drink and commented on how dirty we each were.

04/07/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 19
Today was a banner day. Leslie finished painting the inside of the house! Yay! I didn't think she could stretch the small amount of paint she had left to finish the living room and dining room, but she did it. The paint I think is only nonometers thick in places. We spent about an hour scouring the walls for thin spots where the original color was peeking through, so she could touch them up with the last dregs of paint in the bottom of the 5 gallon bucket. For some reason the flashlight on my phone is particularly good at showing off the thin spots that aren't obvious in normal room lighting. So She kept calling me inside from my workshop to QC her work. Now the problem is that tomorrow Leslie is going to need to find something else to do to keep her occupied.

We had some more good news today. I checked Leslie's garden boxes this morning and found that the cucumber plants are blossoming. We should have some baby cukes forming on them soon. The zucchini plants probably aren't far behind. The kale is starting to look like kale, and the cilantro is starting to look and taste like cilantro. The garden is really coming along.

04/06/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 18
Leslie spent the bulk of the day painting, of course. Today it was baseboards, doors and door frames. She is rapidly running out of paint, and in a dither about what she is going to do with herself after it is gone. The woman really doesn't know how to relax. I told her yesterday that she needed a hobby. She said working was her hobby. I said that's not a hobby. Work is what you do to finance your hobbies. I don't think she got it. So now she's contemplating painting the inside of the garage using leftover exterior paint. Painting the inside of the garage is going to be a nightmare. There is so much stuff hung on the walls and stacked in the way. Oh well, it would keep her busy for maybe a week and not climbing the walls out of boredom.

04/05/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 17
While I was geeking out with Arduinos, Leslie went back to painting the living room. She is brush painting the walls to try to stretch the paint because she is almost out. She thinks rollers are too wasteful. Besides, brush painting is slow and keeps her occupied all day. I shudder to think what it is going to be like around here when the paint is all gone. How am I going to keep her occupied? I took breaks from my work to QC her painting, pointing out all the thin spots where the original color was showing through her brush work, so she could touch them up. Then I made us dinner. Another day of quarantine down.

04/03/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 15
It was a busy work day around the house here today. It started with Leslie changing out the litter boxes and me hustling the garbage cans out to the street and starting a couple of loads of laundry. Later Leslie went back to doing battle with the big clump of shrubbery she wants removed. Some more wasp spray finally arrived via Amazon, so she waded into it with a shovel in one hand and the wasp spray in the other. Meanwhile, I took the leaf blower up onto the roof and used it to blow out the packed gutters. Lots of oak trees overhang our house. They recently dropped all their leaves. The gutters were packed to the top with leaves and debris. The blower made short work of that, while making an incredible mess on the ground. While I was on the roof I also pulled a big wad of lint out of the dryer vent. Hopefully the clothes will dry faster now.

There was collateral damage from using this method to clean out the gutters. So much pollen and dust was thrown into the air that poor Leslie had an allergy attack, even though she stayed far away. So she was done with outdoor work for the rest of the day. I raked up the bulk of the leaves and debris and took it to the trash pile. Then I took over the job of digging out the rest of the shrubbery and hauling it to the trash pile. Later I used the blower to clean off the rest of the mess in the driveway.

04/01/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 13
After lunch it was back to painting. Leslie wanted to at least get a start on the living room. We probably don't have enough paint to finish it and the dining room. We did the east wall and part of the north wall today. Here is a photo of Leslie cutting in near the ceiling after I rolled the bulk of the wall. It looks good.

03/29/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 10
Today Leslie and I got an early start and finished the walkway before it got too hot. We picked up all the demolition debris and piled it in our utility trailer for eventual disposal at the dump. Then we screwed down all the treads on the walkway. Here is a photo of Leslie helping screw down some treads. The whole thing went pretty quick and easy with the two of us working on it. We were done by about 10am, before the heat really set in.

