While doing my rounds this morning, I got to enjoy some lovely wildflowers.
I’m counting the cranberries as wild, since they are self-sown. ;-)
There is a path of flowers running along the south fence that my mother sowed many years ago and have been taking care of themselves, ever since. They’re doing much better, now that we’ve cleared that fence line as much as we have. The white flower in the first photo is the first of these to bloom; there are several more of them budding, and lots of buds on another type with purple flowers that look like they will be blooming, soon.
I don’t know what that tiny purple flower growing in the moss is. The flower looks like a miniature bearded iris!
The wild roses are blooming nicely, but on one of them – just one – I found this.
I’m used to seeing caterpillars eating the plants. Not beetles!
My daughters reminded me to check out the patch of nettles growing near the barn door into the hay yard, to see some caterpillars they found.
A few of the nettles are covered with these caterpillars. They’re not the canker worms I expected, and am more used to seeing around here, like these ones. I’ve just been looking them up and my memory was correct; cankerworms have a preference for trees, like maple and elm. They can also be incredibly destructive. About every 10 years or so, their populations explode and cause a lot of problems. In between those explosions, we don’t see them all that much at all.
These guys, from what I can find, may be the caterpillars for any of three different butterflies. None of the photos I’ve been able to find are helping much to identify them properly, but they could be Red Admiral, Tortoiseshell or Peacock butterfly caterpillars.
So… these are good things to have.
I hope!
Also, it’s not a good idea to walk through a nettle patch while wearing shorts. Especially after getting clawed up by kittens.
We are, however, supposed to get really hot today. As I write this, we’ve already reached 28C, with a “real feel” of 33C. (82F/91F). Thunderstorms are on the way, though from the weather radar, it looks like they’ll miss us. The system seems to be getting pushed up from the south a lot more than I usually see, and it looks like the storms are going to hit to the north of us. Other provinces have already been hit with severe storms, with golf ball sized hail and flash flooding. It’s been really crazy to see videos people have posted online. I don’t expect to be getting any of that here, though the high winds did bring down another, somewhat larger dead branch this morning. Nothing near any buildings, thankfully.
Basically, I’d managed to clear around an old tree stump, and not much else, before being driven indoors by the heat.
This time, I brought out the reciprocating saw to take down some of the larger things, including cutting the stumps of what I’d cleared before, to ground level.
One of the issues we have with using the outside plug is, even the weight of the cord itself tends to pulled it out enough to kill the power.
Today, I tried a solution that worked out just fine.
This pole used to have a bird feeder on it. I took the feeder off to repair it, but with the lilac growing over it, I don’t see use putting it back in this location again. At some point, we’ll pull it out, but for now, it’s coming in handy! :-D
Here is how the area I worked on looks now.
The branches in front, on top of a stump, are for the chipping/burn pile. I cleared as far back as the next stump.
This turned out to be a very finicky job. I kept having to pull things out by hand, like crab grass and small saplings growing out the roots of things I’d cut away last year, then raking out debris, just to get at the larger things I needed to cut down.
In the process, I uncovered a bunch of flowers. I don’t know what they’re called, but I’m finding them kind of all over the place.
I also uncovered these.
There are quite a lot of these very delicate little wildflowers! I tried not to pull any up as I cleared debris from around them.
Further in is where more cherry trees are. None of which have bloomed, that I ever saw. You can see on the right of this photo, the cherry trees that were killed off last spring, when we had a sudden drop in temperatures after they started blooming. They got fresh growth from their bases. I think I have identified one or two in this area that look like they are strong and healthy enough to keep. The rest will be taken out.
Meanwhile, covering the left half of the photo, berries are starting to form on what I believe are chokecherries!
These are pieces of cherry wood that I will be keeping for future projects.
This is the pile of debris I cleared away from that small area!
We’ve started a pile behind the old outhouse, of what is turning out to be a tree debris compost pile. Stuff that we don’t want to add to the chipping/burning piles, but that don’t belong in the compost pile, either.
When we get to the point where we will be building accessible raised bed gardens, debris like this will be used on the bottoms of the beds to help fill them.
It’s remarkable how much stuff came out of such a small area!
When next I work on this area, I want to start on the other side of where we want to put the cordwood outhouse, clearing more towards the junk/wood pile. There’s at least one old tree stump in there, plus fallen trees that need to be cleared out.
