Quick Update

I have been working on the house the past two-plus weeks; I just haven't been working in the house.

Nope, time and the growing season waits for no one, so it's been yard and garden, garden and yard, since the 19th of June.

Grinding up last fall's leaves to mulch the vegetable beds, mostly.  How long I could do that each day has depended upon three factors:  1) the relative wetness of the leaves to be chopped, 2) the battery life remaining in my lawn mower, and 3) the energy remaining in me.  Nos. 1 and 2 are the most determinative, since I'd be tempted to keep going until I dropped (though I know I shouldn't) if the mower would keep going and if there were enough dry leaves to do.

This process has really done a number on part of my back lawn.  Set the mower low enough the mulch the leaves, and there goes the grass.  What I really need is one of those leaf-grinding machines, but you know what they say about wishes and beggars.

There's been a lot more planting, too.  Local nursery had a good sale on flowers annual and perennial a week or so ago and I took advantage.  Put in some impatiens under the kerrias by the back gate, and it looks so nice, I wonder why I never did it before.

Got some pruning in, too, late last week.  My weeping cherry needed a haircut, badly, and I confess to taking my pruners to the shrubs of the neighbors to the west, here and there, to clean up where he'd done a crudely quick-and-dirty hack job on them about a month ago.  I mean, I'm the one who's gotta look at them, right?

Week ago Saturday, the neighbor across the street brought over his ladder and cleaned the maple seeds out of my back porch downspout.  We thought he'd got them all, till it rained hard that afternoon and the gutter was still overflowing.  I was watching the spout over the rain barrel, when whoosh!!!  the last of the clog cleared and that water exploded out of the spout and, completely missing the barrel, made a small temporary pond in my back yard.

It settled down and filled the barrel, and we got another good barrel-filler the 23rd.  Hope we get another soon.  That's the last it's rained worth a darn around here.

What else?  Once the leaves were gone from their spot in the west border, I moved the broken bricks I put there two years ago, then dug out the river rock and took up the landscape fabric.  Discovered a cool thing when I did:  the previous owners, when they put in the board fence, lined the foot of it with brick pavers.  Funny, it's only like this on the west side.  Looks like it keeps small creatures from burrowing underneath.  I laid another row of bricks over that, since the fence has shifted a bit.

That done, I was able to turn my compost pile.  Lots of nice dirt on the bottom, which I'll have to decide where to use.  Maybe I can fill the depressions in my front lawn.  Heaven knows that with this dry spell the grass in those areas might be dead already. 

Anyway, tonight, even though there were more leaves to mulch (raked out from the dark and mysterious side yard), I elected to come inside and strip old shellac off the stairs to the third floor.  Don't think I've tackled that since the 12th.  I knocked off about twenty till midnight, even though I only have two treads and risers and a certain amount of stringer left to do.  My sensible reason is that I have round two of chemotherapy in the morning and should get a good night's sleep beforehand.  My real reason for stopping is that my hair is falling out, and although I got it cropped short a week ago, it got really annoying with the hairs sticking to the sweat on my back and shoulders.  If I didn't have more heat gun work to do, I probably would have pushed through.  But I'm not feeling that dedicated.

So I'll try to add a picture or two to this post, then it's off to the shower.

When It Rains, It Pours. Over.

I'm not too quick on the uptake sometimes.

It's been relatively dry here in southwestern Pennyslvania these past few days. Cloudy and cool, but no rain.

So I'm not sure why it made no impression that for several days I've had a steady drip, drip, drip, from the downspout that feeds my rain barrel. It's been so persistent it's left a greenish algae slick on the wooden barrel's top.

And why did I not think it alarming or unusual when, the last time it rained hard, the gutter on the west side of my back porch was overflowing? It was raining hard, that's what I figured. When there's more water than the system can take, overflows happen.

Anyway, I had plenty of water in the rain barrel-- until I used most of it the past few days watering the crucifers, tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables I've just planted.

So when it started to rain about an hour and a half ago, leaving aside the fact that I'd never gotten out to mulch up the rest of last year's leaves for the pepper and cucumber bed, I was very glad. Hurray! drinks all round for the grass and the plants and a refill for my rain barrel!

Or not. Kept waiting for the water to come gushing down the spout, and nothing was happening. The deluge got harder. Still nothing much into the barrel.

But oh! off that west porch gutter! Floods! waterfalls! inundations! tidal waves!

Uh, Kate? Ever occur to you that something up there might be-- is-- blocked?

Whatever's gotten stuck, it's underneath the wire gutter guard. A view out the third floor window tells me the guard is intact.

