Document Destruction - 19 April 2024

I still get a lot of paper documents and statements in the postal mail.  I know enough about email that I do not trust it for reliable delivery, but that is a topic for another screed.  I get regular notices of attempts to "recover" my password that I did not request.  Security - actually computer insecurity - is a real thing.  With all the hacks and breaks in the world, it is still important to clean up your paper trail.  Here is my suggestion.

I start with a paper shredder.  I used to use a strip shredder that produce long strips from the sheets fed into the top.  This was OK, but newer shredders are "crosscut", and they produce "chips" of paper that are far harder to reassemble.  Go for a crosscut shredder; strip shredders are obsolete.

Many years ago, it was sufficient to simply dispose of the shredded strips in the garbage, but this is easily improved (in a defensive cannot-reassemble sense).  I started mixing the shredded paper in with the used cat litter.  I would dump the cat litter into paper grocery bags and put the shredded paper on the bottom.  This may not stop someone from reassembling your shreds, but it will certainly make it unpleasant for them.  If you lack cat litter, coffee grounds will work well as a mixer.

This worked well for a long time, but I have two further improvements to offer.

As a base protocol, I shred anything that has personal information on it, especially anything that has an account number or other ID on it.  However, this helps a reassembler because they have some guarantee that they are spending their time and effort to assemble something of value.  They can even focus on areas and shredded bits that have, say, numbers in the hope that the number will prove to be the account number.  Do not give them any hints.  A simple and effective improvement is to shred a lot of stuff that is generic or not sensitive.  First, shred the envelopes that the documents come in.  Second, shred all the supplementary informaton in the envelope - privacy notices, advertisements, and the like - after you take it out of the envelope.  The shredders tend to clump pages as part of the shredding process, so take things out of the envelopes to disassociate them.  Expanding this, shred nonsensitive information:  junk mail.  This increases the bulk, making it harder to find the good stuff.  Further, it confuses the reassembler because they have far more material to select from.  

The last improvement is probably the most effective.  Compost the shreddings.  I mix my shreds with coffee grounds.  Use your home grounds and augment the bulk with used coffee grounds in bulk from your local coffee shop.  They will be happy to provide you with the day's bag of used grounds.  The used grounds may contain a few paper filters, but they will break down, too.  Mixing shredded paper and coffee grounds in roughly equal parts is a good mix for your compost pile.  I think the coffee grounds qualify as "green" and the paper as "brown".  If you have read much about compost piles, you will recognize that green-brown blending accelerates the compost action.  Be sure to moisten everything to get the pile cooking.  In the short term, the wetted coffee will stain all the paper brown, making it much less legible.  In the long term, you will have dirt for your garden, dirt that cannot be reassembled into anything.  You can add any vegetable or yard trimmings that you wish to your compost.  There are particular warnings against using certain weeds in home composting, and I would strongly recommend against using animal waste of any kind in a garden compost pile - no dairy, no meats, no bones, no grease, and no animal waste.

In summary, the shredded paper and coffee grounds will create a soil amendment that is totally secure and cannot be reassembled or read.  Even the composting process obliterates much of the information on the shreds, so this is pretty good security for a homeowner.

As usual with any security process or advice, adapt this to your particular circumstances.  If you oversee a lot of wealth, this advice may not be sufficient for you.  If you oversee nominal or minimal wealth, this is a low-cost, low-effort way to protect your personal information.

Greenland paddle from a tree, Step 1 - 19 January 2023

Birch trees, particularly silver birch, seem to be popular for landscaping in our area.   Unfortunately, they seem to have a short lifetime as trees go, something around 40-50 years in our area.  To be honest, I am not sure the particular trees I am talking about are silver birch, but that is my best guess.  About 40 years ago, the builder of our neighborhood put three birch trees in our back yard as specimen trees.  They formed a nice contrast against the dominant evergreens (cedar, fir, and a redwood or two - I think the redwood is a specimen tree, too, by the way), but the birches never really liked out winters.  At least, they were constantly shedding smaller branches, but the snowloads would bring down major parts of the tree. 