Those might end up being part of the walls of the outhouse! :-)
I’d like to be able to access the junk pile better, so we can go through it and see what wood in there can be salvaged, what needs to be added to the debris pile, and what needs to go into the junk pile that will be hauled to the dump.
There are two Saskatoons and an elm growing on that side. We’ll have to decide which, if any or all, of these will be kept.
There’s also a mound of… soil? beside it. I’d like to get rid of it, but it’s got a layer of grasses growing on it right now, so I can’t tell what it’s actually made up of. The other mystery pile out by the barn turned out to be a pile of insulation. I’m kind hoping this one is something like gravel, or even just dirt.
The goal at this point, though, it just to clear access to the junk pile, then get back to clearing the space the outhouse will be built on, and start clearing out the sod.
I’m happy to have gotten at least a little bit or progress in there today!
My daughters and I headed out towards the barn last night, and noticed the dogwood growing at the shed with the roof my brother and I patched is now blooming very enthusiastically!
It is such a strong, healthy bush! I’m hoping I can get away with leaving it alone, even though it’s growing right up against the shed. Unlike the maples growing along the side, I don’t think dogwood will grow in a way that will actively damage the shed.
While doing my rounds this morning, I noticed the Saskatoon bushes by the south fence have once again become infested. :-(
This is some sort of insect damage, and almost all the Saskatoon bushes along this area show some signs of it. Last year, there were very few Saskatoon berries, partly because the bushes were just not very healthy, and I believe this infestation is the reason. It doesn’t seem to be on any other type of tree around there, so whatever insect is doing this, they seem to have a preference for Saskatoons.
For the first time since noticing that something has been killing off sunflower seedlings, I found one where the leaves were still there. All the others, there was just a stub of a stem sticking out, and the leaflets were completely gone.
With a few other areas, I don’t expect any seedlings to break ground. The spots they were planted in appear to have been dug into by some critter. It may even have been skunks digging in the only soft soil in the area, looking for grubs, though the holes don’t look like the divots they usually leave in the yard.
My mother’s white lilacs, meanwhile, are at the peak of their blooming period!
Meanwhile, we had covered the squashes and cantaloupes last night, as the temperatures were expected to drop close to freezing. There was no frost warning, but it would still have been cold enough to hurt the squash and cantaloupes. They all looked just fine, when I uncovered them this morning. I’m glad we covered them. It got cold enough last night, that the furnace actually turned on!
After this, we aren’t expected to have temperatures that low again as far as the long range forecasts go. Hopefully, that will be the end of that!
Of course, I looked around at anything I could see to try and figure out why it stopped. The only thing I couldn’t do is look under it, because we can’t see under there without lifting it or removing things, and it’s too heavy to lift more than a corner. It’s not something we can just pick up at one end/side and tilt, either, due to the design.
So I pushed it into the garage and left it. The plan for mowing still involves using the push mower to get into areas the riding mower can’t, so I saw no issue with letting it wait until the end of the month, when we were already planning to take it in for some general TLC.
Then I got an email from my brother. He had needed to pick up a ball hitch, so he’d bought an extra one for out riding mower. This way, we can use it to pull the trailer, when that’s all fixed up.
In my response, I mentioned what happened with the riding mower.
Well, my brother – being the awesome person that he is – decided to pop over today. They were already on the way when my SIL phoned us to let us know they’d be going straight to the garage, and not going to the house (practicing physical distancing for my husband’s health), to install the ball hitch and check out the riding mower.
By the time I realized they were here and joined my brother at the garage, he was already done installing the ball hitch. He had also given the mower a once over, and couldn’t see anything wrong. Since I was there, he asked me to give it a try, while he watched. So I pushed it out of the garage, first, then tried starting it.
It wouldn’t start.
Then my brother noticed I forgot to turn the shut off valve on the fuel line. :-D He turned it for me.
Which is when he saw it.
The wheel was almost off the axle!!!
The back wheels are held in place by a bolt that runs through the axle, like a pin. We had to look at the other side to even remember what it was supposed to look like.
We propped the corner of the mower up on whatever we could find to support the weight, and my brother managed to hammer the wheel back on. Then he tried to make sure that the holes were still lined up.
They were, but the narrow screw he was using to check, couldn’t go through.
