An Unexpected Early-Morning Wake-up Crash

Not that I mean to only write when we've had something bad occur with the house, but this happened...

About 10 days ago, while Mr. Kluges was in Ireland on a business trip, Mother Nature decided that what this extended late winter, is-spring-ever-coming season needed was an ice storm.  A BIG ice storm spiced up with just a little bit of wind.  Yay.

About 5:30 am, I was woken by the sound of some small branches breaking off the tree outside my window.  I didn't think too much of it, as it's a weak tree that often loses a small branch or two in any sort of wind or ice. I lay there, listening to the tap of the freezing rain on my window, and the occasional tinkle of a small branch breaking off and making its way through its brothers to the ground.  Then there was a sudden HUMONGOUS snapping, loud and extended crashing, and a giant, house-shaking BOOM!  I knew right away one of the main branches on one of our neighbor's trees on the property line to the south had come down and definitely hit our house. I tore out of bed into Penguin's room, sure I was going to see branches poking through her window and an hysterical child in bed.  Fortunately, and unbelievably to me at the time, the window was unbroken and Penguin remained asleep.

But I could see out her window that it was more than just that one branch, big as it was.  I then raced over to Pumpkin's room 'cuz the branches obviously went that far - she was awake & asked what that big thunder was.  I told her it was a tree hitting the house, then threw on some clothes, grabbed a flashlight & went out to see what I could see. 

Turns out I was wrong - it wasn't the one large branch we'd always thought would eventually give way and hit our sun porch.  Instead it looked like the entire tree itself had broken off right at the ground and hit our sun porch, with at least some branches hitting the top roof, and it was resting mostly on our sun porch roof, which was obviously damaged and partially crushed.  I couldn't see very much because it was still so dark, but after determining that apparently none of the tree had gone through walls or windows, I went in and messaged Mr. Kluges, who was, with the 6 hour time different, awake and at work.

Once it got light, I went out and snapped some photos so Mr. Kluges could get a better sense of the damage and what had happened.  Here's how it looked.

The red arrow is the base of the tree, where it broke off from its roots. The yellow arrow shows branches coming completely over the top of the sun porch roof, and the blue one shows branches hitting the top roof.

Our side yard

The poor smashed sun porch roof

The reach of the tree up onto the top roof

Penguin's window, the original one I'd expected to be broken out

Pumpkin's window view, with roof completely covered with branches

The view from the backyard

This WAS the gate to the backyard.

Once the girls were off to school, I contacted the insurance company, and then our tree guy, who wasn't able to come out that day because, gosh, he was really busy and we didn't have any branches actually breaking INTO our house (thank God!).  Later that morning, one of our other neighbors called to say she was sending her husband (and his chainsaw) over about 1pm when he got home from work.  They showed up, and between the three of us and his chainsaw and some ropes, managed to get the tree off of the house.  It got easier to see some of the damage then.

Of course, the branches did a number on our custom gutters!

Since then the insurance adjustor has been out, and so has our contractor.  We're waiting for progress with that.  Mr. Kluges and the neighbor whose tree it was decided to take care of the rest of the tree themselves, so it's now all chopped up and off our yard.  The sun porch roof is going to need significant work, the main roof might need some (thankfully we have some of our special shingles around!), and the gutters are obviously in need of repair.  Surprisingly, it looks like just the gate took the brunt of the tree, but the rest of the fence looks ok.  Somehow, no windows were broken and nothing came through the roof or walls!!!!  I'm counting my blessings on that one!

(Cross-posted to Musings & Mutterings.)

Just an Eighth of an Inch

My job consists of many different roles, but one of them is analyzing IT failures. What happened? When? Why did it happen? Were the appropriate processes and procedures followed? How can we prevent this from happening again? What I've noticed over the years is that disaster rarely happens because of one cataclysmic failure. Disasters often happen because of a large number of poorly made smaller decisions. All of these in aggregation create a situation that is tenuous and rife for failure. One one final mistake or poor decision is made and the whole system comes crashing down.

This means that small things do matter and details do count. Life gives us plenty of opportunities to self correct. When we repeatedly spurn these opportunities, that's when disaster strikes.