And by knocking as far as I can up the downspout, I've determined that it's clear, towards the bottom, at least.

Oh, fun. This means a trip out on the roof. Adventures! I've never done that before. I've got a handy window for it, but it'll need to wait till things dry out again. And until I can draft a spotter. Life's interesting enough without me breaking my neck falling off the top of the back porch.

Worth the Effort

Considering that my stoopy tumor turned out to be a Stage 1C, Grade 1 ovarian cancer, and considering that it was 1c instead of 1A only because it ruptured during surgery, there certainly is a little voice in me that questions whether it would have made a difference had I been able to get it all out on March 25th as originally planned.

But accepting that the bad cold I got prevented that, I have to be glad for the four additional weeks I had to do things and get ready before I went in.

Like getting my hollies planted. I am so grateful that I made the effort to get those rocks out and get that job done.

Here's some pictures taken today:

See that? That's berries. Meaning that the clerk at Lowe's was right: It was okay for me to plant two female Blue Angel hollies on my property, provided there was some kind of male holly bush within a block. I don't know the paternity of these green offspring, but there they are!

The second bush that didn't come through the winter as well is nowhere close to catching up to its sister, but it sports new growth and berries, too.

In other garden news, all the roses have buds on them and in a week or two I should have blooms.

The white lilac I transplanted two autumns ago is very happy in its new position on the east side of the house and promises to present an abundant display of blossom pretty soon.

The year-and-a-half-old blackberry bush is running riot in the east back garden border. It looks like I should have berries (yum!)-- if the birds don't get to them first.

The kerrias are the best they've been so far, and the bearded irises and the clematis lift up their heads for joy.

It's really chilly here in southwestern Pennsylvania today, in the 40s and 50s, and they say it'll get below freezing tonight. I heard on a radio garden show this morning that my perennials should weather that just fine; it's annuals, only, one needs to cover. Makes me wonder if I should put sheets over my leaf lettuce and snow peas. But both of those like being planted before the last frost, so unless I'm feeling really energetic after evening service, I'll let them take their chances, too.

Snow Notes

One of the happiest things about the past few days of snow, snow, and more snow occurred when the neighbor across the street borrowed a snowblower from the neighbor on the corner and plowed the whole length of the front sidewalk. Making two or three passes. On both sides of the block.

That was Saturday. This called for a demonstration of gratitude, so Sunday I made house cookies for him and his numerous family and took them over yesterday evening.

Last night and today, it snowed again. By the time I got up (which wasn't early, school being cancelled again), not only were both sidewalks snowblown, but also all the walkways up to people's houses.

Boy. My great-grandmother's sugar cookie recipe must be even better than I imagined!

Providential

We're having a wonderful Indian summer here in southwestern Pennsylvania, with outdoor temperatures hovering in the 50s and 60s during the day and going down into the 30s and 40s at night. This means I've been able to get outside and do some of the winter prep yard work I'd put off or plain wouldn't do if it were colder.

It's also meant that I could put off turning on the furnace full time. I can't claim any ecologically-founded virtue in this desire; it's just that I'm poor. Or cheap. Take your pick.

Actually, I deinstalled the thermostat had been deinstalled and shut off the HVAC main switch off last July when I started doing the faux finish on my 1st floor hall. My vow and resolution was not to reinstall it until the trim was refinished and put back in place and the new wallpaper hung. In September, this was supposed to be, a week or two after I finished with the Welsh-American convention I was involved in here in Pittsburgh and had bidden a fond adieu to the Kansas City friend who was my guest during it.

But work and life and Facebook intervened. So barring some work in the garden and giving the thermostat cover a "bronze" coat with model car paint (so it'll look less glaring over my new paper), I've accomplished pretty much nothing on the inside of the house since the end of August. Forget wallpapering; I haven't even finished stripping the 2nd floor hall floor.

And though the weather outside has been happily mild, my brick and plaster house can retain only so much heat. Inside daytime temps descended into the low 50s by a week ago last Friday, and reluctantly I gave in and reinstalled the thermostat over the primed plaster.

Ran the furnace three or four hours that evening, just to take the chill off. And a little the next morning. But that day, the weather got up into the high 60s, so I shut the furnace off again. More money saved!

Before I did, though, I removed the burner door and had a look at the burner itself. Um . . . yeah, look at all the smuts glowing in there. Needs cleaned, that's for sure. Actually, I am an inexperienced idiot with furnaces and I've never had it cleaned the entire six years I've been here. Can't hurt to get it done, and it'll probably help with energy efficiency, right?