This was the culprit.
This was still stuck inside.
So, somewhere in our lawn, is the head of a bolt, and a nut, still on the other end of the bolt.
After much scrounging in the garage by all of us, my brother found another nut and bolt the right size, and got it on.
Once that was all fixed, he got me to test it out again.
The mower runs fine now.
Basically, once the wheel got loose, the mower acted as if it were in neutral, regardless of what gear it was in. When I stopped the mower to talk to my daughter, my getting on and off of it must have loosened the wheel just enough to trigger this.
Which is awesome, because if it didn’t have that fail safe, I would have kept on going right up until the wheel fell off, never realizing there was a problem. Just pushing it to the garage is probably why it was as far off the axle as it was. If my brother hadn’t picked up a hitch and decided to come over to install it, we likely would not have discovered it, until it fell off as we moved it around to load it into the van at the end of the month.
Neither of us had even thought to check the wheels as a reason the mower stopped moving. The only reason my brother spotted it at all, was because I’d forgotten about the shut off valve on the fuel line, and he turned it for me. That’s when he could see the bright, shiny, silver part of the axle that no longer had wheel over it. It I had turned it from my seated position, I wouldn’t have seen it. If it had been the other wheel, neither of us would have seen it.
Sometimes, it amazes me when so many tiny things line up like that.
The awesome thing is, my brother has once again saved the day! :-D The riding mower moves again.
I also got to see my SIL for the first time in way too long. She is allergic to cats, so we were planning to visit their place for a change, when the pandemic lockdowns started and all such plans went poof. So it was really, really great to be able to see them both. I just wish it could have been for longer!
And for just a visit, and not to fix yet another thing. :-D
My plans to continue mowing and, hopefully, reclaiming more overgrown areas nice and early got delayed a bit. We had an unusually heavy dew this morning, and cooler temperatures kept it from evaporating until well into the afternoon.
However, progress was made!
Remember this area?
I hiked up the lawnmower, and was able to clear the area all the way to the storage building around behind the pump shack that’s in the photo.
Eventually, I will continue on beyond this, making access to the back gate, but for today, I focused on the area around the maples.
The last time any of this area was NOT overgrown was when the renter’s cows discovered his electric fence wasn’t working, and broke through.
Two years ago.
By the time they finished grazing, the entire outer yard looked awesome! :-D
When I was a kid, the fence to the inner yard at this location was on the other side of the maple trees. There was a small gate near the pump shack, for when we went to get water for the house, or took baths with water heated on a wood burning cookstove that used to be in there. When the chain link fence was installed, it was done in a straight line, rather than turning a corner to include the trees.
I miss having a gate there!
I had to be really careful working through here. I’ve tried to keep up on removing any fallen branches over the past couple of years, but knew there had to be more, hidden in the tall grass. Plus, who knows what else would show up.
Like the lone brick I found, half buried in the dirt.
Thankfully, raising the lawnmower meant I didn’t hit many of the larger buried branches, like the one in the photo above, that I pulled out of the thatch.
It’s only a start. We’ll have to go through the area to clear out any other branches and whatnot that is still buried in there, prune back the trees (there is now lilac growing in the space we used to walk through to get to the pump shack), and get in there with a weed trimmer. Some of the trees have fence wire around them, though one of them is just a stump that has some suckers growing out of it. Since we don’t have to protect the trees from cows, I want to clear away the wire, and salvage it for something else.
I’ve been wanting to get into this area for the last two summers! It feels so good to finally start cleaning it up. :-)
Well, it’s a good thing I was planning on using the push mower more.
While using the riding mower in the inner yard today, I stopped at one point, to go over to talk to my daughter, who was using the push mower. When I returned to the riding mower, it started just fine, but wouldn’t move. !! There were no issues at all before. One minute, it was working fine. The next, no go. Forward or reverse.
Well, we were planning to take it in for Maintenance next month, anyhow…
After doing most of the inner yard, I switched to cutting the outer yard, as there was so much of it that hasn’t been done at all this year. I quickly stopped using the bag to collect grass clippings. It filled so quickly, and the mower just doesn’t like to restart very well.
That did mean I was able to reclaim more areas of the outer yard.
For the first time since we’ve moved here, I was able to clear the area in front of this old shed.
