Pruning Continues At The Bamboo Lagoon

Happy pruned Japanese maple

We are in the midst of some heavy smoke from local wildfires, and this has limited how much outdoor activity can occur. A couple of days before our most recent yardwaste pickup, I was able to get out and prune the little Japanese maple we have in front. It had a lot of growth sprouting from the top, throwing the shape off and then the branches were getting too long at the bottom so that it was touching the ground, which is not healthy for these little guys. So I took to it with the clippers and I am sure the pruning has made it feel so much better.

Broken branch

As you know from other posts, we have two Purple Plum trees in the yard. One in back and one in front. This year, for some reason, there is an abundance of plums on the front one, to the point that the branches are very heavily weighed down. I have been picking the plums as fast as I can and continue to be surprised that the birds haven't beaten me to them. I have been worried for a while that we would lose a branch or two (we actually lost one while I was out of town in June, and the plums weren't even ripe yet). The image to the left is what I saw when I came around the house this morning while working on some other things in the yard. At some point during the night, we lost a relatively large branch on one side of the tree. I was pretty sure it was due to four legged critters during the night, and this was confirmed by fur evidence on the tree trunk and the on the branch.

We really needed to mow while we had a small reprieve from the smoke for a few days, but obviously that wasn't going to happen with the branch hanging down, and I didn't want to the branch completely off the tree until I had salvaged what I could plum-wise. So I went indoors to get a colander and a bowl for picking, and proceeded to pick and pick and pick from both the tree and the broken branch until I felt that the waste had been reduced. I then proceeded to prune the branch off, cutting it into small bits while I went so as to not make a huge mess, and get it all into the yardwaste bin for the next pickup. While I had all the tools out, I pruned some of the rest of the tree to hopefully avoid more breakage, and tackled a few other spots in the yard where suckers were coming up.

Thank goodness these are yard shorts

After all the pruning was done, I got the mower out and started the fun task of mowing our very hilly front yard. I should mention that it was about 97 degrees out, and I hadn't eaten in 5 hours. I was only a few mins into the mowing when I could feel that I desperately needed to eat but I was determined to knock it out first. The way our yard is, I have figured out that it is easiest to start at the top, do all of it, and then mow in downward strokes over the edge of the hill to get the steepest parts done from the top. This requires letting the mower go as far as I can reach while still standing firmly at the top of the yard, and then using lots of upper body strength to pull the mower back up towards me to start over again a few inches over. While doing this, part of the time, I am under the plum tree. There were a lot of plums on the ground. On this wonderful occasion, my feet slipped on the plums right when the mower was at the farthest point away from me...and down I went onto my butt in a pile of overripe plums. The mower pulled me down the hill a bit, but I was able to get up, find sturdy ground, pull it back up towards me, all without letting go of the handle so it stayed on. I had to mow the rest of the yard with my butt looking like this but that is okay.

Once I was done, even though I was shaking with hunger, I felt a great sense of accomplishment because I knocked out everything I planned to do and the yard looked so much better. You can see in this pick that the plum tree looks kind of funny at the top, but that is because the heavy branches are still leaning to the sides. I was only able to prune off some of the lower stuff. Once the upper plums are eaten or drop on their own, the nice round shape will return.

Additional Tidbits

There is a certain level of motivation that I think hits all of us when we have company coming to visit. At least I know it happens to me...and this is beyond the just wanting to clean up and have things look neat motivation. This is the let's get some shiite done motivation!

I have mentioned before that we had a substantial amount of water damage done to the house by the totally slacking property management company last year. I do realize that I have yet to actually post about that event but I have mentioned it in a few posts that I have put up here.

Anyhow, the downstairs bathroom was one of the most damaged parts of the house and is the only guest bathroom in the house. We lost the floor, several walls, 1/2 of the ceiling, insulation, and a huge 95 inch vanity that ran the length of one wall. We reinstalled the insulation and had the drywall and texturing done right away but paint, floors and vanity have been on the To Do list for some time.

 

The floor and vanity kind of rely on each other depending on what kind of vanity and what kind of flooring is being put in. It was looking more and more like we were going to be putting in a footed vanity rather than a kickplated vanity so reality is, flooring will have to be done first, but with a sale and a discount, this vanity was purchased and put into place temporarily so guests would have a place to put toiletries even if they couldn't use the sink. I hope to get it plumbed at least until we get ready to paint and do the floors so that it can be used soon. Right now, the knobs aren't installed, the top is not secured down and the faucet is not installed. Will get everything done but the top being secured since it will be easier to move it later with the top off.

Second little bug that got tackled was the painting of several covers around the house. Two of the exhaust van covers that can't be replaced with new, the doorbell cover and the intake vent cover all needed to be painted white and put back into place so there wouldn't be any gaping holes around the house. It took a couple of coats of spray paint to get all of the tan to white but they look much better now installed where they are supposed to be.

Little Tidbits At The Bamboo Lagoon

I have stalled out on a few things lately. Part of it is my weird brain and the mentality that each project relies on the completion of another project first and that in turn relies on another project which just keeps piling up until I practically get nothing done.

Yesterday, I decided I was going to knock out a few things regardless of what other projects were looming ahead because I was just sick of it.