In a winter storm about five years ago (c. 2018), the two larger trees were snapped off.  One was badly damaged and I removed it, while the other was severly damaged and I was hoping it would recover.  Well, after four years, I decided it was not going to recover, that it was worsening to the point that it was threatening to fall on the house, so I took it down.

Most of the 40-foot-plus tree became bark mulch or firewood, but I kept a 12-foot section from the base of the tree.  My plan is to make a Greenland paddle from it.  With luck, I might even be able to get two paddles from it.  I hope to be able to get an 8-10-foot 8x8 out of the trunk that I can use for the paddles.

I started by leaving the trunk on sawhorses outside the garage.  While this was convenient and gave me free space in the garage (workshop), I think it greatly slowed the drying of the wood that is required to work it.  I used a small chainsaw to remove one side (hidden on the bottom in the photo) in a crude styling of an Alaskan sawmill, but that did not work well.  I finally decided my only option was to bring the log inside the protected space of the house - the unheated garage will keep the log out of the rain.

The log has been sitting in the garage for about two weeks, and it is already looking drier.  This could be wishful thinking; likely is wishful thinking.  As an experiment last night, I took an electric planer and started trying to remove the bark as a poor-man's jointer.  The chainsaw was faster but I think the planer produces much better results.  The resulting wood is prettier than I expected.  All the talk of Baltic birch brings plain grain to my mind, and this looks to be more interesting.  The interesting bit may be planed off in the end.  We shall see.

Unofficially, my moisture meter shows 34%.  I suspect this is optimistic as most of the readings are "off the charts" - too moist to measure.  I hope a few more weeks in the garage will show the needle moving in the right direction.

A Quiet Week - 1 January 2023

Tradition dictates that the last week of the calendar year is a quiet one, and 2022 has been no exception.  We spent some holiday time in Eugene, OR (source of the photo is Spencer Butte) after a delay due to an ice storm (freezing rain).  It was a quiet drive home and some quiet days since.  We did get miscellaneous wind storms that required clean up and a snowstorm that required a bit of shovel work, but nothing serious.

Along with the clean up from the windstorms, I have continued pruning.  Yesterday, I pruned Grandma's climbing rose by our back deck.  We took some cuttings from the original Grandma's rose at Keats Island, rooted them, and planted them by the back deck.  I say "planted" - it was barely more than sticking them in the ground.  The cuttings have happily taken to their new location and provide color in the spring.  I plan to build a rose arbor this year to allow them to better flaunt their colors.  The original rose at the cabin continues, having survived the trauma of construction and the repeated attacks of local deer.  It is now on an ad-hoc trellis that keeps the bulk of the plants above the reach of deer, so it is also quite happy.  The Keats trellis was very much a spur-of-the-moment design from lumber on-hand, so I am now in the mode of continuous repairs.  Last summer, I had to realign a couple timbers and re-screw them together.  I tried to find a recent photo of the trellis but I seem to have focused my photographic energies on other interests.  I will have to get out the large ladder to accomplish anything in 2023.

To anyone reading - Happy New Year!  May 2023 bring successes and peace.

Checking in - 7 November 2022

Winterizing has been the name of the game for the last few weeks.   This comes from three factors.

Due to benign neglect, I have let some shrubs get overgrown over the years.  The resulting blooms have been gorgeous, but we now have a lot of shrubs that are too large for their location.  Several have been blocking windows while others are encroaching over the lawn and some are just too large and tangled to be healthy.  

Then we had a windstorm on Friday or Saturday night.  This storm created yet more lawn and garden waste than the maintenance pruning.  We have a lot of large trees, and the wind came from a direction that pruned the upper parts of the trees, dumping the branches and needles on our house and lawn.

Finally, the decidious trees are dropping their leaves.  The pine needles are coming down, too, to make room for new growth on the evergreens.  