Here is the finished walkway. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. I've built three decks in the last few months. I should go into the deck building business. Now I need to replace some more of the rotted boards in the deck the walkway attaches to. I have some lumber left over, but I'm out of deck screws. So that job is going to have to wait a while.

In the evening Leslie and I hung photos on the walls of our freshly painted bedroom. There were some from our Africa trip, and some from our wedding, and some of just us. The bedroom really looks great.

03/28/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 9
After I got back from Walmart, I went back to work on the walkway out back. I demolished the old walkway, and started putting in the base for the new one. By then it was almost noon. It was turning into a real scorcher, and there is no shade in this area. I took a long break for lunch and to cool off. Meanwhile, Leslie had actually spent some quiet time working on her fossil. She is uncovering what looks like a pelvis. We still don't know for sure what species it is, but never bet against it being an oreodont. After lunch though, it was back into high gear for her. She painted some closet doors, and then started doing housework, before making us all supper. After lunch I went out and worked on the walkway a bit more. Between the heat and my bad knee though, I was done with that for the day pretty quickly. I'll put down the new treads and clean up the mess tomorrow morning before it gets too hot.

Tonight we are both tired and sore from all the hard work we've put in lately. This getting old crap is for the birds.

03/27/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 8
We had a huge pile of lumber delivered yesterday. I spent a good part of the morning cutting it up into four foot tread lengths and stacking them near the walkway that needs to be rebuilt beside Leslie's garden boxes. Then I cut out and replaced some rotted boards in the deck behind the rental house. By then it was after noon. The temperature was getting close to 90. I was done with working with the heavy lumber in the hot sun for now. Leslie was back from her walk and we had lunch together.

After lunch Leslie went back to indulging her painting obsession, doing doors and wood trim in the bedroom. She's like a woman possessed with this whole painting thing. I keep telling her there is plenty of time since we are going to be stuck here for weeks. She keeps thinking if we don't get everything done NOW that we will somehow never get it done. Maybe it's just the way she copes with the stress. Anyway, I think that after today even she may be ready for another break from the painting. Sooner or later we are going to run out of paint anyway.

03/25/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 6
Today was a busy day. We aren't running out of things to do yet. Leslie started off by doing some pressure washing of the back deck and one of the sheds. Then we let Yertle, our giant Sulcata Tortoise out to graze in the back yard. We ran out of fresh greens to feed him. Fortunately we recently built a ramp that allows him to walk down out of his pen into the yard under his own power. Before he had to be lifted up and carried out of his pen. He's just getting way too heavy for that. Unfortunately he didn't really want to go home again. So we wound up having to pick him up and carry him back to his pen anyway. Gotta work on that. He had a grand time grazing and exploring the back yard.

03/22/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 3
The painting goes on. Leslie moved into the hallway today. There are a lot of doors in the hallway. I spent probably the better part of two hours taping off door hinges, knobs, latches and striker plates so Leslie could paint all the doors and wood trim around them. She is a painting machine. At the end of the day though, she finally threw in the towel and said she was done with painting for a while. Tomorrow she is going to do something else.

We ordered a pile of lumber and deck screws for delivery from Lowes. We are going to replace the rotted out walkway that runs beside Leslie's garden boxes. We are also going to replace some of the worst of the boards in the deck behind the rental unit on the east side of the property. Not sure when the lumber is going to arrive. Delivery could be problematic with them too. Once it gets here though we should have work to keep us occupied for a while.

The country seems to be slowly shutting down. By the time our quarantine is over, there may be nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. We may not be leaving home for a lot longer than just 14 days.

03/21/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 2
Leslie is still in full home renovation mode. She's painting anything that doesn't move. I think she is determined to get the inside of the house painted before she either gets sick, or doesn't get sick and has to go back to work. Today it was doors, door frames and baseboards, and herself. She got plenty of paint all over herself. While waiting for a coat of paint to dry, she took on the job of fixing sprinklers in the farm, and then reorganizing all the pipe fittings in the shop. Then it was back to painting again. I helped her with the painting and the sprinklers a bit, but mostly I just stayed out of her way so I didn't get painted too.

