Re: Home and garden projects
 

Your list sounds a lot like mine!

We do actually use the fire pit a decent amount, even into summer.

Laundry room sink and worktop is on the drawing board as is outdoor kitchen. I haven't decided if I'm going to try and take the kitchen on myself or not. There's a high premium on outdoor kitchens here but I think I may struggle to find the time myself...

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So I eventually got all ten logs out of the woods, with my truck serving a log skidder (tractor). I am hoping the sawyer will be able to come and collect them next week, and if everything goes to plan I will be able to collect the sawn timber from the sawyer on the Saturday. :)

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I like to see wood.....

Mine sees the chainsaw first and the splitter second. Splitter undergoing it annual overhaul.

65f at the moment!

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So it's June 23rd, the third day of summer, ...... and I went out into my front yard this evening to rake fallen leaves. Welcome to leaf season! :frown:

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Walked the dog yesterday a long hike, 80F and we came across a snow bank, weird.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

So last weekend I installed a fancy Whirlpool front-loader washer and dryer at Pulaski Manor, replacing the old Maytag appliances that we bought 13 years ago, which are showing their age. Now Mrs P is annoyed with me. :(

The new appliances do such a good job. The washer gets clothes cleaner (definitely whiter whites, though perhaps the almost simultaneous switch we have made to Persil helps :unsure:), it is larger capacity, and it is much more effective at spinning the clothes to get the water out of them. And the dryer also does a great job too, drying clothes with a lot fewer wrinkles than the Maytag did, so things that don't get ironed are less wrinkly, and some things that were ironed can now do without. :thumbsup:

So why is Mrs P annoyed with me? :confused: ..... She's annoyed that we didn't get them two years earlier! Mrs P has been jealously eyeing them since our neighbours got the same Whirlpool laundry appliances two years ago. :lol:

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So please tell us what model did you get? :)

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Someone tell me please how I can make my husband understand that most garden "projects" are incremental works in progress and NOT something one does all in one go. He's been trying to "help" me in the garden and it's driving me round the bend.:ohmy: He wants to get everything "done" ASAP.

For me, weeding happens bit by bit every single day, not in one huge hours-long ordeal once a week--that's a great path to backache. Similarly, establishing anything in the garden, from shrubs to seed perennials to vegetables, happens in careful steps over time. I don't want to buy/plant everything at once, I want to gradually design and build a decent series of gardens that work well, each one to its own purpose, whether that's veg for the table, bird & pollinator attraction/feeding, fixing or hiding faults/defects in the property, or nice colour combinations that please the eye.

Until he begins to understand that the best things in life take time, I need him to limit himself to the one job that can be done all in one grand, sweat-drenched afternoon--mowing the lawn. :mad:

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They're a pair of Duet Steam models, so there a branch in the washer's cold water supply hose that connects to the dryer.

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My answer to that problem is find him a hobby that he becomes obsessed with and the only gardening chore he then has time for is mowing. Worked for me;)

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Thank you Pulaski. Would love to have less ironing so a steam washer and dryer sound great! :)

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We haven't tried it yet, but our neighbours swear that the steam function in the dryer is as good as dry cleaning for suits.

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I would like to buy the same but the washer and dryer in the condo is located in a cupboard...and I think they are too large to fit.

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They're less than 28" wide, and stackable (washer has a flat top, and I believe there is a "kit" to secure the dryer in position).

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It's the height that's the main problem. Getting the dryer into the cupboard to sit on top of the washer.

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That's easy. Just hold the dryer up, then slide the washer underneath it. :)

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I have the same problem. Currently I have an a GE Spacemaker similar to the one pictured below and the full sized front loads are too wide and too deep but height wasn't a problem to fit in the cabinet. So I decided to buy a front load Samsung 3.6 cubic foot washer with matching dryer with free install which just barley fit with the minimum clearance on the sides and back but when the installers came out, they discovered there was only a 220V outlet (washer needs 110v) and said the drain was on the wrong side and the hose wasn't long enough and the drain would need to be re-plumbed (the current units has the drain on the back right and all front loads have the drain on the back left). I said I'll get an electrician to install both 110v as well as 220 V outlets and I'll buy a longer universal drain hose (10' instead of 7') and have them come back to install the units and they said they can't change the hose and I'll have to hire an independent installer. I said I'll put the hose on the washer (it only takes a minute) and they said they are not allowed to install it with the longer hose.

Finally I decided to not purchase the units.

http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pro...04f626_400.jpg

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There is no room for one person to hold the dryer up whilst the other slides the washer in place.

They are similar to my units. The location of the vent is a problem too...and the the space around the washer dryer is so tight there is hardly any room to maneuver.

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My vent goes to the 8' ceiling so that isn't an issue. Many in my condo have installed the small front load units after having a 120v outlet installed.

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Er yeah, I know. Perhaps my adding a ":)" instead of a ":rolleyes:" confused you. :lol: ...... Among the unspecified problems are the fact that the washer weighs 240lb and doesn't slide easily, and that sliding the washer in would be massively complicated by the length of the washer hoses, which would have to be connected first, but then the washer would be in the way of picking up the dryer, ...... and hoisting the dryer 36" into the air to slide a washer under it would be challenging even in the middle of a wide open space.

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The Whirlpool Duet washer is 38.75" and the dryer is 39" for a total of 77.75" and a standard door height as well as the door height for my laundry cabinet is 80". So for me the height wasn't a major issue.

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Hmmm, good idea. :thumbup: Can you tell us which hobby worked the magic for your hubby?

