Stumping along

Well, to update on past two weeks activities with the Plum tree stump, I have it dug out about 3-4 feet now and have all the roots cut down to that level. The picture was taken on Tuesday, the day after I got it dug down to it's current depth and all the roots sawed or chopped out. The three biggest roots are sitting in front of the hole in the picture.

I took off Monday - Wednesday of that week to support Aimee figuring out how to get around now that she has started college again. Good thing too, cuz I ended up driving her to school once and picking her up twice.

I actually used a hand pruning saw to get the big root out and an axe to get the other two out. The second one with the axe was much easier since I sharpened the axe in between. I bought a yard tool sharpener that is basically a handle with two sharpening blades in the center of it, one for single edge tools, like pruners, and one for double edge tools, like an axe. With one hand on either side of the handle, you pull the tool's sharpening blade along the edge you want to sharpen and it basically scrapes the metal away on either side of the edge. It took many passes on the axe, since it was quite dull, but now I could probably shave with it since it has a very honed edge. It seems like the angle of the edge is a little steep so we will see how it holds up over time.

Here are some other progression pictures, you can click on them to see the bigger picture.

As you can see from the first two pictures here, the hole got deeper quickly. You can also see the big root I had to saw out in the bottom of the last picture. I will probably have to dig out more of that root when I regrade the ground in that corner for the shed that is going in there.

Now all I need to do is find a chain saw to cut the thing out of there and bury the rest of it. Should probably put some root rot stuff in what is left of the stump or will eventually get suckers growing up out of it.

Yard update

Well, I haven't been doing a whole lot the past few weeks, but I decided to finish picking up the debris from the plum tree on Saturday, which resulted in another 1 and a half of the yard debris cans we have from the garbage company. The rest of the other can was filled with grass clippings, since I also got the lawn mowed, and the corn stalks, which I took down due to the fact there wasn't much corn on them. I harvested what corn I could salvage, but the majority of the corn had the top 2 inches eaten away by some kind of caterpillars, one per husk. The rest of the husk was fine after I cut off the eaten part and we have been eating on the 10 or so pieces since then... it is rather good corn.

Then Sunday for some reason, I was out there trying to figure out what I was going to have to do with the stumps and started digging out around them so I could get a stump grinder in there. I want to grind them down below the ground level as far as I can. I need to talk with my brother-in-law and find out what his experience was when he did the same thing to three very large pine tree stumps in his front yard. The second picture is the left over large wood pieces I had to move to get to the stumps. They are all irregular sizes so they ended up in a pile. Aimee had to help me with the one in the foreground that is like 5 feet long.

Anywho... I have about half of it dug out and the rest loosened up before it got dark tonight. Need to finish digging out the loose dirt and find a grinder to rent for Saturday. That is unless I figure out I can get the two small stumps out of there this week without too much work. My little hand axe just may be the limiting factor, so I anticipate needing the grinder.

Surprisingly my low back hasn't bothered me since I started digging on Sunday, but I am being quite careful with bending over a lot. I have been twisting a lot to throw dirt behind me, but that hasn't seemed to bother anything so far. Pray God spares me from any further injury while I work on this.

Oh and this weekend we also made a small lemon curd filled lemon cake with triple chocolate chip frosting, yum!!! We got these cool small cake pans that leave a "dent" in one side so you can fill the "dent" in two of them and smoosh them together to make a filled cake. Click on the picture and you can kinda tell the middle is gooey.

Labor Day Project

I put up the light in Aimee's studio/craftroom. It now has a nice new 58 watt flourescent light with brushed nickle base and frosted globe. Aimee was quite happy to help me hold tools and get others I needed to make sure it got done it one night. Well, at least I got one thing accomplished during this long weekend outside of molding the couch cushins to my back side.

That being said, we did get in a long walk on Saturday, about 3 miles, and a bike ride down the the college campus on Sunday morning, 14 miles round trip. At least we did get some exercise, even if we did spend the rest of the weekend wasting time.

Plum Tree progression pics

Here is the full progression of the Plum tree removal, as captured throughout the 5 hours they were here.


and after I cleaned up the grass and stacked the remaining trunk pieces off of Aimee's flowers and ferns. I wish I would have taken a picture before I had cleaned up, but you can see in the last couple pictures above where the ground is litered with debris.

The brown spot in the grass is covered with plum carnage and mud from plum juice being stomped into the ground. It was amazingly muddy for being a 90 degree day.

Sprinkler controller rewire

So, the deal with the sprinkler controller rewire was that I needed to move the controller and rewire the sprinklers so I would have enough wire to have the cable neatly routed along the ceiling or in the walls, or at the very least, so it didn't drape in front of the garage doors and restrict access.

When I first installed the sprinklers before the 4th of July, it was to get it ready so we could leave to go out of town, so I just barely got it wired to allow us to leave when we wanted. In the following months it became apparent that the controller was not in a very convenient place since I was adjusting the watering time weekly.

**Side Note**
The local water and electric company displays on their site the suggested percentage of water that a lawn will need based on a calibration of your watering system of 1 inch per week or water for lawns and .5 inch of water for shrubs. So for example the setting for this week is 1.1 so I set my seasonal adjustment to 110% and my timer automatically increases the times for all the zones by 10%. When it is not as hot or wetter, the value may be less than 1 meaning my setting would be less than 100%, giving my lawn less when it didn't need additional watering.
**End Side Note**

It would probably help if I had my system calibrated, but I am working on that a little bit at a time, as I have about 20% of the lawn measured for my current settings. I will eventually have a reading for several places around the lawn and can average them to see if I need to increase or decrease my default zone times.

Anywho... I digress as this is about the re-wiring. I decided to move the controller by the inside people door of the garage so it was easier to get to when changing the seasonal adjustment. I bought some additional 14awg electrical wiring for the irrigation pump relay switch connection so I could wire the pump separately from the irrigation wiring. This which allowed me to use the one length of cable for the front yard valves in the garage and the existing wire from the backyard valves was plenty long.

For the backyard wire, I ran it along the house to the back people door and up the side of the door into a hole into the attic space. I pushed as much as I could into the hole thinking it would be easy to get to from inside, but I ended up needing to crawl into the side attic space, where there was barely room for me to crawl in on my belly. It was quite cramped and upon getting back in there I found that my efforts to push as much cable as I could to make it easier had resulted in a ball of wire that I would have to fight to untangle... then my flashlight battery decided it was done and I was in almost pitch black with a little light coming in from various places from the garage.

I used my cell to call Aimee who was inside the house... and called, and called, and called for about 5 minutes when I started to get a little claustrophobic. I started pounding on the rafters and finally got Aimee to come out to see what was going on. Unfortunately, my being in a tight space for that long doesn't lead me to treat her with very much patience and I end up yelling at her to hurry up.

At this point, not only is my wits at their end being up there, but my back is giving me very specific signals that it needs to get out of the contorted position I am forced to be in. Aimee helps me get to the line with fresh battery and helps pull the cable through from the garage side of the attic so I can get to it when I crawl out. I finally get backed out of the attic space a little at a time and am covered in dust and sweat from being up there for about 30 minutes.

So the actual wiring part was quite easy comparedly, and got completed by the end of the night. I am glad to have it finished and as soon as I get the one side of the garage cleared out when I put up the next set of cabinets, I will be able to finish tacking up the wire for the front valves so it isn't just hanging along the wall.