03/20/20 Corona Virus Quarantine Diary: Day 1
Well, it had to happen sooner or later. My wife may have been exposed to someone with the virus. So we have been advised to quarantine the entire family for 14 days. I made one last run to the grocery store and hopefully found enough food on the nearly empty shelves to get us all through two weeks stuck at home. We also went to the feed store and got a bunch of food for the animals.

After securing supplies...Then what? My wife, who doesn't handle down-time well, immediately went into home renovation mode, and decided my office needed to be painted, NOW. So we moved furniture away from walls and began painting. The office really did need painting. We'd been talking about it for a while. In fact we were eventually going to paint the entire inside of the house. Looks like eventually will be over the next two weeks if we don't get too sick to work.

While we were waiting on the first coat of paint to dry in the office, we pivoted over to another project and hung some new cabinets in the garage, above our new chest freezer which is now full of frozen food to get us through the two week quarantine. The freezer is dual propane/electric powered. It is meant to get us through power outages and food shortages caused by hurricanes. It arrived only a week ago. The timing couldn't have been better. Anyway, the cabinets have been cluttering up the garage for a couple of months. My wife decided they needed to go on the wall, NOW. She really dives into household projects to burn off nervous energy brought on by stress. I told her we needed to slow down on the projects or we'd be out of things to do in only a few days. We'd need to start adding an addition on to the house to keep us occupied until the 14 days are up. Fortunately I have some ideas for projects too that should keep us busy.

After hanging the cabinets, we put a second coat of paint on the walls of my office. Then Leslie started painting the wood trim. She does not have an "Off Switch." After all the stressing over the quarantine and hard work we put in today, I didn't think either of us should have to cook dinner too. I discovered that one of our favorite restaurants was open for delivery only. So I ordered some food for delivery and tipped the delivery driver big time so hopefully they will be able to stay up and running. We'll start eating our survival food tomorrow.

It's not all bad news, stress and and house renovations here on the farm. My wife's garden is really coming along nicely. It will be a while before it will be able to help feed us and the farm critters, but things are really growing. About the only thing she planted that isn't growing so well is the broccoli. Not sure why it seems to be lagging behind everything else. The cilantro is really taking off. So are the cucumbers and the zucchini.

Here is a shot of the other garden box. It is going gangbusters too, especially the kale and zucchini. My wife got a type of Ukrainian zucchini seeds. They are supposed to grow more bushy than viney. I think they are some kind of radioactive, mutant seeds from Chernobyl or something. They only just arrived a week ago. She only planted them a few days ago. They have already sprouted and are getting almost as big as the cucumbers she planted weeks ago. I hope the zucchinis don't glow in the dark.

02/27/20 The planting in the garden boxes has begun
Here is a photo of Leslie getting her hands dirty planting stuff in her new garden boxes. When this photo was taken she had already transplanted her tree collard cuttings, and was starting to plant rows of various vegetable seeds. Aside from the collards there will be cilantro, cucumbers, broccoli, sweet basil, oregano and rosemary. A lot of these vegetables will feed our giant tortoise and rabbits. Some of it will find its way to our dinner table too.

02/24/20 The garden boxes are filled with compost
Today we got some of the farm workers to fill the garden boxes I built for my wife with compost. They used their loader to top off both boxes with some nice compost from the big piles we have around the tree farm. That's close to four cubic yards of compost. I'm glad I didn't have to move it via shovel and wheelbarrow. Then we set up a sprinkler that waters both of the boxes at the same time. We left the sprinkler going for quite a while since the compost was very dry. Soon it will be time to start planting. Seeds and cuttings have been arriving nearly every day. My wife can't wait to get started.

