Posts That Didn't Make It
I keep coming up with ideas for posts and then not having a whole lot to say (or, in a few cases, none of the photos to illustrate, on account of how it got all dark here all of a sudden). So today: a collection of posts too brief to make it out on their own.
Poppy-Planting Season
In Northern California, we are planting poppies right now (or we ought to be). I have been fairly lazy about starting them from seed, so I bought some nice ones from Annie's and put them in among the ornamental cabbages (which are going along nicely). This weekend I think I will change the anti-stomp fencing around, to block off the entire poppy bed and aid in their survival, but so far the dogs seem to be concentrating on destroying the poor daylilies before they get a chance to put out fall foliage.
That is a Whole LOT of Concrete
Last week I was doing some calculations for the number of sacks of concrete mix required for the shed slab. 102,000 cubic inches of concrete required, which is about 59 cubic feet, and each 80lb sack makes... 0.6 cubic feet of concrete. A hundred sacks.
It turns out that you can get it delivered by the pallet-load, with about 40 sacks per pallet. I did consider having a truck come, but that's just slightly over two yards, and either we kill ourselves and all the plantings wheelbarrowing it back, or we'd need to get it pumped, which would be $RIDICULOUS, so it's not going to happen.
The premixed stuff is $3 a bag, roughly, so I'd expect that with delivery it would come out to under $500, a number much closer to my budget for this shed (I wanted to stay under $1000 for the whole thing).
Making Mulch
I've been slacking on stealing leaves, because it's been either really hot or really cold, and I am not a temperature extremes kind of person. I should get back on that, except that tomorrow is, like, Halloween, and I might have more urgent matters to attend to than leaf hoarding.
Sunday I pruned the lavender hard. I ended up with the little red wagon stacked five feet high, and then Noel and I went to grind it all up in the chipper. Alas, the blades on the chipper appear to be completely dull -- indeed, they appear to have shipped that way, which would explain the troubles we had with the previous grinding session. My plan is to pull them out and sharpen them, and also the blades on my secateurs (much dulled from pruning the lavender). At the same time I may sharpen the shovels, which is always fun, even though it lasts for like five minutes. Once I get started on sharpening things, I have a hard time stopping.
Warm
It's really nice having all the heat hooked up again, now that the weather has gone from obscenely hot to AUTUMN overnight. We should go get a can of spray-insulation and seal up that gap around the edges of the parlours, though.
A Clarification on the Concept of the Ten Year Plan
For some reason, people who visit here seem to think we are only going to take ten years to finish this renovation. That is probably not correct. For one thing, we didn't even come up with the Ten Year Plan until we'd lived here for two years.
Basically, the idea of the Ten Year Plan is to try to do as much work as we could before we got to things that really had to be done as large projects (like dealing with our problematic floors) or that should all be done together (adding two bedrooms on upstairs). We made a big huge list of projects we wanted to do, then grouped them simply into one-offs like removing wood paneling and whole-house projects like the flooring. When we were done, we had about ten years of projects that were one-offs, and it seemed to make sense to think that by then I'd be out of school and we might have the income to hire people for some of the whole-house stuff.
But will we actually do it then? Depends on a lot of variables. Construction and renovation are like that: there's not much you can predict about where you will be in seven years.
What Next?
People keep asking us what we're going to do next, so here's a quick list of what we're planning on doing in roughly the right order:
- Shed: foundation and construction
- Parlours: repair/complete plastering, paint
- Kitchen: some pantry re-arrangement and building another counter
- Landscaping: install irrigation plumbing
- Dining Room: get rid of the wood paneling
We are obviously biting off more than we can chew, but that should keep us occupied through the winter.
Winter Earthworks
I've decided to postpone major winter earthworks projects for another year in order to have time and energy to work with what I have. I am not ordering any more trees this fall, nor any roses. When the roses already here go dormant, I will be loosening them up and making a double hedge (bushes 18 inches apart in two rows three feet apart), and then the Mme. Alfred rose will be moved to the back fence, then I will fuss with the hydrangeas some more until spring, when I think they will go in the ground. That should be plenty of back-breaking labour out in the freezing rain. Besides, we still can't figure out what to do with only two quinces, so let's be a little more mellow on the fruit tree front, eh?
I'm also going to be busy killing the Bermuda out front and working on the streetscape with our neighbor, who volunteered to help out with the heavy work. We have a great neighborhood.
posted by ayse on 10/30/06