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Monday, May 26th, 2003
Today I put stones in the back yard to make a path between the lawn and the driveway. They were slate that I took out of the ground at the back of the garage. Very thick, about 2", so I dug holes of the appropriate shape to receive them. It worked out very well -- although a couple of them rock very slightly, I am thinking that will go away after they get walked on some. If not, I will take them up and redo. I am seeing this as practice for the back patio, which is going to be a huge project. Maybe I will do that during my August vacation. For that I need to: measure the area of the patio; buy stones and sand; take up the old stones; level the ground; put the old and new stones down.
posted evening of May 26th, 2003: Respond
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Sunday, May 11th, 2003
Mom and Dad have been visiting this weekend, I have been doing a lot of yard work with help and direction from Dad. We discovered a big climbing rose bush against the back fence, behind all the underbrush there, much of which we cleared away. There are also a whole lot of a plant that the man from Rutgers Co-op Extension says is honeysuckle -- we took some clippings from 4 plants in to the county fair to see what they are, and though the Master Gardener was not there, the person on hand was able to speculate some. Also, some weirdo took a flower pot off of our front porch -- everyone thinks it was taken to be used as a Mother's Day present.
posted evening of May 11th, 2003: Respond
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Saturday, May third, 2003
My hobbies of reading and woodworking have intersected in a nascent new collection, of old (Victorian era) books about carpentry and house-building. So far I have George Ellis' Modern Practical Joinery (1902, by coincidence the year our house was built) and Modern Practical Stairbuilding (1913?), plus Steven Sloan's Victorian Buildings (1850's) and one or two others. Today I found out my friend Janice has passed down from her father two books by Fred Hodgson, one of which, Practical Uses of the Steel Square (1903) I have heard recommended several times on woodworking web sites. She loaned it to me so I will be finding out more about squares in the coming days.
posted evening of May third, 2003: 1 response
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Friday, May second, 2003
It's been Spring for a couple of weeks now in South Orange, the flowering trees massively in bloom; but I've been waiting for leaves on the larger trees to come. This morning it looks like they are finally here! Almost all the trees have foliage coming in. In our yard, the little tree that may or may not be dogwood has buds; and the bush in our front yard sprouted hundreds of crimson flowers all at once a few days ago. I de-ivied that little tree a week and a half ago; and last night I cut the last trunk of ivy off our big maple tree -- there are now about 8 feet of visible trunk before the ivy infestation starts. My dad thinks if I give it a couple of months, all that ivy above the cleared section -- which is no longer getting any nourishment from below -- will dry up and be relatively easy to remove. Update: Ellen informs me the crimson bush is an azalea; also there is one in our back yard, which I noticed this (Saturday) morning is coming out in buds the same way. I'm thinking it may have gotten buds a few days later because there is less sun; but that is pure speculation.
posted morning of May second, 2003: Respond
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Thursday, May first, 2003
Well tonight I was working in the yard and I noticed, the hose hook I installed last weekend was pulling the siding away from the wall. Oh no! I thought I had screwed through the siding into the stud -- come to find out, when I pulled that siding away, I had screwed through the siding into air -- there is a gap of about ½" between the siding and the stud. What to do, what to do? I ended up cutting a rabbet in the end of that piece of siding so it would fit over the end of the piece around the corner from it -- that seemed to work ok but now I need to seal it.
posted evening of May first, 2003: Respond
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Monday, April 28th, 2003
I put up a hook for the garden hose in our front yard today, and Sylvia helped out, assiduously. [? I wasn't sure what that meant but it somehow suggested itself as the appropriate adverb. Looked it up just now in the dictionary and whaddya know, it fits pretty well. I'll let it stand.] Her description of the activity was, "We're doing shoe rack!" It is up and looks good, though I made a bit of a mistake in the positioning of it. It has two screw holes that are on a vertical axis, and two more that are on a horizontal axis collinear with the lower of the first two; when I was positioning it I was only looking at the lower three holes, didn't realize there was another one, and I put it in a place where that top hole is not near any wood. Oh well -- the three screws should do a fine job of holding it up.
posted evening of April 28th, 2003: Respond
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