Any one of these could generate a lot of organic waste that we put in the lawn-and-garden bin for pickup.  However, all of them together overwhelm the 96-gallon capacity of the weekly bin, so I get out the chipper-shredder and make mulch. 

The chipper-shredder is an old one and I do not know how much longer I will have it.  I bought it from a catalog company when we lived in Chicago.  That would have been in the 1980s.  I loaned it to a friend for use in the autumn and he kept it for the winter.  Unfortunately, he was not aware of the maintenance requirement to drain the gas tank (or treat the gas), and the chipper would not start after he returned it.  He moved away shortly thereafter, so the chipper followed us to Massachusetts and then to Washington.  I am not much of a mechanic, so I did not really know how to fix this.  The chipper weighs a lot, maybe 75-90 pounds, and it is large, so I could not figure out how to get it to a repair shop.  And so it sat, moved dutifully with us as we bounced around the country.  

A few years ago, I got bold.  I bought some cleaner sprays (e.g., carb cleaner) and started poking at it.  I could get it to run by spraying carb cleaner down the throat of the carburator, so that suggested to me that the problem was rooted in the stale and evaporated fuel rather that some outright mechanical failure.  I carefully disassembled the engine, not really knowing what I was doing.  I sprayed everything I could find with the carburator cleaner and I sprayed all the moving parts with WD-40, then I reassembled it as carefully as I could.  In particular, there was some oddly shaped bit of plastic that I carefully placed back.  I am just guessing here, but I think that was the fuel pump.  Anyway, I got it all back together without any "extra" parts, so I put in fresh fuel and tried to start it up.

It started.

I was amazed.  I ran it for a bit so ensure this was not some start-only magic, and it has been working reliably ever since.  I am careful to run out the fuel in the autumn, and it keeps chugging away.  The only other maintenance is to sharpen the blades and change the oil.  The chipper manufacturer is no longer in business, but the engine is Briggs & Stratton, so I can probably get parts when that becomes necessary.  I hope.  In the meantime, I keep running it so that I can try to keep up with the organic waste that I am generating.

  

Visitors in the side yard, 30 October 2022 (15 October 2022)

 Bobcats, I think.

There are three, perhaps a small family unit on the prowl.  

Original image: 15 October 2002 in the middle of the afternoon.

ETA: formatting.

Smoke 4, 19 October 2022

According to KIRO-7, a Seattle TV station (emphasis added), Seattle has the worst air quality in the world at this time.  This source did not quote numbers, but other sources quote ratings at 300 and above.  From IQAir, the Seattle Eastside is generally above 300 (hazardous), as illustrated after the quote from KIRO-7.  Our neighborhood is reporting 296 or 366, depending on the sampling station one selects.  The air has been distinctly amber or brown all day.  To be honest, I have been to Delhi and Beijing when the air quality was worse, but this is bad today.

Heavy smoke from wildfires continues to reduce air quality in Seattle and Western Washington, and an air quality alert has been extended for a second time.

The poor air quality landed Seattle the top spot for the worst air quality in the world, according to IQAir’s air quality and pollution city ranking, as of 6:45 p.m. on Wednesday.

After starting the day in the top 5, Seattle fluctuated up and down the top 15 before taking the top spot in the afternoon.

The cities that ranked below Seattle were Kolkata, India, at #5; Chengdu, China, at #4; Delhi, India, at #3; and Lahore, Pakistan, at #2.

Portland, Oregon came in at #6. 

Smoke 3 - 18 October 2022

While we were traveling in September and early October, we read reports of continuing smoke in metro Seattle coming from the forest fires east of here.  One featured in the news was around Route 2 and the town of Skykomish.  We have been back for a week, and the smoke continues.  I posted a couple days ago about the intensity of the smoke, but it was clearing in the days since.  Today, the smoke has returned.  In the morning hours, there is a distinct haze and color cast in the air, visibility has dropped dramatically from the norm, and there is a scent of woodsmoke in the air.

Photo taken soon after sunrise.