So yesterday morning a serviceman comes from a local heating and cooling company to inspect, clean, and tune up my furnace. Down we go to the basement, I show him where everything is, and he gets to work.

Less than ten minutes later he's up at the top of the basement stairs, saying, "I have news for you, and it's not good."

"Oh?" say I, reserving judgment.

"Yes. Your heat exchanger unit is cracked. It's not very big now, but as you run the heat it'll widen and there'll be a danger from carbon monoxide."

"It'll need to be replaced?"

"Yes. And that's not good news."

Well, maybe not as bad as he thinks. "I have a home warranty," I pronounce. "It covers furnace repairs."

"Oh, which one?"

"American Home Shield."

"Oh! We're one of their repair agencies! In fact, we're their No. 1 furnace repair contractor in this area!"

Back downstairs, he tried to show me the crack, way back there behind the burner. But my eyesight isn't so good and I had to take his word for it. He stayed down to put things back together and I went up to call AHS.

Funny, but even though that H&C company is just across the river, they didn't have my zip code registered with them on the AHS contractor list. After a few phone calls the oversight was corrrected, AHS assigned them the work order, the order for a new heat exchanger was put in, and they're to call me in a day or two when it arrives and arrange a time to come put it in. Hopefully sooner than later; the thermostat reads 55° today and it'll likely go lower by tomorrow.

But I call this whole thing providential. If I hadn't run the furnace only minimally this fall, that crack would've been widening and the CO would've been gassing me and my critters out. If I hadn't got off my duff and called for a cleaning (finally!!), the problem wouldn't've been found. And how providential it was that the H&C cleaning company I called is an AHS contractor, so I could get the repair process working right away, instead of waiting a day or two longer for the assigned contractor to get back with me.

Who says being cheap doesn't pay off? Though I suppose, if I'd been so cheap as not to have gotten the furnace cleaned, I might've had a pay off I wouldn't like.

Scary, but It'll Do

Yesterday afternoon around 5:00 o'clock I drove down to my local True Value to wander around and see what they could do for me.

I asked the assistent, whom I found stocking some shelves, if they had patching cement for concrete.

No, not for my third floor stairway ceiling, for my front step. I had a parent of a trick-or-treater Thursday night [my borough always does it on the Thursday night] express doubt about the safety of it, commenting ominously, "Somebody's liable to sue you over this." And it was getting really bad, so bad I put a board over the cavity so no small witch or ghoul would fall in.

"It's right here in this aisle," he said. "Here's the kind you want, in this bag." Then, "Wait a minute," he said. "This might not work after all. The temperature has to be above 50 degrees for twenty-four hours after you apply it."

"Well, it's 68 degrees outside now . . . I don't know what it's supposed to do tonight . . . "

"Let's check The Weather Channel." He led me to a laptop, brought up the site, and look, the low last night wasn't supposed to get below 58 degrees. But tonight, it was supposed to get down in the 30s.

The assistant expressed his doubt as to whether I could get the job done in time, but, said I, "It's tonight or never. I have to get that step patched before somebody hurts himself on it."

So, quickly, quickly! One 40 lb. bag of patching cement, one 5-gallon bucket to mix in, one trowel for the application! Pay for it, throw it all in the car, and take the fastest way home!

And yes, I did get the cavity filled. In the light of day I see it was not a pretty job. Not my usual level of craftsmanship. But it'll do.

The first thing was to pull out the rest of the loose pieces of concrete tread. When I washed out the dirt from the resulting cavity, the sand and gravel aggregates kept running out as well. If this was June or July, I think I would have kept the hose trained on that rotten concrete till it all washed away and gave me the excuse to put in a whole new pair of steps. But winter's coming, so I stopped at the first semblance of solid material and hoped-- hoped!-- the cement would adhere.

Then, even though I borrowed a concrete block off a neighbor to hold a board against the broken step to make a kind of form, it wasn't much use. The remaining concrete was sticking out cockeyed so I couldn't get the board to sit squarely against it. I ended up throwing the board on the grass and just using the concrete block, on end, to keep the patching cement from slumping out the front side of the cavity.

Couldn't mix too much cement at once; had to consider the capacity of my old Black & Decker drill with the paint-mixing attachment on it. Even in the light of the setting sun it was plain that my batch wasn't going to fill all the hole.

So I got clever. Or stupid, you take your pick. I filled the cavity up just high enough so I could lay the broken pieces of original concrete back in, mosaic-style. Couldn't find them all, and there's cracks between them that'll have to be filled with all-weather caulk or something to keep the water out. But it's level, right?

