Category: gardening

All In All It’s Just Something Something

Fences and posts down, concrete foundation curing (28 August)

The massive pile of bricks have mocked me since I only used enough to put in the new kitchen window. The time has come, however, to use these up.

In most of Britain, looking out into your back garden (not usually a euphemism) you own the border to the right and are responsible for it. If you are the left-most resident of a terrace block, then both are yours. I don’t have to fret about the back wall since it is definitely mine as half of it peers out over municipal property and the other half is separated from the next structure’s wall by a half meter gap.

The wall out the right hand side, though, had some rubbish fence panel inserts held up with poorly installed gapped fence posts. When I pulled these down, the need for a foundation to support the new wall became obvious (our house’s previous owner only did enough to the panels to straddle about half their width on her side). We levelled this up then took out every other brick (the ones terminating a run) so that I could feather in the extension and still have one cross brick every row to lend strength to the structure). The topmost one remains for now to hold up the capstone (we need to source some of these) and the bottommost one is there to trigger a new one every half rise/half run.

The progress was catch as catch can what with Jimi’s medical issues and our 2+ week illness mid-September. The first full weekend of October, it stood thus (note the new line of bricks working in … these were the ones Jimi took such an interest in the day before taking ill):

It rained every Saturday thereafter and you have to wait until ‘social hours’ to do anything on Sundays so getting a couple of lines in per week became the norm. As I reached the top but still didn’t have the half round, decorative blue bricks — we’ll do those in the spring — I tidied the sloppily spilled mortar with wire brushes and repointed both sides. Painting to match the rest of the garden walls is also on the short list but here we are, only three months behind plans.

Paddy O’Shed

What is going on under that sheet?

Or, rather, shed patio. One of the two major summer garden projects got started the weekend after Debra flew home and continued until it didn’t anymore: a leisurely 6 weeks compared to similar construction jobs we’ve tackled so far.

We started by levelling the playing field / excavating the bed of the patio. THAT’s what was going on under the sheet…the first bit of grading required breaking up the turf before seeking the flat earth we suspected existed there, if only the high spots would move into the low ones.

Not worried about the permanence of the sub-slab, I used a bunch of the pavers already removed from other bits of the property to rough-out the now-nearly-level area and to act as filler so I needn’t, eventually, use so much concrete.

Quarry tiles removed from the house back when we started the dining room refurbs were spread out to facilitate cleaning. The nicest of these were used for the top of the deck while the next best ones were set aside to make the front garden look nice (smaller big project this summer). There was a bit of remaining substrate from 116 years ago that we spent a morning removing, leaving behind that debris and a checker board array of stressed grass.

With gravel levelled, we mixed and poured a self levelling cement over and through then reseated the pavers over this.

And, put down a screed over that:

This screed served as the tile adhesive for the quarry tiles.

Finally (about 2 months later due to rain and general malaise), we mounted a liner around the border. The entire area is in the shade by 2pm in the longest days of summer so we don’t need a brolly to enjoy the garden. Unfortunately, we have already started replacing our fence with an extension of the wall (hence the debris).

Front Garden

We broke up the ready-mixed concrete that made up the front garden in July 2021 at the opportune moment that one of the skips arrived. I wanted to lay Victorian tiles but J was keen on trying some lawn scaping. It was thin for the first few months but eventually caught up (grown from seed, not sod).

One neighbour (don’t know which) started letting his dog shit in there but that stopped after I started dosing the paved part of the walk with cayenne powder. Birds love it –it tastes sweet to them, as I understand it — so I also spread it in the hedges for the sake of the kids who shove their empty snack containers into them (dumber than the dog, the children probably won’t ever realise why their eyes burn, which is nice).

We finally abandoned the sod idea (or, the sodding idea, as it were) nearly two years hence and opted for the paving I originally considered but with just the leftover quarry tiles from the house refurb (nearly two more years before). With 110cm width, we were able to fit in rows of 5 plus about a 1/2 on a sand substrate over some weed blocking fabric. Now, we just need to put out some plant pots.

House Ready For First Real Visitor

Note to Debra the day before she flies: “We’ll ring you when Jackie is home from work but in the meantime if you go out for any last minute shopping then pick us up a 50 pack of Goodies powders. I just used the last one from about 5 years ago. Also, if you have room, bring me one of these shirts:”

We’ve done as much work on the house after work the past three months as we had planned to do for the whole year, our focus sharpened by our Debra who is finally making good on her threat to come visit. She’s never been out of America and we really wanted her to have a home from home as opposed to a hovel (although I suspect she’s just overwhelmed by the experience).