Smoke 2 - 15 October 2022

 How bad is the air quality, I hear you ask.  Well, this bad.

Allergies and Hummingbirds - 11 May 2022

Sneezing and a bit of watery eyes are my classic symptoms for allergy responses.  For the last 1-2 weeks, I have had intermittent episodes of sneezind and watery eyes.  I just finished moving some of the felled trees from the backyard to the wood rack behind the garage, and I am sneezing.  About two weeks ago, we had a massive pollen release, probably from the western red cedar trees with contributions from others.  I say massive because there was a coating of yellow on everything.  The black asphalt of the driveway became brownish.  The black enamel of the BBQ became brownish and took on a crust after a cook.  Cars were covered in yellow dust.  It was bad, but I did not react.  Well, maybe a little, but nothing serious.  After moving the firewood, I am stuffed up and sneezing.  It is not as bad as some of the November episodes in Chicago and Boston, but it is worse than normal in Seattle.

On a more positive note, I saw two hummingbirds at the feeder today and they were each comfortable in the presence of the other.  Normally, two hummingbirds would be ballet-fighting over the feeder and only one would remain, however these two were clearly traveling together.  The second part of the surprise is that the hummingbird population took a drop in February or March down to one-a-week or so.  The population is now rising again.  It is still low - about one a day - but that is well above the one-a-week rate that I was adapting to.  Nice to have them back.

Spring is springing - 8 March 2022

 After the sunny days of recent times, I expected another sunny day today, but no such luck.  After the rain passage this morning, I got out for a little clean-up in the yard.  In particular, I scraped rust and flaking paint from the trellises, sanded them, and applied a rust converter.  They are actually in pretty good shape, so it was not a lot of work.  I will let the rust converter dry overnight and then apply another anti-rust spray before I finally apply some finish paint.

The photo has nothing to do with the yardwork or the rust work, but it presents a sense of the spring-like weather we have had in the last few days.

The Official First Mowing of 2022 - 6 March 2022

Yesterday was the last day for which sunset is before 6pm until late October.  The Vernal Equinox arrives in two weeks.  After much snow and rain, the weather has started to warm a bit into the upper 40s and touching 50F.  Therefore, the grass has decided to grow again and it is necessary to start to mow again.  With a break in the rains and a few sunny days, I charged up the batteries overnight to be ready for today.  I pulled out the new mower, an EGO battery-powered self-propelled mulching mower; there is probably an acronym for that, but EGO BPSPMM does not roll off the tongue and I shall not use it.  I was confident that I was prepared and ready to mow.  How hard can this be?

I put on my safety shoes, a pair of old hiking boots now retired.  I pulled the mower handle to full length and locked it in place.  I rotated the handle to the middle position to be comfortable for my height.  I slotted in the battery with a solid push, punched the ON/OFF button, pulled the safety bail, and pushed the go-forward palm-buttons.  The mower lit up and moved forward.  Unfortunately, the mower was strangely quiet and there did not seem to be any mowing action taking place.  The grass was pushed over but did not appear trimmed behind me.  

I probably violated a dozen safety warnings when I put the mower up on a pair of sawhorses so that I could see what was going on underneath.  The oddly quiet bit that I had noticed earlier was confirmed by inspection: the blades were not rotating.  I started with some simple diagnostics: battery fully seated (the mower propelled itself but maybe another contact was not supplying power for the blades), reseat the battery, switches fully depressed, headlights work, mower handle fully extended and locked in place.  No joy, so I came into the house to check some YouTube videos.

The first two videos both concluded that a safety switch in the handle extension/lock device was the problem and the solution was to bypass the switch.  I was reluctant to bypass a safety device, so I watched a third video.  This guy started going down the same path, dismantling various housings to inspect the wiring and switches beneath each.  When he got to the main housing where my hands go (as the operator), he took apart and demonstrated how the main power switch works.  This was the aha! moment.  I had taken the ON/OFF switch as the usual push-on-push-off momentary toggle switch.  Not so!  There is a mechanical interlock involved with the starting bail, so one pushes the ON/OFF switch and holds it while pulling on the starting bail.  I had released the ON/OFF switch, so the mechanical interlock did not engage when I pulled back the bail.  

