My Elysium

When it came to where to build the garden our plan was to wait a year before we choose a spot.  We have a fair amount of space but most of it is heavily treed.  There is actually very little space with any good sunlight.  Since we like to grow things like tomatoes we need to be picky.  The “hot” season here is quite a bit shorter than the prairies. A longer growing season sure, but cooler.  Tomatoes need sun, and do better with a little heat.

The time has come to decide and after much hemming and hawing we thought we had it figured out.  I spent a day levelling a spot and hauling the cement blocks we will be using to build the raised beds.  We really like using patio blocks on edge for raised beds.  No rot issues, and a nice working height.  This is the second property we have built them on.

The next morning doubt crept in.  Maybe this is the wrong spot.  Maybe this will not see enough sun, too close to the trees on the south exposure.  A little time on the NRC web site and we convinced ourselves it would be wrong.  Likely less than 3 hours of direct sun.  Needs to move.

Originally we had picked out a nice sunny spot down the hill at the back of the property.  There is a good sized clearing there and we have no other plans for the space.  The problem was water.  It’s too far away to water from the house or with collected rainwater from the old shelter on the site

The shelter site also had a nice clearing but would require another few hundred dollars of deer fencing and we had other plans for the space.

We spent this morning staring out at the yard and finally decided to put it on the north side of the house.  The beds will sit on the far edge of the lawn just by the tree line.  Good southern exposure we think. Soon I’ll start to move the blocks and begin again.  I guess I have to fix the grass I dug up too.

Wow.  I knew it would be wet here in the winter but I didn’t expect to be greeted with record rain.  The average rainfall here for Oct and November combined is 9″.  This year we saw 19″, and the bucket on my deck says maybe a bit more in my yard.

Along with the rain we have also had several windstorms.  Wind here is a little more to be concerned about than I am used to.  Being a rural location with lots of tree and an all aerial distribution we have seen more than our share of power outages.  Including last night’s, I think we are at 6 outages this fall for a total of almost 100 hours.  Needless to say, I have invested in some technology.

Speaking of trees, we haven’t had any personal bad luck yet but there was one near miss.  We left the house to go to the village store a few weeks ago and when I came back an hour later I found this in the spot I had my truck parked.

Near miss for the truck but there was one casualty.

The makes the second barbecue I have owned that had a tree dent the lid.  What are the odds of that?

We are now past Zero day.  11 days past as of the date of this post.  So what does that mean and what happens now?

First, I will not be setting a new date.  The clock will continue to run until Zero Day actually arrives.  The date was originally picked as a wild guess two years ago.  As a guess it was pretty good, and there is a very good chance it will turn out fairly accurate.  Things are in motion on this front, I’ll update you in a few days.

We have already completed a lot of preparation for Zero Day.  We have been eliminating two decades of accumulated “maybe we can use this someday” stuff.  The tenants are out and the new place is vacant and ready for us.  Power is on, cell phone is bought.

Thanks to a creased drivers door my 13 year old truck has been replaced.  “Not worth fixing,” the insurance company says, “here’s a cheque”.  It’s not a new truck, but newer with half the mileage.  I also found a 12 step program for boats…sort of.  Our cabin burnt down if a forest fire last summer that also destroyed two boats.  Two more have been gifted to the kids.  The last two I will take with me.

Now, if only Greece, and the UK, and Russia, and the oil patch slowdown, and all the other crap that is creating havoc would settle down.

 

Related Post Mi Casa

 

 

Time for a pool update.  After the end of round two I still lead the playoff draft by 11 points and have three players remaining.  The most anyone else has is four player.  Most years this would be a lock on a first place finish but not this year.  There have been some scary point getting nights by my fellow pool members.  A couple of nights with the wrong scores and I will loss the lead.  Fingers crossed.

The start of round three finds me in 6th place in the bracket challenge.  I told you I had to brag while I could.  However…with the 3rd rounds picked now in I can retake first place if I guessed correctly.

Stay tuned.

 

Last year I bought an antique Morris chair for my wife as a birthday present. Great chair, terrible cushions.  We decided that the chair would look great with leather upholstery.  Off we go to the local purveyor of hides and find an awesome full hide of distressed leather.  It looked perfect.

Next, how do you actually upholster with leather?  I have redone a few pieces before, a 1930’s sofa, a couple of wing back chairs, a tub chair (my best result to date).  All these were done with some type of fabric.  Although we didn’t know exactly how to do this we did know that our sewing machine would not be up to the task.  So the next purchase was a new sewing machine.  We choose the Ultrafeed LSZ-1 from Sailrite.  Great machine.  Lots of power.

At this point there was a long, loooong stall.  Corners.  How do we do the corners. Many options and various difficulty levels.  Any mistake in cutting or sewing would rapidly become a several hundred dollar oops.  Final after many weeks we found a new way.  Lace the cushions instead of sewing them.  So here we go…

I was just reading the latest newsletter from a greenhouse we stopped by this spring.

Pests and Pestilence

I have one addition to the pest category that is new for us at Wheelbarrel.  Three large otters surprised me early one morning coming down through the roses heading for the pond I presume.  In fact I don’t know who was the most surprised.  Me or them.

We had lost all our fish in the ornamental pond the week before and had the plants all tipped and generally messed with.  We had assumed that the raccoons had finally got them.  The otter sighting put a different perspective on things though.

I knew we had racoons, but otters in the fish pond?  There’s something a prairie boy like me never expected!!