It was much more effort than this sounds:

  • Repainted the dining room
  • Installed a futon
  • Put a pair of geraniums on the front door hangers
  • Added a pendant to the stairwell and improve existing ones there and in entrance
  • Pointed and painted the walls of the garden walkway
  • Built coat and linen closets and two living room cabinets
  • Hung floating shelves for our vinyl LPs
  • Refurbed and hung a mirror
  • Touched up paint all around
  • Moved a 3m long X 1m wide X 50cm tall pile of tools, paint equipment, and lumber out of the dining room where it has been in various forms for the last 3 years
  • Finished (started, really, and finished) the kitchen trim and finally regrouted and sealed those quarry tiles
  • Layed out a temporary patio by the shed
  • Tidied up some outstanding issues with the bathroom
  • Resealed the electric access floor boards on the landing and restained the seals
  • Installed thresholds where we’ve meant to do for, well, ever
  • Got in some plates and drinking glasses (we had two plates and were using 60 year old Tupperware for ourselves)
  • And, finally put some shit on the walls.

Note from Jackie replying to my note to Debra: “Jesus, don’t tell her that, you know she’ll try to find one!” I answered that she’d have to travel back to the 70s to get one and Jackie aptly noted that she won’t travel closer to the 70s than spending a week in West Brom. It begins.

Monthly Recap April 2023

The totals for the month: 91 miles running, 23 pubs, 8 kebabs, 7 fish and chips, 1 short review. Here’s the cartoon of the month (not necessarily a monthly feature):

I sent the photo of the Slim Chickens sign with the subject line, “What in the Wide World of Sport is a goin’ on here?” because the NHS email filters would have blocked, “Somebody’s gotta go back and get a shitload of dimes.” She ignored the reference to the venerable Mr Taggart, instead noting that this Slim looks like a pimp.

Red tulips opened the first week of the month and there were as many as a dozen still hanging on merrily here at the end. Jimi also seems to be rejoicing at the sun.

In fact, without the sunlight he would be deprived of his two favourite toys: reflections and shadows:

Picking up a newspaper one Saturday I spotted the Wild Turkey Rye on the top shelf at the newsstand. For a laugh, I asked how much and the price was disturbingly low. I’ve really got to go back and buy the rest of these:

Graffiti lasts about 4 hours before getting painted over at the pedestrian subways under the 5 Ways Roundabout so I have to be quick to record them. This one seems to be a bit less clever than the ones about corporate crimes or homelessness but I do like the way the red bits could be taken to be the letters of LOVE being spread by a tongue (you see it or you don’t):

Been catching the evening trains to Wolverhampton for a beer, to check out progress on the tram branch to the station, and to just have a pootle about the Other City out this way. Saint Peter’s Gardens is always very nice:

Successfully introduced a laser through the beam path of the LTQ mass spectrometer. The IR laser should also pass through this same line of apertures and will allow us to break apart amino acid chains, non-covalent complexes, and detergent micelles.

The erstwhile ‘IRMPD Control Board’ mostly just reports on the state of the laser with the only inputs from the instrument control end a safety interlock and — as it turned out — a dc voltage that drives a voltage controlled oscillator fashioned from a couple of op-amps. I’ll need to make a cable that bypasses this last feature so I can run this laser from our arbitrary waveform generator but that can wait till after the bank holiday, tomorrow.

I also bought a new chisel, speaking of fragmentation mechanisms:

Autumn Garden

The temperature has dropped precipitously since I was out this morning so I started shifting plants inside for the winter. The avocado is almost too big for the laundry window but I don’t want Jimi eating the fungi that have fruited in recent days so there it goes.

I really abused the date palms since sprouting in some sharp, builders’ sand and never giving them nutrition nor drainage. Before bringing them in from the chill, I reset them in some orchid compost and topped it with some standard potting soil. The shock may kill them or, I hope, they will grow like mushrooms.

Date Palms

Not a euphemism for solo workouts of a lascivious nature, I am actually growing some palms from date pips. Hopefully I can keep them dwarfed and free of infection but bonsai methods will make the pneumatodes especially susceptible to fungi.

The first green shoots sprung from roots and not from the seeds in March (the seeds hanging off the side of this new structure):