Raised Beds Done

Almost every day since my last posting, I've been thinking about posting. And everyday I'd say to myself, "I'll wait until the raised beds are done. Then I'll have something of substance to show and actually write about." And then everyday progress on the raised beds was soooo slow.

Monday I finally finished. We started digging the raised beds last April. I had hoped to be done by the end of May, so that we could put in the garden on Memorial day, which is our traditional time to plant the garden. Obviously, we didn't make it. The project took more resources than I thought it would.

• 180 linear feet of pressure treated 2 x 4's
  
• 7 yards of class 1 gravel
  
• 2 yards of river sand
  
• 1400 pavers
  
• 3 bags of silica mortar sand
  
• 576 linear feet of cedar 2 x 6's
  
• 288 linear feet of cedar 1 x 4's
  
• 200 linear feet of cedar 2 x 4's
  
• 4 boxes of stainless steel decking screws
  
• Time to completion- 2 months
  

I knew it was going to take a lot of time to build - just moving that much dirt takes time. And we ran into several issues with the weather. If the weather had cooperated, we may have made it by the Memorial Day deadline. We also made the mistake of measuring the bricks incorrectly and digging the hole for the path to the wrong size. At least we caught it before we started laying the base and the brick.

We still have a bit of dirt to move around. Throughout the process, our strawberries have blossomed and started to set berries. We didn't have the heart to move them and lose this year's berry production. Once they have finished producing, we'll move them to one of the other beds and then fill in the hole they are currently in.

But now it is done and I have officially turned it over to Ms. Huis. It is now her problem to plant it and weed it. My job is to simply eat from it.

A view from the second floor of the house.

Same view from close up and the ground.

The Ultimate Enabler

The glory and the damnation of the Internet is that it is the ultimate enabler.

At any given time there are at least five projects for the house that are rolling around in my head. I consider them from every conceivable angle, adjust them, re-examine them and then shelve them for later examination. In this way I work through what is affordable, what I have the time to do and what I have the skill to do. Currently I have two projects in mind that involve some very serious soldering. I won't go into detail about what they are yet. I'm still considering their affordability and time commitment, but it's sites like this and videos like this that convince me that it is feasible for me to attempt this.

After all, it can't be that hard can it?

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.

Dig This

Digging. Why does it seem so many of my projects involve digging?

I put in a retaining wall and steps in our last house. That was about nine yards of earth. When we put in a new sewer line in the House of 42 Doors, the excavator left a nice pile of dirt that needed spreading out. That was probably three yards. The previous owner built a three car garage, and as part of that, there was a nice pile of dirt that he left next to the garage. That was another four yards. The compost heap in the backyard that had been there since time immemorial was four feet high and six feet in diameter, so another three yards there. The hundred or so yews I put in required digging, although only a little bit at a time.

And now we've started another project with more digging. This project started out as an idle drawing and an idea that I showed to Ms. Huis. She liked it, and grabbed it. We wanted a vegetable garden at the house, and cleared out a a 25 foot wide and 60 foot long swath of scrub (mostly buckthorn) to get it. Unfortunately, we discovered the land there was not suited for a garden. While the top 2 inches were nice black soil, beneath that was a two to three inch layer of compacted gravel. All of our root vegetables would grow two inches and just give up. Our carrots were like stubby, fat fingers. So the answer was raised beds. And what would go between these raised beds? Brick paths, of course.

So that means digging down about 12 inches, putting in about 7 inches of base, and then another 2 inches of sand. We have 276 square feet of path we're installing, so that adds another 10 yards of earth to the tally. I haven't done all the digging; there's been plenty of help from Ms. Huis, the in-laws and even our youngest. It's awful stuff though, with the old compacted gravel, and the tree roots from the scrub we took out.

I'll be glad when the project is done so that I can move onto other house projects. Progress to date can be viewed here.

Storm's a Comin'

Yesterday was the first day of 2011 that it was warmer outside than it was inside. It was unseasonable warm - 74 F (22 C) - and followed by severe thunderstorms. Ms. Huis was about to go out running when the tornado sirens sounded. The womenfolk scurried into the basement while I watched the storm from the safety of my front door.

At first there was nothing, just clouds that looked like curtain swags, and the occasional bit of lightning. The bats were out feasting on whatever insects were around. It was dead calm. Eventually the bats took shelter and within 20 minutes, the real thunder and lightning started. It was 40 minutes of constant thunder and lightning. The rain came pouring down, but it was still calm. Then the wind came up all of a sudden; sudden enough that I went into the basement. Within 5 minutes it was gone, and the storm passed.

There was no damage by us, but a tornado did touch down close by, and on the way to work there were several missing fences and some twisted road signs. At work I heard stories of neighborhoods that lost siding, trampolines and small trees.

I know that thunderstorms are dangerous, destructive, expensive and life threatening, but I love them.

Spring Is Here

About six weeks ago I was ready to write that Spring was here. The snow was melted, the garden was visible and I was looking at the garden with anticipation. Then we received a foot of snow, along with what felt like months of below freezing weather (I think it was actually 10 days). So I held off. But, I'm happy to report that Spring is here now.

The squill is a bit behind this year, thanks to the late snow storms. Usually we have a sea of blue by tax day (April 15th). I'd say we're a few weeks from that. I tapped our maple trees this year for the first time and they are now done. I pulled almost a gallon of syrup from them in the end. Not bad for just four trees.

I'd mentioned in the past that we had our door refinished. The last post is actually a good before and after picture. The sidelights show how bad the finish was compared to the door. Now I'll have to try and get them finished this year. We have a lot of projects in mind for the year, which I won't enumerate here. I'm not ready to make a list of stressors just yet.

Calling All Wee Folk

I'm a strong believer in the little people. I'm not talking about the Irish (although I do believe in them too). I'm talking about faeries, pixies, sprites, brownies, elves and the like. When we lived in Ireland, we always put out a bowl of milk for the brownies and more times than not, we'd find it empty in the morning.

Lest you think I'm naive, I know that the neighborhood cat would occasionally drink the milk, but what about when it wasn't the cat? Can anyone prove that it wasn't the brownies? With all the work that the House of 42 Doors entails, I'm willing to ask for help from anyone who can provide it. If there were elves who could make shoes, then why can't there be faerie folk who can do carpentry work?

I also know that workers will follow the best working conditions and salaries. This is why putting milk out for the brownies works. You feed them and they come. Available food is a much better working condition than no food. So to that end I've started constructing small tools in hopes of attracting a little assistance with my carpentry work.

I'm hoping this sawhorse will be good for a new roof on the back porch.



I'll let you know if it works.