Do you see where the colour changes from nice and green, to more brown?
While the clippings blur the line a bit, there is a clear demarcation where the colour changes. The brown is where I had not been able to mow, until today. Where I’d been able to mow for the past couple of years, the grass is green, thick and healthy. Where I hadn’t been able to get in with the riding mower (and it’s so rough, I still won’t be able to use it there), the grass was choked out by its own thatch.
I’ve now been able to reclaim pretty much all of the outer yard on this side, and I’ve started to reclaim the area leading to the collapsing log house and chicken coop.
I feel like I should have been making hay! The grass was starting to go to seed.
I will work on this area tomorrow, weather willing. With the push mower, I’ll be able to reclaim even more of the outer yard, little by little. I’ll be mowing a path to the other gate, as before, but will have to be very careful as I go beyond what I’d been able to do with the riding mower. Who knows what is hiding in that tall grass! Rocks and rough ground is one thing, but there could be chunks of wood, metal and small kitchen appliances, for all we can tell.
Since I was walking back and forth so much, I took advantage of it and opened up Pokemon Go on my phone. There is a feature in the game where you have a “buddy” Pokemon that walks with you. While it is your buddy, the game records distance, even when the game is not active. After you walk a certain number of kilometers, your buddy “finds” a candy.
The buddy I have right now is a Meltan. While most buddies need to be walked for 2, 5 or 10 km before finding a candy, Meltan needs to be walked for 20km. Once a candy is found, the meter restarts for the next 20km.
Based on the distance measured in the game, I walked at least 12 km this afternoon. And that doesn’t count the distance this morning.
My phone came with one of those “health” apps that I can turn off, but can’t get rid of. These apps irritate me, since they all basically measure “health” as “lose weight”. It doesn’t matter how good your other health measures are, or how much exercise you get, if you haven’t lost weight, you’re a failure. It does, however, have a pedometer. I’m curious to know just how many kilometers I am actually walking while doing basic yard work.
My brother, being the wonderful person that he is, came over to remove the rusted out screws on the trailer frame with an angle grinder.
I told him about the box for an angle grinder I’d found in the garage. The one with human teeth in it. He figures that is probably the strangest thing we’ve found, since moving out here! Though I admit, there are some things that are still competing for that top spot.
I had to pop over to the house while he was working on the trailer frame, and he was done by the time I came back! I did find one that he’d missed, though, so I was able to get a picture of him working on it. :-D
He also removed the remains of old lights at the end, and cut the bolts of a piece in the corner that had been twisted completely around. That corner that you see? Where those squarish marks are? There used to be a sort of bumper there, with a piece on the frame below the bolt hole at the very end. The piece is still there. It’s just now on the inside, instead of the outside.
Some of the old screws he took off still had their heads on them. They were hex screws. Totally the wrong kind of screw for the job.
After he was done, he showed me how to use the self drilling screws I picked up, and we took measurements. Exactly 2 sheets of plywood will fit on there, but we will need to cut openings for the tires and make some sort of fenders.
It is now ready for cleaning and rust removal and, if all goes well, painting.
Then he surprised me.
He had ulterior motives for coming out. He didn’t drive all that way just to take off a few screws for me.
The shed next to the barn, where we found the table saw, has holes in it. I believe it was last year, or maybe our first year here, I’d helped him cover holes on one side, but we weren’t able to do more at the time.
It’s been bugging him, ever since.
We still have sheets of metal roofing in the barn, left over from when the barn itself, and other buildings, had them installed.
Note the piece of equipment with the board leaning on the tank. I’ll have more to say about that, later.
On the left is what we put on last year. We actually dragged them out from a pile outside the barn, and one of them had a piece cut out of it.
On the right, my brother has already covered one hole with a short piece. None of the pieces we had were long enough to cover the whole length, so he put short pieces along the bottom, first, so there would be an overlap.
The scary part was having to go to the peak of the roof and unscrew that top cap, so he could slide the panels under it. He screwed a scrap of plywood we found in the barn down first. There was no way he could have climbed to the top without it.
This was interesting.
There are three types of shingles on here, and so much of one type has blown away, we can see what are likely the original shingles.
What an interesting diamond shape! That roof must have looked great, when it was new!
Here is how the roof looked, at the end.
Bits and pieces, cobbled together, but who cares what it looks like? No more gaping holes!