Not quite. A couple of big pieces weren't sitting high enough, and the riser surface of the step was all pitted and spalled. So there I was at 7:00 last night, for all intents and purposes in the dark, mixing up another batch of patching cement, this one half the size of the first.

Half the size, and nowhere near the stiffness. I glopped it onto that riser with my gloved hand (faster than the trowel) and it slumped down on the step below like a tired teenager. The concrete block kept it in place in the middle (and it seems to be stuck there at the moment), but otherwise . . . ? Gaahh.

The finished job is pretty ghastly-looking. My only excuse is my race again time, the weather, and potential liability claims. God willing, next spring I can get a set of front steps put in that're good looking and permanent. In the meantime, hey, the patch is hard! And the reinserted pieces don't seem to be going anywhere! It might even bear weight! And be halfway safe even when the snow covers it!

It's awful, it's ugly, it's hideous, the After picture looks like it should be Before-- but it'll do.

Food Out of the Dirt

My poor garden's definitely been neglected this past summer. I think I applied Miracle-Gro maybe once.

Still, the veggies are coming on in spite of me, and this year as in all gardening years I am continually amazed that I can go get food right out of the backyard.

What astonishes me most of all is potatoes. There they are, food in the dirt! Reach in, scrabble around a bit, and there it is-- dinner! Some say they're not worth planting. That you can get them cheaper at the store. But these came from some Aldi's potatoes that sprouted, and I've already got more than I planted, despite my neglect. And these buried gems are firm and fresh and hard and smooth, not slightly soft and contorted and covered with eyes.

Tonight's potato morphed into french fries. Or should I say, nice, fluffy-on-the-inside, crisp on the outside, English-style, Delia-Smith-recipe chips. With a shrimp stir-fry featuring mushrooms, eggplant, and yellow peppers, the last two also from my backyard larder.

I'd better enjoy it while I may. The dreaded f-word (no, not that one!) was mentioned on the weather report yesterday and while the Brussels sprouts might enjoy a spot of nippiness, the peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes, and potatoes will not.

(Good grief, it's only the end of September; lighten up with the cold weather, all right already!)

Something Else It's the Wrong Time For

The west side of my house has three tall arborvitae shrubs.

Rather, it had three tall arbor vitae shrubs.

One I had taken down last September, because I really want to plant a climbing rose in its spot.

I'm not that fond of the other two. They've been going brown here and there and I'd really like to plant hollies in their place. But they shield the air conditioner unit and I've got enough to do inside without messing with non-crucial landscaping.

Rather, they did shield the air conditioner unit . . .

We had a big wind through here early yesterday morning. When I took my dog out to the alley I saw this in a neighbor's backyard.

I thought myself unscathed. Except for sticks and twigs, my maple trees were intact.

Then I came back in, and looked out the dining room window to check the level of the seed in the birdfeeder.

And I couldn't see the birdfeeder. All I could see were arborvitae fronds that weren't in view before.

Yeah, it's toast. Pulled up by the roots like a lot of other evergreens around here. And its companion is leaning ominously. Looks like I'm going to have to get a chainsaw at the secondhand tool shop and clear both of them out.

And start looking for holly bushes. Preferably the self-pollinating kind.

Jumping the Gun

I've appreciated the warmer weather we've had the past few days in western Pennsylvania.

But all the same, there's something deceptive and meretricious about it; something disruptive and out-of-time.

Something like how it's whispering to my tulips, daffodils, and Spanish bluebells that it's time to wake up.

See that, in the middle of the photo, just this side of the drift of leaves? That's a tulip poking through.

And these greenish-whitish fingertips are the bluebells jumping the gun.

These shots are from this past Sunday. Today it's even worse: The spikes were higher, greener, and more numerous.

It's not time to get up, you silly bulbs! Winter's got five or six weeks more to run! Go back to sleep before your noses get frozes!

I mention the dilemma to my neighbor, out walking his dog. He says, "Stomp on their heads!"

I don't resort to such violent tactics. I've tucked them up in fresh blankets of fallen leaves, in the hope that the colder temperatures forecast in the next couple of days will convince them that the long night of winter is not yet over, and they've sleeping yet to do.

Furnace Update

The furnace is fixed. Apparently. I hope.

No heat all day Saturday. That afternoon I made a batch of sugar cookies, but 350 degrees in a modern oven doesn't do much to warm up the kitchen, let alone the house. The house temperature went down to 44 and stayed there.

Oh, well, the cookies rolled and cut out beautifully on the marble board. No trouble with sticky dough at all.

In the meantime, I turned off the pilot light and the gas to it. No point in running it if it wasn't going to do any good.

