Saturday June 28, 2014 Guerneville CA.
We do have some nice days around here
It was such a nice day out when I got it going this morning that I decided it would be a good day to stay home in the morning and do some projects around the place.
Watering the fruit trees
First off, I like to give my fruit trees some deep watering every once in awhile to help them grow and provide me with fresh fruit. I grew up around a lot of fruit trees and have always eaten a lot of fresh fruit off them all my life. As I’m getting older and allergic to all corn things, this is proving to be a blessing as it’s all corn free, so it benefits me big time to take care of these trees.
I’m watering some cherry trees in this picture. The tree on the left is a red heart plum tree, which has fruit on it now,and the ones on the right are Italian prunes a sort of plum that was once grown in this area, by who else, but he Italian’s that settled in this area. There’s a guy named Luther Burbank from Santa Rosa, CA. who also had a lot to do with propagating these trees on ranches in the early days. My understanding is Burbank and Armstrong, the guy the park is named after who once owned all the property in the upper Armstrong Valley was in cahoots together and that’s why there are a lot of types of fruit trees in this area. This has always been to my benefit. As a kid, I grew up eating good fruit and at that time would never think of buying any fruit. No need to, I already had the best, ripe, right off the tree fruit, there was to be had.
I needed to make a bracket
Once I got the water started, I started fabricating a bracket to support my skylight vent crank. I installed this new skylight last winter and it came with a hand crank. It also had a motorized kit I did not buy, but maybe I should have and still might if this doesn’t’ work out.
First, I found a piece of angle iron steel and cut about three inches of it off the large piece. I drilled a big hole in it large enough for the aluminum pipe that gets cranked, and a little bigger too. So iron doesn’t wear the aluminum pipe out, I coated the inside of the big hole with epoxy, which is drying in this picture of the bracket.
It took a longer time for the five minute epoxy to dry, but when it finally did I painted the bracket black with a few coats of spray on paint.
This is the black bracket mounted I made this morning, mounted for use. The clamp holds the pipe up on the bracket and I added a couple plastic washers for a bearing surface.
Backing out a bit, the mounted bracket with the hand crank shown here.
I opened it tonight to let the heat out and it seems to work ok. Much better than trying to get the end of it in the socket in the dark. It was a big hassle before I made the bracket.
A monumental task
The next thing I did was something monumental that I’ve been wanting to do for a couple years now, but just never got it going. I put a tarp out on the ground in front of my house and started putting all the old computer monitors and computers out on it to eventually get rid of. I still need to add a some boxes of little circuit boards and stuff before I call Goodwill to see if they’ll send out a truck to pick it up. I heard they will, or I will pack it off with my car, but at least it’s a start and out of the house. Of course, moving all that stuff out, left a lot of dust and dirt, which will have to wait to clean up. One thing at a time.
I covered up the computer stuff and hope it’s not a couple years before I have it hauled away. :O)
Thinking of going kayaking, but
It was afternoon now and I was thinking of going down to kayak at Jenner, so I got something to eat and had a little nap. When I went out in the yard to check the water, Marty and Patti came by for a visit so we sat around in the nice weather and shot the bull for a couple hours.
Cancel kayaking
Once they left, I needed another nap and after that decided to stay home and either go up and work on the water springs or dig on the great ditch. I decided to work on the springs tomorrow morning, so started digging on the great ditch.
Digging on the great ditch
As I was digging, I found that the ground was a bit hard and needed some more watering to soften it up. I dug a couple hours and finished about six feet and part of another six feet, before giving it up and putting the water soaker back on it.
I dug from the yellow shovel on today, not very far, but it’s progress. I used the chair a lot too.
During my breaks while digging the ditch I would go over to the apricot tree and eat a few cots as they are starting to ripen up.
That was a productive day.