02/11/20 Building some raised bed garden boxes
My wife has been wanting to get into gardening for years. The problem is that we live in the middle of a tree farm. There are very few places where there is adequate sunshine reaching the ground to actually plant a garden. Another problem is that we live in a very swampy area. She'd need raised bed garden boxes to get anything to grow when the weather is wet. After talking about doing it for a long time, I decided to just go ahead and build her a couple of raised garden boxes in the sunniest area of the property as a Valentine's Day present to her.

So I set to work. I planned on building two 4 by 8 foot garden boxes next to an existing wooden walkway. So we will be able to stay out of the mud when the weather turns wet. Here the boxes are partly built.

Here are the completed raised bed garden boxes. They are each 4 feet by 8 feet by about 18 inches tall. They were basically made from two stacked untreated 2x10s with 2x4 corner braces, and all held together with lots of 3 inch deck screws. I also lined the bottoms of the boxes with root-stop fabric. Now all we need to do is fill them up with about four cubic yards of nice topsoil and start planting. Happy Vanentine's day, Sweetie!

01/13/20 A larger pen for Yertle
We just finished enlarging the pen for Yertle, our giant Sulcata tortoise. He is getting to be a big boy, and needs more room to roam and get exercise. So we extended his pen by putting a 20 foot long extension to the west from the south side of his existing pen. Now it is a big "L" shape. We also built a dirt ramp down to ground level from the existing elevated pen. Yertle is just getting too big and heavy to lift and carry down to ground level so he can graze. It was all hands on deck to complete this project. Leslie, her son Joe and myself worked on it for most of the day to get it done. Here Leslie is attaching boards to the sides of the new section of pen. The boards make a smooth surface so Yertle doesn't snag his shell against the chain-link fence as he wanders around the pen. We also roofed it over with Fencing to keep raccoons out. Above Leslie's head can be seen a temporary bulkhead we built to keep Yertle out of the construction area while we worked. He loves to be among people, but he's like an unstoppable little bulldozer. He steps on our feet, gets in the way, and can even knock a person over. So we had to wall him in for the duration.

Here is a photo of the completed pen. From this angle it is easier to see the "L" shape of the new pen. We not quite doubled the space Yertle has to roam around. He can now also get down to ground level under his own power. That will be great when we want to let him out to graze on the grass in the back yard.

It was a big project. I for one was beat by the end of the day. Leslie is like the Energizer Bunny though, and was ready for the next project. We were all filthy, sweaty and cut up from the wire fencing by the time we were done.

Here comes Yertle, charging down the ramp and checking out the new extension to his pen. He loves to explore and didn't hesitate to go into the new section as soon as we removed the temporary bulkhead holding him back.

Here is Yertle grazing on the tasty grass at the end of his new pen. That grass won't last long. He'll have it cropped down to the dirt in only a day or two. That's ok though, because now we can just open a gate and let him out into the back yard to graze to his heart's content. The only hard part will likely be getting him to go back home.

01/12/20 New Mud Flaps for Leslie's Jeep
I installed mud flaps on Leslie's beloved purple Jeep today. Ok, it's not really much of a house related project, but it was a quick and easy job. I bought the mud flaps, and some other Jeep accessories, for her for Christmas. She'd been complaining about how the mud and manure splash up on the sides of the Jeep as she drives around here on the farm. I suspect Jeep designed the vehicle that way, with the front wheels slinging slop all up the sides, so it always looks like it has been out on the trail when it has hardly even been off-road. Anyway, I bought an after-market mud flap kit, and finally got around to installing them today. The site I bought them from promised they would be an easy, no-drill, installation. Well, as you can see from my drill being present in the picture, that wasn't quite the case. In fact all but two of the holes for the front mud flaps, and all the holes for the rear ones needed to be drilled. Still, the installation went pretty smoothly.

Here is a photo of one of the front mud flaps installed. You can see how the mud was getting slung up the side of the Jeep by the front tire (Click the photo for a larger view). That's probably all from just going through one little mud puddle. The Jeep always has crud slung up the sides and looks like it just came home from some serious off-roading. Hopefully the new front mud flaps will stop that, and the rear ones will deflect rocks that get kicked up when we do take it off-road. We need to run the Jeep through a car wash now and see how clean it stays with the mud flaps in place.