Just as an experiment, though, I turned the ignition back on around 7:30. Went upstairs to make some phone calls, came back down twenty minutes later, and hey, presto! the furnace was on! And proceeded to run the thermostat up two degrees above its setting.

No complaints about that. Went to bed, woke up yesterday morning, and the furnace was off. Again. 50 degrees and dropping. 49 degrees by the time I left for church.

It was a very good day to have things scheduled outside the house until nearly 7:00 PM. I returned to find the inside temperature stabilized at 43 degrees (21 outside). Made another batch of cookies. And lots of hot tea. The coldest part was unloading the dishwasher. Those stoneware plates and bowls were freezing!

A bit before 11:00 PM, I tried the ignition again. Just for fun. And what do you know? the heat kicked on! I goosed up the thermostat to a temperature I figured would require the furnace to stay on all night and not cycle off, and apparently it worked. I still had heat this morning.

But that didn't solve the problem of why the system wasn't working properly in the first place.

Around 8:00 this morning, I got a call from the heating and cooling people. A third person, different from either I'd spoken to before, was on the line. "Your heat is off?" he asked.

"Wait a minute," I temporized. (I admit it-- I was still wrapped in my warm covers, putting off getting up and out into the cold.)

I went downstairs to check the thermostat (the register in the bedroom never gives much heat; no point checking that). 59 degrees. "Let's say I have intermittent heat." And I described what had been going on.

"Could it be your air filter?"

What? I went through this with their other guy on Friday!

"No, I just replaced it less than a month ago."

"It still could be dirty."

"I checked it on Friday. It's gray, but not filthy."

"Do you have a programmable thermostat? Maybe it's just the program cycling off."

"No, I don't have it set that low!"

"Well, maybe it's the factory settings."

I about lost it. "Nooooo!!! At 43 degrees?!" Good grief, man, don't patronize me! And don't you guys communicate? I went through all this with your colleague the day before yesterday!

"Well . . . "

"Do you have the serial number?" I asked.

Of course he didn't. He didn't have anything. But he said, "I'll be out within the hour."

More like an hour and a half. The serviceman was younger than I'd visualized. Funny, but his questions had made me imagine a middle-aged, burly, "I've-got-all-the-answers-and-the-homeowner-knows-nothing" type. I apologized for having lost my patience with him (if other people are acting like idiots, no point in being an idiot yourself) and showed him downstairs.

Having turned off the furnace, he turned on the now-futile ignition. "This unit doesn't have a pilot light," he said.

"But I saw---"

"It's not on all the time. It's got an electric ignition. Did you hear this clicking when it wasn't turning on?"

I listened. "Yes, but I thought it was the metalwork rattling or something" (guess this homeowner doesn't know everything!) "You mean it's like the burners on my gas stove?"

Yes, indeed. Having fished my calico cat out of the bowels of the furnace, I took myself and her upstairs and left him to it. And after a few minutes of poking and prodding, after him having me jack the thermostat up to see what that did, after some turning off and on of switches, the serviceman called me back down the basement.

"It was your ignition sensor. Your pilot light was coming on, but the sensor couldn't tell, so it wasn't turning the gas on. I've cleaned it, and I've shut the furnace off and on twice to make sure. Here, I'll do it again." He hit the switch (which is, as I'd recalled, at the breaker box) off, then on. The furnace shut off, then powered back up. "I think that was it."

And apparently it was. He took the home warranty call fee and went on his way.

And God willing, that will do it. Though I can see that getting somebody out to clean the whole shebang wouldn't do any harm. But not this firm, most likely. I'd like somebody who's a little better at internal communication.

Enforced Energy Conservation

This is what my thermostat read when I came downstairs this morning:

I assure you, I am not that energy conscious. Nor that cheap.

My dad was that cheap. He removed the furnace from his house entirely and got through the Midwestern winters by wearing his overcoat constantly and running space heaters in closed rooms. He swore he wasn't going to give the gas company any more than he absolutely had to.

I, too, economize on energy. But not that much. I routinely set the thermostat back to 55 degrees at night and stay warm and cozy under five covers and three cats. But by 8:37 in the morning I really do expect the temperature to be heading back up towards 61.

Wednesday morning, the thermostat said 53 degrees when I got up, but the furnace straightened itself out. Probably had nothing to do with the fiddling I did with the fan switch.

Thursday morning was a bit warmer outside: no trouble with the heat.

Friday morning, yesterday, the outside temps dove back into the mid-20s. And my thermostat read 52 degrees. Then 51.