My brother is just screwing down some pieces of metal we found in the barn that could be used as top caps. After that, he put in more screws as far as he could reach from the ladder, so the winds won’t catch and blow them off.
It was very, very dangerous up there. That ladder on the right was the best place to get up there, but there were tree branches in the way, making it even more dangerous. Once he was safely at the top, I went and grabbed a saw and cut away almost half the tree (one tree at the base, two trunks up the sides).
I’m keeping that wood for future carving!
My brother is really, really awesome. We spent hours out there, working on it, and I couldn’t do much more than pass him things, and hold the ladder for him.
Remember that piece of equipment by the building?
Thanks to ladder holding, I was looking at it from angles I hadn’t, before. I asked my brother if he knew was it was. It belonged to our late brother, and has been sitting there for at least 10 years.
After looking it over, we figured it out.
It’s a boiler system for steam cleaning.
The boiler itself is pretty amazing.
There should be a cover on that round opening.
Just look on the date on that thing!
It had to have been salvaged from somewhere. I wonder if my late brother built it? He certainly had the skills to do it.
The fuel tank is actually part of the trailer frame! On the left, you can see the fender over one of the tires.
Both tires are flat, which is why this end is resting on the ground.
The white tank in front would have held the water. It was most likely used to steam clean culverts or something like that.
That boiler isn’t the only old object of interest we talked about.
As we were putting everything away and getting ready to leave the barn, my brother pointed at a metal object on the floor and told me to make sure to keep that. I had no idea what it was.
It turned to be part of an antique hand pump for a well. A wooden handle would have been attached to it. I was told there was another one, but my mother had sold it to a scrap dealer, years ago.
*sigh*
After all this, my brother couldn’t even stay for lunch. Our mother was expecting him, and by the time we were done, he barely had time to come into the house and say hello to the rest of the family!
Have I mentioned my brother is amazing?
I don’t know what we would do without him! No one living knows this place better than he does! And certainly no one else in the family has the tools, skills and knowledge – not to mention physical ability – to do stuff like this. It’s been many years, since I was physically able to go up on a roof like that! Of course, being a woman of ample proportions, I would have gone straight through a roof in that condition, with or without a sheet of plywood to climb on!
So that was a whole lot of hours in the sun, but the job is done. My brother figures, this probably added about 10 years to the life of the building.
Well. On this side, maybe. The other side probably won’t last that long, and I think we’re out of metal roofing material to do that side, anyhow! It doesn’t get the brunt of the weather, though, the way the side we covered did.
What a job!
While I may not need to do it this year, I should cut the rest of that tree down. It would be a shame to work so hard to preserve the shed from the top, only to have it wrecked from the bottom. The tree is growing right out from under a wall!
My new “toys” came in today – I wasn’t expecting them until next week!
I got myself a beginners wood carving set. :-) With all the interesting woods we’ve been pruning and clearing away, there are all sorts of things I’d rather be doing with them, rather than burning them or having them chipped.
I have no plans to carve figurines or anything like that; that’s just not my thing. But to carve small, useful things, like spoons, spreaders, tiny bowls and the like is right up my alley!
This kit includes safety gloves, three carving knives, including a curved knife for cutting bowls, a leather strop and polishing compound to use on it, and sand paper in a range of grits. Plus, a spoon blank to practice on!
I actually plan to use a piece of scrap wood to practice cuts on, before I start on the spoon blank.
Of course, I’ve been looking up how to use these, and noticed I would need a couple other things. One was a breastplate, so I can safely brace the wood against my chest as I work. My darling husband has already filled that need. He had some heavy leather scraps and glued a couple of pieces together to make an even thicker piece, and cut a couple of holes in the top corners. All I need now is some sturdy cord to put through the holes so I can hang it around my neck. So I now have a very strong, purple breastplate to use! The other thing is something I will need for when I want to carve bowls, and that’s a particular type of chisel to cut away waste wood. The curved blade in the kit is sufficient to carve spoon bowls, and while I will likely be keeping things small – at least for the first while – I will still want to go bigger than a spoon! Plus, I think I have some pieces that might make great cups, and for that, I definitely will want something more appropriate to chisel away the waste wood.
Well, today ended up a bit going off plan, but we still got a couple of things off the to-do list for outside.