12/16/19 The west side is painted
The west side of the house is finally painted. The weather and our schedules finally cooperated to allow us to get it painted today. Poor Leslie had to do all the cutting in. I have a knee injury that is keeping me from climbing ladders. I rolled most of the wall from ground level. Anyway, one more side is done. We just have the east side, some trim and a couple of doors to do. Then the whole outside of the house will have been painted. We have a lot of paint left. We bought way too much. Doop! We were talking about painting one of the out-buildings to use it up. We'll see.

12/12/19 The bunnies are in their new home
We moved the rabbits to their new permanent home and gave the tortoise back the end of his pen. We recently had one of Leslie's co-workers over with her three year old daughter for a visit. She absolutely loved playing with the bunnies, and seeing the rest of our menagerie. It's almost like we are running a petting zoo here these days. We got the bunnies into their new home just in the nick of time. They had engineered two escapes from their temporary pen, and were close to breaking out again the day we moved them. Hopefully this new pen is escape-proof. We did everything we could think of to make it escape-proof. I guess only time will tell.

12/08/19 The bunny hutch has a roof
It took me a couple of days work on and off, but the new rabbit Pen has a sheet metal roof. I also tied it down with long steel stakes and steel cables so it (hopefully) won't get blown away if (when) tropical storm force winds start blowing some time in the future. The pen is almost done. We just need to install the dig defense perimeter to keep them from digging under the chicken wire. We'll likely do that tomorrow. Then the new pen will finally be done and ready for the rabbits to move in. Not a moment too soon either. A couple of days ago the little devils found a way to escape the temporary pen we have them in. It must have been quite comical to watch us trying to round them all back up. Too bad nobody got video.

12/01/19 Rescue bunnies!
Leslie takes in rescue animals. We have parrots, a cat, a giant Sulcata desert tortoise and now five rabbits. The rabbit's previous home burned down. Leslie took them in. They are just the cutest things. All five of them are visible in this photo, but you may have to look for one of them. It's hiding in one of the little hutches Leslie made for them from very large planting pots. We stole about 10 feet of the pen from the giant tortoise, walled it off, and made a temporary pen for the bunnies. This is just a temporary arrangement. The tortoise needs his space to roam and exercise. So we are in the process of building a new pen for the rabbits.

Here is a photo of Yertle, the giant tortoise who generously (against his will) donated part of his pen for temporary rabbit housing. He was snacking on a pumpkin when I took this photo. He'll get his space back soon. In fact we plan on expanding his existing pen. He's gotten so big that he really needs more space to roam and exercise.

Here Leslie and her son Joe are working on the new rabbit pen. Eventually it will have a partial roof to keep the rain off the bunnies, and netting over the rest to keep the hawks, eagles and raccoons out of their pen. We also need to add the anti-digging barrier around the perimeter to keep the rabbits from digging out.

11/14/19 Redoing the landscaping out front
Leslie has had a problem for a long time getting anything to grow along the front of the house. It is on the north side. so it doesn't get much sun, and the overhanging trees reduce the amount of light even more. Moss and mold seem to be the only things that reliably grow in the planter out front. As part of our general beautification efforts she decided we should tackle it since it is too rainy to finish the painting. So we started by digging out the bed of shells that was there, down to the weed barrier. We used the shell to fill in a muddy low spot beside the driveway. Leslie wanted to put in a bed of landscape stone along the side of the house.

Next we went shopping for some landscape stone. We bought out all the rocks they had in stock at the landscaping place Leslie likes to shop at. Here is my poor pickup truck burdened down by just short of one ton of rocks. Leslie keeps saying my truck is too pretty and nice to be a work truck, but that doesn't seem to stop us from using it as one.