I called the home warranty people, who had a heating and cooling repair company call me. Yes, sir, the furnace motor is going. No, sir, the fan and the gas burner are not running. Yes, sir, the pilot light is on. No, sir, I can't seem to find the switch for the furnace motor. Yes, sir, I've found the label inside the furnace . . . oh, look, I think it says this unit was installed in 1987! No, sir, that is really not surprising, it was my POs-1 who put in the forced air system . . . No, sir, I still haven't found the switch you describe . . . oh! look! the burner and the fan just came on!

That's good, the heating guy said, because they were pretty booked up that day. Call them back on Monday to let them know if they should still come out.

I did not wait till Monday. Not with the thermostat reading 46 degrees F. Not with it again in the 20s outside. A number of calls and some futile fiddling with switches later, the maintenance guy has determined the problem is the module. Which he can't get till Monday. And hopefully it's not some other part I forget the name of: that'd mean replacing the whole furnace.

(Though given that I have a replacement warranty, that might not be a bad thing. Even the sort of bog-standard furnace the home warranty company will pay for has got to be more energy-efficient than the unit I've got!)

Meanwhile, I get to rough it through the weekend and most of Monday. Baking Christmas cookies was not on today's calendar. But, um, I think I just changed my plans . . .

Nasty Bits

No, not that kind.

I mean the four jamb trim pieces I stripped today.

I was really hoping to stop the current paint stripping campaign at the top of the steps from the first floor. It's tacky enough subsisting with my living room, dining room, and first floor hall denuded of trim. It's quite enough to have to overlook the black-dusty-crumbly grossitude that is the exposed plaster where trim once reposed on the walls of the first floor. I really didn't want to tackle the trim of the five doors, one window, and miscellaneous baseboard in the second floor hall as well. Couldn't I restrict the squalor to one floor only?

No, I could not. The wallpaper and/or paint that starts in the downstairs hall will have to go all the way up. No stripped trim upstairs, no nice new stairhall walls upstairs or down. Those five doors, one window, and miscellaneous baseboards had to be done, now.

So I'm doing it. The trim of the window and three of the doors I tackled last weekend. Today my goal was to strip that last of the long jamb pieces, the two from the bedroom doorway and the two from the closet.

Should have taken me five hours. Maybe six, maximum. Instead, I was at those four nasty pieces of work from shortly after 10:00 this morning till nearly 8:00 this evening, with maybe a half hour out for a mid-afternoon snack.

The problem? On the first two, splintery places some previous owner(s) hadn't bothered to glue down before painting them over. Rather, the object seemed to be to get as much paint behind the splinters as possible. You can literally while away hours trying to dig that out.

And then, of course, these damaged places need to be reglued. Which they should have been several decades ago.

With the third piece, it soon became apparent that it wasn't the original trim. Original to the house, but I think it started out someplace else, someplace where it was painted from the beginning. All except one edge, which was stained and shellacked under the paint. Very strange. There's a story there having to do with the time my POs-1 converted the third bedroom into a dressing room/walk-in closet. But I won't insert my conjectures now.

The paint on this piece, even after two laborious, time-consuming attacks with the heat gun and scraper, still wouldn't yield to the liquid refinisher. Had to order in the light artillery and use the palm sander. It now has squiggly sanding marks all over it, but I Do Not Care. It's stripped, that's the point, and I'll deal with the squiggles later.

This piece also had a chip that needed glued back in, but it broke in two and the heatgun blower blew one of them onto the floor where it got lost amidst the paint shavings. Oh, Darn.

Fourth piece I did this evening only because I finally got the Project Tracker working (with help from Larry at Simpson's Folly) and I wanted to post another percentage point.

So there I was out on my screened-in porch at 7:30 PM. It was dark outside, the north wind was rising, the temperature plummeting, the rain was thinking about turning to sleet or even snow, and I was stripping woodwork. I couldn't be sure if the vapor I was seeing was smoke from the work piece or my own breath, and my feet were so cold I had to resist the temptation to turn the heatgun onto my shoes. But I wanted it done.

The last jamb piece wasn't as awful as the others: it just had a lot of that old blue wall color ingrained in the outer edge. Lovely pasttime, freezing your fingers with cold refinisher in colder weather.

My right shoulder needs the chiropractor, I'm so tired I'm liable to forget I have dinner in the oven, but the nasty things are stripped.

Hooray.

Anybody Got a Chain Saw I Can Borrow?

We got a bit of a blow through here a few hours ago. A leftover from Tropical Storm Lowell from way out west, out in the Pacific.

Well, maybe more than a bit.