I have a friend who does a fair amount of metal working - machining and blacksmithing. He had a project one time where he needed to drill holes to match up with a mated set of pegs. The problem is that the jig he used was off by 1/64". A very small amount, but since he used the previously drilled hole as his reference point for the next hole, by the time he'd drilled his 48th hole, his last hole was off 3/4" from the peg.

When I measured bricks for our new pathway in the raised beds, I measured the bricks as 8 inches long, and Ms. Huis carefully (and painstakingly) figured out the exact dimensions of the raised beds to accommodate these 8 inch long bricks. We moved 10 yards of dirt to accommodate those figures. Two nights ago I laid out some bricks in the holes we dug, just to estimate how it would look. They didn't fit. So I measured the bricks again. It turns out they are 8 1/8" long. That 1/8" is not much, but compounded over 40 sets of brick, it adds up.

Looks like we're going to have to do more digging.

Ted the Ninja Buckthorn

Wow. What a hiatus. Longest one ever. I'll just reference this and move on.

When we bought our house, it was seriously overgrown. European Buckthorn was the most prevalent species. I pulled it out, cut it down and chopped it up. There was one buckthorn near the property line that was actually quite nice as invasive species go. It was tall and straight, adopting a tree-like form, rather than the bush form. I named him Ted.

In my research of buckthorn, one warning that was frequently expressed was to NOT cut it off at the ground. Buckthorn freely suckers and cutting it off at the ground would just make the issue worse as the plant would turn into a messy bush. While I could appreciate Ted as a tree, he was still a buckthorn, so two years ago I cut him off at five feet and decided that I would wait until out tree guy came to visit. Then Ted would get cut off at the ground and chipped out. So last spring, we had our tree guy come out to chip some stumps. And somehow we missed Ted.

Two weeks ago, we decided to have our tree guy out again to finish off the last of the scrub. My wife and I went over what needed to be done. She went over it with the tree guy again. And we missed Ted again. At this point, I've dubbed Ted the Ninja Buckthorn. He hides in plain sight.

But no more. As part of the honeysuckle clean up, he's succumbed to the shovel. He's been dug out and Ted is now hiding in the backyard, propped against a tree, waiting for the fire ring. We'll see how long it takes for me to find him to burn.

WW - Mr. Kluges's Weekend Project? HoneysuckleBGone!

Before...

During...

After...

(Cross-posted to Musings & Mutterings)

2009 Wrap Up

Two years, 123 days. There have been eight hundred, fifty four days that we have owned the House of 42 Doors. My blogging has become more sporadic and less passionate. We are settling into the house and the house is settling into us. What originally seemed strange and wondrous has become normal and mundane.

What we accomplished this year pales in comparison to what we accomplished in 2008, but for the record, here is the list:

• Finished up the kitchen ceiling (after the waste pipe replacement in 2008).
• Plugged crack after crack in the basement with Great Stuff foam. Last year's basement temperature was 48 degrees. This year's its 58. Progress!
• Stripped the calcimine from the bathroom and painted it.
• Replaced the tub/shower drain.
• Ripped up some of the attic floor and sealed some of the air leaks. More work needed here.
• Painted and patched the office.
• Distributed 90% of the huge compost pile to the garden.
• Planted a garden.
• Repaired, scraped and painted the beadboard soffit.
• Built a storm window holder.
• Put in 75 yews for a hedge.
• Took out several honeysuckles to make room for said hedge.
• Painted the dining room red (and interestingly, both Ms. Huis and I have gained weight this year).
• Removed all the calcimine paint from the guest room. Patching and painting to follow.
• Painted the back dormer.
• Repaired and painted the back porch gutters.
• Built an igloo (it only lasted a week - I'm no Eskimo).

Next year we'll be looking at repairing our last two roofs and maybe replacing the front entry gutters. When those are repaired that will be the end of the exterior repairs to the house.

Here's hoping you had a great 2009 and have a fantastic New Year's!

Bricks

Brick pavers are heavy.

This is an obvious fact. But if I asked you exactly how heavy, would you have any idea?

On Monday I saw a listing on CraigsList for 1000 brick pavers for sale. I contacted the seller and was thrilled to hear that they were still available at a very good price.