Table assembled

So I started by vacuuming the entire upper floor (because I needed to use the vacuum in one of the projects downstairs and didn't want to drag it up and down the stairs more than I had to). Then I vacuumed the entire downstairs. I moved some projects that aren't going to be completed in the next week, into a closet to get them out of my way.

I put together this old 50's style table that has been sitting in pieces in one of the extra rooms so I could use it if necessary. Part of the reason it wasn't put together before this was because I need to paint that room and moving the table in and out of the room to paint is

Small window with blind

harder when it is put together, but since the painting isn't going to happen this week, I decided to forge on. The screws in the table were older flathead screws and one of them was missing so I made a run at lunchtime to our local hardware store to replace all the screws with Phillips Head screws so I could use the cordless drill instead of putting all 24 of them in by hand. While I was out, I picked up a healthy sandwich from the co-op for lunch.

Big window with blind

I rehung the two sets of blinds that I had repaired and cleaned a few months ago. Once again, the reason I hadn't done this before was due to wanting to paint the rooms that they are going in, but I am tired of not having the blinds up so I just put them up. Taking them down for painting won't be that big of a deal later. I had to replace one of the hanger clips on the larger blind but fortunately, I had an extra from the shop I had them fixed at.

I cleaned up the second of our extra rooms downstairs and put in the mats and the weight bench that has been sitting in the garage since last fall. Once again, painting was the reason this had not been done but I was sick of not having room in the
garage, and not being able to use the weight bench where it was. Hopefully this will motivate me to get back to weight lifting too. The downstairs of the house (because it is a split level) is much cooler than any other part of the house so that will be nice for exercising.

Pullup bar

I also installed in the doorway to that room the Perfect Pullup bar that I had purchased a while back. It isn't a good spot for someone that wants to do "real" pullups because of the low ceiling in that room in particular but because I
can't do real pullups yet (and J is not here to do them), I figure it will work for me doing the alternative methods until I get stronger. Once real pullups are required by one or both of us, we can move it to the other door frame where there is more ceiling clearance.

I am hoping that this motivation continues for a bit so I can continue to knock out a few things that have been lingering. Feels good to knock some niggling things off the list.

Sprinkler Issues

Old diaphragm

Well, it seems I spoke too quick.

While over 700 miles away, I get a text from our neighbor that our sprinklers are shooting water straight into the air in the middle of the day, which is not on the schedule. She let it run for a bit thinking the timer would turn it off and when it didn't, she thankfully came over and turned off the valve to the front yard system and spigot. Of course it was about 800 degrees here while we were gone too...

I am sure that the old diaphragm died...thought we would get one more week out of it, and we didn't. So I looked up the sprinkler people online, and called their supplier to order three diaphragms thinking we might as well replace all of them at once. They haven't come yet and I am starting to get worried since we can't water in the front at all unless by watering can.

Oh, and while the gushers were going, which of course I can't determine anything about yet, a lot of bark in one of the beds got washed out...more fun work to do...LOL. I am hoping that there is not another leak in the system somewhere else...

Update: Now that I think about it, we do have a spigot in the garage, I might see if it is still functioning with the front turned off, because I could put in a rotating sprinkler for the front in a few spots. Especially if the delivery doesn't come today. Have to wait until it gets shady in front though...

Functioning Sprinklers

One of the large popups

Okay, it seems that we have a fully functioning auto sprinkler system in the front yard. I don't have it set exactly as I want it but it will do for now. I still need to order the diaphragms for the valves but right now, none of them seem to be leaking so I am not super worried about that just yet.

So the other day, after my trip to Ewing and the packed full brain of all the info that they gave me, I replaced all the sprinklers that I had purchased replacement parts for, and I put the old diaphragm back into the valve so that I could turn the system on and find the rest of the missing popups.

New small popups

I figured out pretty quick that I didn't have the big popups in right because they were both watering the street instead of the lawn but I was able to just grab them and "ratchet" them around like the folks at Ewing had told me.

While the sprinklers were on, I ran through the yard with my homemade markers and found the missing small popups as well as three more that I didn't even know about. I marked them all and made another trip to Ewing for more small popups.

While running the system again, I also realized that some of the small popups I got were

Blue tape marks the spot

spraying way farther than I needed them too, so I traded 5 of them in for smaller distance heads.

Today, I dug up all the remaining marked popups that needed to be replaced and went through and replaced each one. Some of the popups were so buried in vegetation that I had to cut them out a little hole to see through. They are clear enough to pop up but I will need to clear more vegetation if I want them to spray as far as they are supposed to.

New guts and head

I then turned on the system to see if I had them set the way I wanted. I realized when I was working on the last one that the system was installed in 2000-2001 timeframe when I think the sod for the front yard was done. Make sense that some of them have tilted a bit with the growth of the yard. I got soaked while figuring out the settings for each head but it kind of felt good since we had a close to 90 degree day today.

Once I was sure they were all spraying the way that I wanted them to, I set the auto system up to water on odd numbered days so it should water tomorrow morning, and I'll know if it is working as it should on a schedule. Fingers crossed that it all functions as it should.