User error.

Once I held the ON/OFF switch will engaging the bail, everything worked fine.  I mowed the three tranches of the lawn with no problems.  I have not yet turned the outside water back on, so the hose cleaning will have to wait until the next mowing party.  After mowing the front yard, the battery has only descended by one bar (from 5-full to 4-partial).

Two notes on the grass.  The grass seed that I applied a month ago did little.  I speculate that it has been too cold to sprout, therefore it went to feed the birds.  Furthermore, any seed that may have remained was probably washed away by the rains.  The other note is that the moss is doing well.  Major swathes of the bright green lawn are moss rather than grass, so I have to get out the dethatcher for a workout.  Given that I am also struggling with moss on the asphalt of the driveway and the cement of the walkways, this is no surprise.  This has been a really good year for moss.

Espresso and Preparing for Spring - 7 February 2022

Espresso machines have proven to be more complicate that I thought.  And the last couple days have had sunny spots that broke out of the pattern of rain.  I used the sunny bits to get some yard work done.   

I recently came into the possession of an older espresso machine made by La Pavoni, a manual machine called the Professional.  It is an advancement over the prior machine called the Europiccola by adding a pressure gauge, a drip tray, and a wand for steaming milk.  The particular machine was purchased in about 1980-1990 from a store in San Francisco CA that has since closed.  To test the machine, I need to get a drip tray and a portafilter-basket combination.  The drip tray should be simple (about $30) but the portafilter is proving to be harder to find.  It seems a design change was made in the closing days of 1999 and that affects the size of the portafilter.  The "pre-millennial" units have a 49mm portafilter while the Millennial units have a 51mm portafilter. I may have my acquisition date wrong because I think I have a 51mm unit, but I am not sure what to measure.  At $80, I am not in a hurry to make a speculative purchase.

There are some stickers on the bottom with potentially useful information.  The readable sticker gives the name of the retail shop, the one that has since closed.  The hard-to-read sticker admits the Professional name and a few other details, but not a serial number, model number, or date of manufacture.  I am in the process of opening the base to see if there is anything inside that admits to a date or identifying number. 

I do not actually need another espresso machine, but I would like to get this one working on general principles.  It was a fine device when manufactured and has many years of life remaining.  I can say that now because I have not examined the state of the internals.

We did have snow recently, but it is since gone.  It was a significant amount for this area - six to eight inches - and it shut down a lot of activities in the area, but it melted within about three days and was followed by a week of nice weather (see earlier posts about snowshoe trips).  The routine winter rains have resettled over the area but we still get "sun breaks", some as long as a day.  I use these breaks to get out, address garden tasks, and fill up the compost bin.    For reference, I think the compost bin has an official volume of 96 gallons and gets picked up each week (mostly).  In addition to yard waste, we are able to throw in food waste, so it is busy all-year round. The contents go to a professionally operated compost facility.  Back to our story.

One day, I pruned the roses by our back deck and filled the compost bin with trimmings (a climbing rose).  Other days, I have pruned the hydrangea shrubs we have scattered about.  I have lost count, but there are at least six, with sizes that were 6-8-feet-plus in diameter.  I also pruned some of the large rhododendron shrubs.  In the summer, I chip them into mulch, but because the winter ground is so soft, it is hard to get the chipper to the work areas, so they go off to the commercial compost pile.  More recently, I have trimmed back many of the ferns, especially along the walkway behind the garage and house.  Today, I pruned the apple tree and the holly.  I have cut back the holly more times than I can count; it is a vigorous tree.  I am pretty sure it is a volunteer.  Usually lurking among the plants are blackberry canes, so I must be sure to wear leather gloves.  I got ahead of myself this weekend.  After filling the compost bin with hydrangea trimmings, I got a second load from the apple tree, so the bin will be full again as soon as they haul away the hydrangea contents.  I may have to get out the chipper.