They were an hour away, and I opted to drive down to see them. I wanted to be sure they were real brick and of a color that would match the rest of the brick around the house. The directions to the place sounded familiar, but it wasn't until I was well on my way that I realized the house I was going to was on the way to our CSA, which we've visited three times over the last two years.

The bricks turned out to be perfect. They are 8" x 3.5", and I figured that as long as I was down there, I might as well load up the Ford Taurus and take some back with me. I figured if I could get a third of the bricks in the Taurus, then I could come back another time with my wife and our two cars and get the balance.

As it turns out, estimating weight is not one of my many skills. I loaded up the Taurus trunk, back seat and passenger foot well with as many bricks as I thought I could safely take - about 275. Other than bottoming out the Taurus once, the trip was uneventful, but I was nervous the entire way that something was going to happen.

Once I was home, I weighed a brick to see how close my estimate of two pounds each was. It turns out each brick is closer to five pounds and that I overloaded the Taurus by a few hundred pounds.

We were able to arrange for the sellers to deliver another quarter of the bricks last night (for a fee of course) and I think I'm going down tonight to load up another quarter. They'll be following me with the last 250.

I had no idea when I bought these that it would be such a hassle to get them here. The ironic bit is that the guy selling them pulled them out of a sidewalk for a lady who happens to live within 15 minutes of us, and then transported them back to his house an hour away.

If only we had known.

Yewdaism

Well, now that Ms. Huis has let the proverbial cat out of the bag, I guess I'd better come clean.

I'm a yew lover.

There I said it. I hope you can all accept me and will support me now that I've come out. I'm no longer a closet yew lover.

My path toward yewdaism began when I was 17 years old, before I even knew about yews. My mom and I took a trip to Europe for a month where we visited Blarney Castle, in Blarney, County Cork, Ireland.
Blarney Castle has extensive gardens attached to it with numerous old yew trees. I have a picture of me, at 17, in a black, stone-washed, jean jacket sitting in the limb of this tree.



At the time, I didn't know that this was a yew tree. I just knew that it was a really cool tree. Then as I grew older and started thinking about the tree more, I started wondering what kind of tree it was. I was able to confirm that it was a yew tree when I went back to Ireland with my wife in 2003. I was hooked.

This yew tree is a major pilgrimage site for yew lovers. We even moved to Blarney for two years where I lived within just a few miles of it. I have since returned to the rest of the world to teach others and evangelize about the joys of yewdaism.

If anyone is going to Blarney Castle, this tree can be found at an elevation of 127 feet at north 51 degrees, 55 minutes, 45.54 seconds and west 8 degrees, 34 minutes, 4.09 seconds. Once you get into the gardens, follow the main path through the tunnel under the road. Stay on the path, past the elephant ears and it will be on your right.

There are a lot of yews in the landscape of the current community we live in, but they tend to be used as accent plants. This is good, but there is so much more that can be done with yews! Too many people have fallen sway to the false Society of the Arbor Vitae (treasonous splitters), somehow believing that they make a better hedge.

I have begun my evangelical work by starting a yew hedge around the House of 42 Doors. To date, I've put 66 yews (195 feet) in the ground, and more are coming this fall or next year.

Long live the yew!

Sworn to secrecy

I'd tell you how many yew trees Mr. Kluges has purchased this summer, a few at a time, both spreading (maybe this one?) and Hicks varieties, but he says I can't.

But I am going to tell you that it's more than the number of doors in our house... :)

Et tu, Brute?

While I was in charge of the girls last weekend, I tried to make a point to get out of the house and do something fun with them each day. On Friday, we went to a nearby state park for the first time. My plan was to do a bit of hiking and have a small picnic before we went back to the house for nap time.

We found a nice, flat broad path perfect for a two year old, an almost five year old and an out of shape dad. We were really enjoying ourselves when I started to notice the local flora.

What did I see? Tartarian honeysuckle, buckthorn and garlic mustard.

I guess that when they say "invasive", they really do mean it. It makes me wonder though, what exactly is to be done about invasive species? Is it inevitable that the Wisconsin understory will someday be buckthorn, garlic mustard and honeysuckle? Will we lose all of our ash trees to the Emerald Ash Borer, just as we lost our elm trees to Dutch Elm disease? It's really very sad.

Wanted

I'm looking for a rose with characteristics similar to a good wife/girlfriend.