Now my parents live in Houston, and yesterday I was on the phone sympathizing with my mom over the three trees in their backyard that blew down early Saturday morning, in consequence of Hurricane Ike. One of them, she said, took down part of their fence.

Well, guess what, Mom: It must run in the family, because a big limb of my sugar maple came down in the windstorm this past evening and knocked down a big section of my fence.

Funny, it didn't fall outward into the neighbors' yard. No. It collapsed inward and apparently took out my sunflowers, my volunteer cherry tomato bush, and my new blackberry bush. And maybe a cabbage or two.Can't tell for sure till morning. And maybe not even then, not until I can bum somebody's chain saw and wood chipper. I don't see getting a tree surgeon over any time soon. Whole town's in the same mess I am, and a lot of people probably have it worse.

i can has piyanoh?

With a nod to all you lolcat fanciers in Housebloggerdom, that is my cat-got-the-pigeon way of announcing that as of 6:00 o'clock last evening I got my 1911-vintage piano moved safely into the front room of the Sow's Ear.

And that is despite snow and sleet and reports of accidents and weather-related mayhem all round the area; despite slushy hilly winding roads for me, and a long traffic jam that had my piano movers stuck on the Parkway West for nearly a half hour; despite a tight doorway and slick sloping conditions at the church; despite a truck diesel gauge that was riding on Empty and a white-knuckled (on the part of the movers) detour to the nearest station that sells diesel fuel; despite needing to bring the piano up my neighbors' walk due to the tight turn at the foot of my front steps; and despite the severe slope of the floor of my front-porch-turned-front-room, that initially caused the top back edge of the piano to lean a good 3" away from the wall.

Despite all that, it's in.

The piano movers' getting stuck in traffic on the way to the church actually worked out well for me: It gave me more time to vacuum the drywall sanding dust and the cobwebs off the piano and bench. As soon as they arrived, everything was ready to go.

It's really amazing what only two not tremendously big guys can do with just a dolly, a piece of plywood, a metal ramp, and a lot of technique. Despite, I say again, the slope and a lot of ice and snow.

I video'd about the whole process; all but the very end at the house, when I was busy lending a hand shepherding the piano into position and pulling the dolly out from under when that was done. I intend to put the clips all together and make a little movie out of it, but I'd like some music to go with it, and the piece I'm thinking of I only have on cassette.

So the video will have to wait. In the meantime, here are a few stills:

[Photos coming!!!!]


It was really silly of me not to consider the slope of my front room and have something ready to put under the front casters. The movers shoved folded-up cardboard under there for me, but the piano's still leaning out an inch too much.

So there's something else for the project list: Make some decent-looking blocks that'll raise the front casters up a good inch and half. And then figure out how to raise the bench enough to compensate.

Today I cleaned off the rest of the dust and dirt, and moved the bookcase and books that used to be on that wall into the living room.

And sat down and played awhile, as well as I am able.

Now that the piano is in, my ideas for the front room are coalescing. Maybe variations on the theme of light green painted walls with a gold and white stencilled frieze around the top. Something with musical motifs in an Arts and Crafts style, maybe. I'd toy with the idea of doing the trim in a creamy-white marbleized effect-- but I've got the woodwork too far stripped to natural to go back to paint. And the dark wood tone goes well with the dark mahogany of the piano!

Gambling

Got the rest of the crape myrtles planted this afternoon. At least, all but the one that's going somewhere in the back yard.

I'm happy to say that the hole digging went faster today. I learned the holes for the two little ones I still needed to put into the new bed by the front steps don't have to be as deep as for the bigger varieties. And the remaining, larger, specimen was going into the front border, where it turned out that the previous owners' landscaper, even if incompetent as to the selection, spacing, and positioning of plants, had taken out the sandy soil to a depth of about 16" and replaced it with topsoil. So the roundy rocks were few and far between, and all it needed was a few handfuls of perlite to lighten things up a bit.

What I don't get, however, is what they tell you about watering shrubs in. The soil was workable enough when I was mixing it (though I admit, I forgot to do the squeeze test). I did what they tell you about dumping water over the loosened-up and modified soil in the hole and letting it drain. Then I watered the shrubbies again after I popped them into the ground, as they say to do. Not a lot, because the little plants seemed wet enough already. Ground around them was going splooshy, splooshy, squelch! Like some kind of a bog or something.

(Don't tell me: I'm supposed to let the hole drain for a day and a half before putting the plants in? Or if it doesn't drain in fifteen minutes, I'm supposed to take all the soil out again and replace it with 100% perlite?)