While I am on the topic of landscaping, I am glad that I do not yet have to mow.  The grass is growing, but growing slowly, so I can postpone mowing.  I have a spiffy new mower - battery powered and self-propelled - but I would rather not start the mowing season.  Further, I have spread some grass seed to fill in the muddy patches and I want to do a run with the dethatcher to get out more moss.  This is proving to be another good year for moss (that is - if you are the moss).  The demoss treatment for the roof has worked well, and we shall reapply later this year to stay on top of the problem.  I should find out more about the materials used so that I can apply them at Keats.

Seeding for Spring - 21 January 2022

Early, I know, but I have put down some grass seed.  We have had a period of dry weather (meaning 24-36 hours without rain), so it remains relatively cold, but I am optimistic that the seed will germinate given a chance.  The bag officially says 60-80 degrees, and we are in the 40's, so consider this an experiment.

The daffodils are peeking abovve the ground, a good six inches up, and the hellebores have been showing for a couple weeks, so life is active.  At the worst, I am feeding the birds.  I admit that I did apply it far more thickly than advised.

Most of the delivery trucks are fine, but a couple of them are challenged by the long, narrow driveway.  The occasional driver will leave the drive and plow through the grass.  One would think that the cement curbs could serve as a hint, but they seem insufficient in practice.  I try to ignore the stripes, but they eventually get to me and I head out with yet more seed.  Further, there are a couple areas that get limited sun, so I reseed often.  I am starting to think that I need a couple patches of shade garden.

I am also looking into pruning.  The apple tree will need to be pruned and the raspberries will be helped by a good pruning.  I did prune the apple tree last year at this time, but evidence suggests I did precisely the wrong things.  We ended up with about four (4) apples even though the tree appears healthy.  Clearly, I cut all the wrong bits.

  

Lawn and garden - 28 December 2021

We have bird feeders out around the house, partially for our entertainment but also for the cats.  The suet feeders get the attention of "larger" birds and the cats while the hummingbird feeders attract hummingbirds and the people.  In the past, we have had problems with squirrels who seem to think the feeders are for them.  After a few years of battle, the squirrels have largely given up.  A "witch's hat" protects the suet feeder, an anti-squirrel cage protected another feeder, and we have switched to shuttered anti-squirrel feeders for the seed feeders.  The squirrel-cage approach was effective on keeping out the common gray squirrels but it also blocked the medium and larger birds; the cage did not block the native red squirrels (smaller than their gray cousins) and it seemed to confuse a lot of birds who clung to the outside, unable to solve the riddle of entry.  In the end, we abandoned the cage in favor of shuttered feeders.

the shuttered feeders have an internal spring.  For light creatures like the birds, the weight is not enough to counter the spring, but when a squirrel gets on the feeder, their weight squashes the spring and that closes the shutters so that food is no longer accessible.  It takes a couple days of failed attempts, but the squirrels eventually give up.  The area under the feeder is kept clean because we buy the shelled seed.  there is some spillage onto the ground, but birds (and the odd squirrel) patrol the ground under the feeder and keep the area clean.  Occasionally a neighbor will warn that feeding birds attracts rats, but there is no evidence of this.

the suet feeder one time attracted a rather large critter.  A bear entered our suburban backyard and trashed the suet feeder in a successful attempt to eat the suet within.  We never did find the suet feeder.  I went out the next day and discovered a hole in the cedar fence.  I patched the hole with some scrap wood and we have since replaced the fence, so I expect our ursine friends will take the easy route and search for easy pickings among the neighborhood rather than out backyard.  Any neighbor concerned enough can put up their own fence.

To counter the squirrels and the bear, we have switched to hot-pepper suet.  It turns out that birds cannot taste capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot peppers, but the mammals can.  A mouthful of hot-pepper suet is nothing to a bird, but it will be long remembered by a mammal.