• Low Maintenance
  
• Local
  
• Non-invasive
  
• Pleasant smelling
  
• Nice hips
  

Suggestions anyone?

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

In a perfect world, I'd have a little place in the country, with views of the ocean in the front yard, and views of the mountains in the backyard. I wouldn't need much land, maybe just a half acre to an acre, so long as the view was unspoiled.

But I don't live in a perfect world, so I'm planting hedges.

Our lot is 100 feet by 265 feet, which means that if I surround the entire place in a hedge, I'd need 730 feet of hedges. Due to driveways, garages, sidewalks and pre-existing vegetation, I think we only need about 450 feet of hedge. Putting in this hedge is a multi-year project of the ten-year plan, and short of one small area, it's all intended to be yew.

Last night I was planting six more of the 150 or so yews along the front of the lot when the southern neighbor pulled up in their truck to chat. A little back story is necessary to appreciate the rest of the post. Ironically, I was planting the yews just a few feet from the scene of last spring's tree cutting crime, perpetrated by yours truly.

We exchanged pleasantries for a short amount of time (she is a very direct sort of woman), before she began telling me that she had found a great landscaping guy. She was looking to contract with him for several years to slowly replace the buckthorn in the "woods" between our place and theirs with native shrubs. In addition, she would maybe expand the woods making it larger. That's fantastic I said.

But then she said she was hoping that she, the landscaping guy and I could meet sometime so that we could come up with a plan for the woods, one that we could all be happy with. Then she asked if I was still set on putting up a yew hedge? (As I'm planting yews along the front).

Clearly what she wanted to hear was that I wanted a naturalized woods on my lot. Instead, I tried to assuage her fear of change by saying that a yew hedge with several large trees and understory trees on her side would blend in and be completely unnoticeable from her side in the summer.

The entire time this conversation was going on, what I wanted to tell her was that it was my damn land I'd damn well do what I liked. As a matter of fact, to avoid these sorts of arguments, I've placed the hedge three feet off of the property line, so that it remains my hedge.

I may need a higher hedge.

Soil

Last night I put in a half dozen yews we purchased to act as a hedge. And the soil - Oh the soil! I have the kind of soil that makes me want to knock on the neighbors' doors and ask them, "Have you seen my soil? Come marvel at the crumb, the dark inky color, the ease with which I can move it."

I want to invite my gardening friends from Minnesota over so that I can dig a hole and we can all stare at it in silent appreciation. Nothing would need to be said as we all stood there, because we would all know that this is what soil is supposed to be like.

If I ever fall to my death while cleaning the gutters, I can only hope that I land face down in the dirt.

Invaded

I feel so...invaded.

The house originally belonged to a family that owned a greenhouse business adjacent to it. The greenhouses are long since gone and the previous owner (an architect) clearly did not inherit any sense of gardening from his progenitors.

When we purchased it, the property was seriously overgrown. We have buckthorn, tartarian honeysuckle, creeping charlie, burdock and garlic mustard. There are other plants on the property that I haven't identified yet, but I have a sinking feeling that they are also listed as invasive species. America is a melting pot, but I'm not sure that should apply to plants as well.

The soffit work continues, albeit slowly. Our youngest has been sick most of the week, and still is not fully healthy. This has taken away a fair share of my working time. But at this point, I can stand in the attic and look down through the floor, through the soffit and see the outside. I'm hoping to use the new Rotozip to finish cutting out the rotten bead board and get the south soffit sealed up this weekend.

There is some concern that so long as the soffit is open, we are subject to all manner of animal invaders too - bats, birds and wasps. Yesterday Ms. Huis called me to say there was a bat crawling up the side of the house in the middle of the day. And I know that one of the sizable holes in the soffit has had a lot of wasp activity. Last year's wasp nest in the soffit ended up being about several cubic feet in size, and I don't want a repeat of that. We came across the under-the-floor nest this spring, when my dad and I put in the cross pieces to try and stop drafts from entering the house under the attic floor. Thankfully, it was empty and a darn cool thing to show our eldest to teach her about wasp nests and the six sided shape of their cells.

We've also caught two more mice in the last few weeks, bringing the count up to 52. Here's hoping all the Americans out there have a safe and happy Memorial Day.