The result looks pretty good. we both like it. Unfortunately we didn't have quite enough rocks to finish the whole length of the north side. We'll need to go get more when they have more of these rocks in stock. Not bad for a few hours of labor.

11/09/19 Re-sealing the decks
We re-treated and sealed the three wood decks around the house, and also a very large wooden picnic table. We are going to have the whole blended family over to our place for Thanksgiving. So we are sprucing things up a bit. The decks look great after re-sealing. If the weather is nice on Thanksgiving we are planning on seating everyone outside on the big back deck for dinner. The big picnic table will easily seat over a dozen people. There is room on the back deck for that table and another table we have. That should seat everyone coming. Fingers crossed that the weather is nice.

11/04/19 The awning is up and the kilns are installed
We got the awning up and the kilns moved onto the deck. Finally they are in place and ready to go. I hooked up the big one and gave the new wiring the acid test. 60 Amps of draw and it worked just fine. Can't wait to start fusing, slumping and casting glass to make telescope mirrors again.

11/3/19 Two sides of the house painted
When weather and time permit, we hit the painting hard. We've managed to get two sides of this very big house painted. Here is a photo of the front of the house with its new coat of paint. The new paint is a slightly brighter yellow than the original paint. But Leslie was aiming for essentially the same color. Likely the original paint just faded in the 20 years it has been on the house. Anyway, we both like the new color. We haven't gotten around to painting the white corners or the doors yet. They are going to get painted a kind of mossy green color. We'll see how we like that once we get some on the house.

Here is the back of the house painted. Painting required removing the bird deflectors from the windows that I built below. They went back up shortly after this photo was taken.

10/30/19 A new deck for my kilns
I love my new workshop space. It's huge! It's a big upgrade over the garage in my old house. One problem with it though is that there was no good place for my kilns. So I put on my tool belt and carpenter hat, and built myself a deck on the back of the workshop. It went together quickly, and it was fun to build. Then we had an electrician come out and install a 60 amp outlet to power them. Once I have an awning over the deck, the kilns can get moved from their temporary storage under a tarp onto the deck.

After the above deck was done, I went shopping for a big awning to cover it and keep the rain off the kilns. I knew right where to go. An architectural salvage yard nearby had a bunch of used awnings at really reasonable prices. I just had to pick out one I liked. In less than an hour I had the awning back home. Now I just need to mount it. That is a job for another day. I need to gather a few necessary bits and pieces and then find the time to work on it.

10/28/19 Bird Deflectors for the Back Yard Windows
We have feeders in the back yard that attract a lot of birds. We love to sit at the dining room table and watch the antics of the birds, squirrels, possums and other critters that gather around the feeders. The problem is that sometimes birds will hit the windows. We don't want any birds to get hurt running into our windows. Leslie found a description online of a simple to build bird deflector. I built two of them and installed them over the windows facing the feeders. They are just pieces of PVC pipe with holes drilled in them every four inches, and a length of paracord threaded through the holes and dangling down in front of the window. I guess the idea is that the birds will see the paracord and turn away before hitting the windows. Time will tell if it really works.

10/24/19 Priming the stains on the House
After quite a delay due to rainy weather, a wedding and a honeymoon, we finally got around to covering the rust stains on the house with primer. The water from the sprinklers had deposited some iron stains near the base of the house. There were also other areas of staining and discoloration that didn't wash off with pressure washing. We covered them with primer too.

10/6/19 Pressure Washing the House
The first thing we did after I moved in was pressure wash the house in preparation for painting. It took a couple of long, wet, dirty days to get the north and south sides pressure washed (it is a big house). Here is a before photo of the north side.

And here is the north side of the house after pressure washing. It almost looks good enough that it doesn't need painting, at least from a distance. Up close the paint is in rough shape and it definitely needs repainting. So next we were off to Home Depot and bought enough paint to redo the entire exterior of the house. Unfortunately the weather turned bad and we got busy with other things (minor stuff like getting married and going away on a honeymoon), so no painting happened for a while.