In an unusual turn, the nectar in the hummingbird feeders froze yesterday.  A winter storm had brought 20-something-degree temperatures to the area and remained overnight, so be brought in the feeders overnight to thaw them.  I redeployed them this morning and the hummers have been battling over the feeders all day.  An "alpha" hummer seems to own the feeder and they chase off interlopers all day, feeding occasionally.  It is supposed to get down to 24F tonight, so we will bring them in again to redeploy tomorrow.

Lawn and Garden - 3 December 2021

It has been a quiet period dominated by lawn and garden work.  

We have seen an increase in bird activity, so the suet and nectar get refilled more frequently.  I am guessing that we went through a migratory phase that has changed the populations.  During the Fall migration, there were lots of seeds available naturally and this seemed to reduce the need for supplemental feeding.  The new Winter populations have settled in, the winter pickings are few, the cold raises the need for food and - voila! - we have hungy birds again.  The hummingbirds are reluctantly sharing the feeders (they were quite territorial in the Summer months) and the suet is savaged by packs of maurading little birds.  

The garden work has mostlly been pruning.  Our Howe Sound cabin has a rose that has been growing at one corner of the cabin since about 1938-40, planted by Susan's grandmother.  This is an original "old rose", a climber that has survived benign neglect and active construction for about 80 years.  In advance of the construction, we were unsure if it would survive, so we took a half-dozen clippings back to our Redmond house.  Several of the cuttings remain in pots, large pots, and several are in the ground.  The grounded roses are very happy.  We did not really know what we were planting, how the cuttings would adjust to their new home, but the last few years have shown them to be taking quite well to the new surroundings.  for the last couple of years, the one by the back deck has grown up onto the (south-facing) roof and the one by the entrance has tried to capture any number of delivery persons.  I pruned both in the past week, completely filling the 96-gallon composting container twice.  The thorns on the old rose are quite effective as deterrents; wicked things.  This makes pruning a challenge.  I have settled on a technique that starts at the edges and prunes inward and downward.  This limits me to smaller cuttings and the work goes slowly.  Once I have removed a good bit of the rose bush (about half), I can come in from the side and this allows me to cut off larger bits.  The composing service is very handy - they use an automated truck to collect the contents of the bin and I can just wave good-bye to the thorns.  The alternative would be to run the rose cuttings through the chipper-shredder, and that would be awful.  The canes going in would be constantly grabbing at fabric and flesh, neither of which is pleasant.  And the service means the rose bits go off to become compost. Win.

I came across a video, now misplaced, that explained a technique for pruning and trellising old roses.  It was an eye-opener.  I have decided to try its technique.  I am now pruning the roses to grow large, healthy canes in a horizontal pattern.  From these will grow smaller canes, reaching vertically, that will carry the rosebuds, creating a wall of roses.  Nice.  We have not had any mildew or pest problems, so these old roses seem quite hardy and the veritcal growth will lead to more sun (mor blossoms) and good ventilation (controlling mildew and pests).  I will need to rebuild the arbor so the roses have something to grow on, but that will be another story.

Shattered Fence, Fallen Tree - 23 November 2021

This is actually an experiment to see if I can embed movies in a post.  It does show the fallen tree that broke the new fence in the windstorm around Halloween 2021.

<pause>

Well, it did some sort of upload, but there is no image here. 

Next experiment - upload to YouTube and link to there.

The video is here: https://youtu.be/423yL75Lkp0

It seems one must click and follow - the video is not embedded.

Oh, look - there is one button to upload images and one to upload videos.  Let us now pause to upload the video.

.

I am not looking at the final version, but the original portrait image has been truncated to landscape.  Not sure how Blogger determines this.

Excitement in the Backyard: Septic extension - 23 November 2021

This work was done a while ago, but I am documenting it today because I only just pulled the photos from the camera (phone?).