The real problem is that my husband is trying to avoid working at his job (he works from home). The current project is proving to be a difficult one involving lots of moaning and cursing. :(

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Maybe you could encourage him to take up a hobby that involves "moaning" and "cursing". :sneaky:

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If you want a garage full of motorcycles and motorcycle parts ....;)

The only other solution would be to lock him in his office:lol:

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We found the solution! He's cutting down and bundling up the all decrepit moving cartons that we blithely stuffed up in our attic/loft after we moved into this house. There was a piece in the local newspaper about an attic fire due to stored papers overheating.

Some of those boxes have moved with us 4 times and are 30 years old! And the attic is poorly insulated, which we need to remedy at some point.... (Making another job, but not for the summer that one.)

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LOL. I would divorce my husband on the spot if he did something like that.

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Now that I've got the gardening back to myself and the full summer weather is upon us, I thought I'd report.

Vegetables are coming along. For some reason I can always grow lettuce, and it's certainly nice to stop buying the overpriced stuff in the supermarket and just go out and break off some leaves whenever we need salad.... Sadly, after almost a month of great lettuce yield, I woke up one morning to find some creature (probably a deer) had carefully stripped all my romaine plants of every single leaf but thoughtfully spared my green and purple oakleaf plants. (Not to his/her taste?) Really annoying!!

Even though it's been a cool summer so far, the tomatoes are doing decently. The big tomatoes have lots of flowers (no fruit yet) but the cherry tomatoes are forming little green globes.

Of the herbs, only lemon balm, mint, parsley, onions & garlic are really thriving. (I plant a lot of the last two because that's supposed to deter rabbits & deer--but sure didn't work in the lettuce bed.) The basil is tiny & stunted (maybe too cool for it), sage is very small but pickable, tarragon is sparse & not very flavourful (oddly blah) ....

So a mixed bag so far, but hoping for better yield next month (peppers, tomatoes, etc.)....

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French tarragon is the one with the best flavour and AFAIK cannot be grown from seed, Russian tarragon does grow from seed but has a greatly inferior flavour.

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And across the state, I am having an all time show stopper basil harvest! We are enjoying lots of pesto and caprese salads; we cut the leaves carefully and it grows back in no time. The lemon balm got so crazy I had to rip a lot out as it was taking over. My lettuce is finished, but it always bolts early here.

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No vegetables this year, but today I finally got a big sheet of 6mil black plastic out and covered a 10' x 35" of the vegetable patch. If I move it every 2 weeks, and maybe even double back in September, (it covers about 1/4 of the vegetable patch) I should be able to "cook" all the weeds and seeds by the end of summer. :thumbsup:

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I have NO idea what kind of tarragon mine is! :( I bought it three summers ago (in a pot) at our local farmer's market, and it lives in a giant dark pot beside the garage. It has either wintered over or (possibly?) self-seeded each of the two summers since then.

Maybe it's Russian...? It's pretty scentless & tasteless anyway. Do you know so-called Mexican tarragon? Suddenly this summer I see it at the local garden centres.

My lettuce (especially the stripped romaines) is trying hard to bolt, but I keep pinching off the little flower-heads & have kept them more-or-less leafing. It's weird, even the poor stripped Romaine stumps are producing small leaves.... I think our cooler weather than yours is to their liking.

I'm so glad someone is producing good basil!! :lol: I think your weather there to the west of us is warm enough for it. Come to think of it, I grew some decent basil when we bunked with relatives in Fairfield County on our arrival.

Only one neighbor of ours has decent basil. He amends his herb garden soil to a great depth, plus the garden backs up to his house foundation so is very protected from the cool winds. Next summer I'm going to try both ideas. I miss pesto!!

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Family of rabbits have done their best to rid us of lettuce and watermelon.

Cucumbers are appearing along with a lot of tomatoes. Courgettes are doing fantastic. It's just a shame I didn't plant any and no one likes them.

Peppers and chillies have done nothing, along with the corn, peas, beans and everything I've planted.

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I grow most of my herbs and chilies in pots on a sunny area of the deck, as otherwise they get bitten to pieces by bugs or trampled on by dogs!

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j1...psazmngcum.jpg

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I set out to mow part of Pulaski Manor, only to find my path blocked by a large fallen part of a hornbeam tree. The tree had been bent over in an ice storm several years ago, and never fully straightened, but a recent storm snapped off the top of the main trunk and about two thirds of the branches, as well as peeling off a very large ribbon of bark down the remaining part of the trunk. :( So that took an hour or so with a bow saw to cut up and tidy away, pending a garden fire when the temperatures are lower and the undergrowth more damp. The remainder of the tree is badly damaged, and will be attractive to fungus and insects, so that is going to have to be felled next winter.

Having cleared my way past the fallen hornbeam, I set about mowing, only to notice that a mature 80ft pine tree, surrounded by the grass, has died. So that is another thing to add to my project list for cooler days in the autumn or winter. :rolleyes: Luckily the dead tree is remote enough to not threaten any buildings, but it only died recently and so isn't in imminent danger of toppling.

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Always looking for wood, or sheep, you can borrow my chainsaw.

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I could use a hand, if you'd care to help out when you're in my neck of the woods. :) ..... You can take all the dead or fallen timber you can find back with you. :nod:

I have a serious pro-grade Husqvarna 272xp chainsaw (a replacement would run $900 incl tax), but I used an arborist's bow saw because it is razor sharp and therefore as quick as a chainsaw and no more tiring than wielding a chainsaw. In any case most of the branches I need to cut were no thicker than a drainpipe, many barely thicker than a broom handle.

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I will take that chain saw off your hands as you are not using it.

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I need it for the above-mentioned pine tree, and several other trees this winter. :nod:

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Afterwards?

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Whatever 2016 does to my trees.

I am not short of trees, and lose an average of approximately one pine per acre per year, and hardwoods at about half that rate.

Mother nature is replenishing them, though I try to weed out all the pine saplings.