But it was starting to rain. And hail. And the temperature was dropping. And is supposed to continue dropping this weekend. And I wanted to get these shrubs in the ground, because if I don't do it now, I'm liable to forget about them till sometime next June.

So I took the gamble and planted them, squelchy planting holes or no. I guess I'll see if I rolled the dice correctly in the spring.

And if they don't grow, at least the holes are there, and I'll try again.

O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast

This past August I read a novel by English author Rosamunde Pilcher called Winter Solstice. The main part of the action is set deep in December in a town on the far northwest coast of Scotland. She did such a fine job of describing the snow, the rain, the cold winter weather, that when I'd open the door to let the dog out I'd be surprised to feel the balmy breezes of a southwestern Pennsylvania summer.

And I was impressed how convincingly Mrs. Pilcher depicted her characters going out into this weather without moaning or complaining. They were continually out visiting, shopping, walking the dog, walking themselves, and the conditions seemed always to strike them as bracing, or envigorating, or, at the most, challenging.

Gosh, how admirable! Once winter has set in, whatever happens in my back yard stays there till next spring. In the dead of winter, once I'm inside I hardly want to open the door to pick up the mail!

But there's a basis for all this Pilcherian cheerfulness. As the creator of her novelistic world, she decreed that her characters should have a "well-built Victorian house" to live in and enough pounds and pence to keep the central heat going comfortably and to pay for logs to throw on the sitting room fire whenever wanted. It's easy to face inclement weather with good cheer when you know the house you'll return to is toasty and warm.

I wish I could rewrite my own current life story that way. But alas, no. I finally had enough and turned on the furnace night before last, and the highest it's going this winter is 61 degrees when I'm home and awake and 56 at night.

No, I'm not trying to reduce my carbon footprint. I'm just trying to reduce the drain on my wallet.

It's been all right so far. Really. The temperature outside hasn't gotten below the low 30s and the double-glazed windows are shut and locked. It helps having three cats to act as live hot water bottles, too.

I'll see how it goes once it gets colder. I suppose turning up the thermostat a bit is preferable to my sitting on my icy hands whining. Thinking of other and older British novels, the proverbial drafty 19th century manse may seem romantic, but living in a house that feels like one is not.

Sparrows Falling?

We haven't had much rain in the Valleys since last Thursday, and conditions were getting dry. But late this afternoon, a strong line of thunderclouds streamed in from the west and looked sure to break. I closed my car windows, then noticed how sad my neighbors' hanging baskets were looking. They always unhook them and put them out on the sidewalk when it rains, and here they weren't at home to do it.

I knew they'd want to take advantage of the moisture. So I decided to do my neighbors a favor, and put the petunia baskets out myself. And this is what I found in one of them:

What to do? If I left the nest in the planter, the baby birds would likely drown. But the flowers needed the water.

So I picked the nest up, birdies and all, and put it in a sheltered position on the porch, leaving the planters on the sidewalk to drink.

The mother bird, a sparrow, came back during the worst of the storm, and couldn't find her brood. Since I don't speak Sparrow, I couldn't tell her her babies were safe on the porch floor.

After a half hour or so, I decided the petunias had had enough and, having carefully replaced the nest in the one, I rehung both baskets.

I can see the nest from my door, and so far, I haven't seen the mother bird back on it. This worries me! I know sparrows are a penny a dozen, and a lot of people consider them avian vermin. But if a sparrow (or a whole nest of baby sparrows) is effectively going to "fall," I'd rather it not be my fault!

Something I've Learned

I installed a rain barrel two years ago, and I've often been glad for the use of it.

It started life as a proper Kentucky whiskey keg, with an uneven top that the plastic drain insert doesn't fit evenly into. But, I figured, "that don't make no never mind." The water always seemed get into it any how.

So this past Monday I was planting out, and pretty much drained the barrel dry. No problem: It rained a good clip on Tuesday and really bucketed down this afternoon. I watched the water splashing out of the downspout and slopping over the rim. "Gosh, that barrel really must be full! Too bad I don't have two of them in tandem!"

But this evening, I put in the Japanese eggplants I bought yesterday at K-Mart, and the edging marigolds that've been sitting since last Thursday. I went to wash off my trowel at the rain barrel, and about nothing came out of the hose. Wha . . . ?

Poked my camera down inside, and this is what I found:

Practically empty!

So here's what I learned: If your plastic drain grid doesn't fit evenly, take the silly thing off in a downpour! Otherwise, it'll just channel the water over the edge and you'll lose it all.

(I don't even want to think about what all that runoff water is doing to the footing of my porch pillar . . .)