The main one being, the broken flexible hose for the sump pump has been replaced!
This is what the connection looked like, before I started.
After talking to my brother, I was confident there wouldn’t be any weird surprises when I took off the flexible hose.
The first order of business was to make sure the pump wouldn’t go off while I was working on it. The reservoir was pretty full, so I lifted the float to trigger the pump and let it drain before unplugging the pump.
My brother had suggested I might want to push the pipe from the inside, through the opening to maybe add a bit of length on the outside. The pipe is so snug in there, though, that it wouldn’t budge. Which told me I wouldn’t need to have one of my daughters in the basement to brace it while I was attaching things on the outside, at least!
Once I took the flexible hose off, I could see that the batting or whatever that is, and the rest of the hose, was wrapped in a thick later of electric tape.
I started taking that off and found…
… something that looked… almost like fabric? Canvas??
It turned out to be hockey tape. Several layers of it.
I got all the old tape and the batting-looking-stuff off and discovered…
… the end of the pipe had a big ole crack.
I guess that’s why it was taped so thoroughly, and why a larger hose was added over it.
I wonder. If the previous hose had indeed been wrecked by someone running over it with a lawn mower, it’s possible the hose was yanked hard enough to crack the pipe at this end, too.
I cut off the cracked part, which didn’t leave a whole lot of pipe sticking out the wall. I did try and push more through from the basement, but didn’t seem to accomplish anything.
The next thing to do was clean up the inside of the pipe, then use the connector piece the guy at the hardware store picked out for me, in case I needed to attach the two hose kits to each other.
Pushing the connector into the pipe did finally start moving the pipe through the opening – making it shorter, of course, but not enough that I couldn’t get it done. I brought out a hair drier to soften the plastic of the pipe, which made pushing the connector the rest of the way in much easier.
That didn’t quite work with the flexible hose part. I could get it through the flat part easily enough, but once the end started to go into the flexible rings, it just wouldn’t go any further.
So I tightened the clamps as it was. It really should be closer together, but I know the important parts of the connector are through to the flexible rings of the hose and, together with the clamp, that should be enough. We’ll just have to keep an eye on it, to see if it leaks. If it does, I should just need to tighten the clamps a bit more. I put a container under the connections, so if it does leak, I’ll be able to see water in the container.
Next, I ran the hose down the side of the house.
There is adequate space along the house to tuck it under, so it won’t be in the way at all. It’s also being held in place by a shelf, garbage can and rain barrel along it’s length. The brick was just a little extra to hold it in place, closer to the pipe.
The hose reaches several feet into the old kitchen garden. I would have preferred an extra foot or two, but this should be fine. If we find it needs to be further from the sun room’s foundation, we can always get another connector and attach the hose from the spare kit onto it.
Once it was all done, the sump pump was plugged back in, but so far it hasn’t had to go off, yet. I’ll be sure to check on it, later today.
While I was working on this, the girls dragged the table saw out of the old shed we’d found the door in and brought it by the house. They plugged it in and turned it on and YES!!! It works!
It is currently sitting in the sun room. We won’t be able to work on the replacement door for the sun room today, as I’d planned. It likely won’t be worked on tomorrow, either.
Oh, I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here, yet. My husband got a call from the cardiac clinic in the city a couple of weeks ago. When they cancelled all appointments, they were looking to June for rescheduling. It seems they were no where near as busy with the Wuhan virus as they expected, and could start re-booking earlier. The appointment is early tomorrow afternoon, but he and I will be leaving in the late morning.
I have to figure out what to do after I drop him off, though, as I will not be allowed to go in with him, as normal. Which is frustrating, but whatever. Unfortunately, it’s not like I can find a coffee shop or something and hang out for more than an hour. My FIL actually lives nearby but, like where my mother lives, the building is locked down to visitors, since so many people living there are very high risk, including my FIL.
If I can find someplace free to park, maybe I’ll get some Pokemon Go in or something. :-/
Meanwhile, I have had to take it a bit easier today than I intended. It’s been a slightly worse pain day, and I don’t want to overdo it when I have what will likely be a long day, tomorrow.
For now, I think I’ll painkiller up and find something more sedentary to work on. :-/ Normally, I’d work on some crochet, but the pain is mostly in my arms and finger joints today, so that might not be possible.