When the septic pumper was here, he pulled out the filter in the septic tank that protected the lines in the leach field.  He was very careful, warning me in advance, but the filter moreorless fell apart upon removal.  I think I noted that there were three plastic (nylon?) rods that heald together the individual stack plates of the filter.  The nuts holding these failed.  The guy offered to install a $500 replacement filter, but also described the repair process.  I went for the repair. I got three "all-thread" rods of stainless steel with six of those nylon locking nuts.  The idea is to replace the failed plastic rods with steel rods that will last.  

After I got back from the hardware store, I hosed down the filter in an effort to clean it.  I was mostly successful, but let us be real - there is no way to "clean" this thing.  I wore gloves to remove the failed rods and install the new ones.  I had put three of the locking nuts on the three rods in the kitchen (when everything was clean from the store).  That was a challenge because - no surprise - the locking nuts locked up.  As you might imagine, this foreshadows the trouble I was about to have in the backyard, assembling the repair for the filter.  I tried and tried, but could not get the bottom locking nuts on the rods, so I went back to my stash of nuts and bolts, grabbed four and used them.  I double-nutted one of the rods as a safety and then put the reluctant on the bottoms of the rods as best I could as a double-safety. 

In the photo, you see the repaired filter insert to the left, the receiving column inside the septic tank in the center, and the silo lid on the right.  For sanitary reasons, I used a loop of rope to lower the filter core back into the filter housing in the tank.  Once it was all settled, I put the lid back in place and screwed it closed.

For future reference:  the screws in the lid are Robertson, likely #2 or #3.  There are four at about the cardinal points. 

Excitement in the Back Yard - 16 November 2021

Well... the excitement is papable.  I think that is a word.  Two big bits of excitement in the back yard, and maybe three bits if you count differently.

A tree fell down and broke our fence in a windstorm around 1 November.  I took some photos, but the weather has been so crappy that I only just got back there to do some clean-up.  It is (was) a sweetgum tree in our neighbor's yard that snapped off at about the six-foot level, and almost twenty feet of tree fell on the corner of our newly installed fencing.  Other names for the sweetgum are liquidambar and American storax.  Unfortunately, besides the cleanup, about three panels of the new fence are damaged.  

Under WA law, we are responsible for repairs - this is an agreement common among insurance companies.   Metropolitan just sold our policy (the whole business) to, I think, Farmers or maybe State Farm, so I have to find the new insurance information to make a claim.  In the mean time,  I went back to do some initial clean-up.  I am hoping that I might get a 4x4 board out of it, maybe 12 feet long.  Looks like nice wood, but we shall see.  I am concerned that an otherwise healthy-looking tree snapped, so the wood may be diseased or otherwise not useful.

Second bit of excitement - we had the septic tank pumped for the first time in about 5-7 years.  We are pretty careful with, uh, what we put into the tank, so seven years is about normal for us.  We had the silos put in (towers?) last time, thus no digging this time, just pumping.  When he went to clean the filter (between the septic tank and leading to the leach field), there was a bit of discovery.

The filter fell apart when he pulled it out.  Not surprising that 30-year-old plastic fails.  As I understand it, the filter is a stack of filter plates that are held in a column by three plastic rods and capped by three plastic nuts.  The filter serves to protect the leach field from solids in the tank (liquids only).  The plastic failed, probably the nuts but perhaps the threading on the rods.  Anyway, the operator got the filter out, but barely.  He offered a replacement at $500 but also told me how I could get some replacement rods to repair the filter for another decade or three.  I chose the latter option, but now I have to go to the hardware store, get the replacement bits, finish cleaning the filter, and replace the filter (inside the septic).  I am not entirely thrilled by this option, but I am less thrilled by the $500 option.

In the meantime, I have ripped the first seven seasons of MASH to the family media server and Handbrake has only crashed twice.  I am now completing seasons 8-11 and then the movie.  Then on to House, Seinfeld, and some miscellaneous DVD movies that I have not yet ripped.  I also have some French DVDs to rip, but they are a different Region (EUR rather than US), so I have to look into MakeMKV.