March 14-15, 2014

It was a nice mild weekend with highs in the mid 60s both days with a morning low in the mid 30s. It was a bit cloudy and breezy -- more so than Sally prefers.

Onions and Kale

We stopped at the Farmer's Coop and got a set of Walla Wallas and some kale seeds. It took me a while, but I got this mound weeded, the onions in the ground, and watered. The one other time we grew Walla Wallas they were great. I hope these do well. Sally planted a bunch of the kale seeds in another free mound. The garlic was looking good, and there were some sprouts of spinach just showing. (We finally got a good rain Saturday night, the first since mid December. Of course it was followed by an all day snow Sunday, but it was wet and not to cold.)

Honeysuckle (continued)

Sure enough, Sally helped me decide what to do -- whack it off she said. I used my loppers and cropped it right along the top of the lattice work. This was a very good suggestion, because then I could get behind it. I was then able to get the 2x4 free, mated the 4 nails still in it with the holes in the side of the garage, and got it tacked back up. I then backed that up with 6 screws. I wish I had longer ones, but these should work.

The next problem was how to secure the warped lattice to the 2x4. I found I could wedge this rake between the house and lattice to press it back to the garage and the 2x4. It is not flush, but good enough. I then wired the lattice to the 2x4 by threading some wire through a valley in the corrugated tin siding. I am real pleased with how it turned out. Some of the honeysuckle was already beginning to show growth, and I have no doubt that it will come back as full as ever. Heck, it needed that drastic haircut. It may be a while before birds can again build nests in there, but that time will come. In the meantime the humming birds should be happy (they feed there when it is blooming).

Firewood

I went back down to the SE corner to cut more tornado downed trees. This time I was after some good solid wood for Amanda and John. That meant it needed to be cut to a 16" length and then split fairly small for their fireplace insert. These crisscrossed and broken white oaks and red oaks were the source. Mostly I got white oak, but cut a few nice red oak logs. I took the McCulloch, but could not get it started. So I reverted to the reliable, newer saw -- the Stihl MS250. (Later at the house I took the spark plug out of the McCulloch, cleaned it up, and then got it to try and start. So I cleaned and scrapped the plug until I could get the numbers off it and will seek a replacement.)

Back at the barn I started unloading and splitting logs one at a time. Shortly Sally joined me and took over the unloading while I just split. After she got it all unloaded, she began loading 24" logs I already had split so we could take them back to town. She finished first, and I had to leave two of the shorter logs yet to be split. (You can see the shorter ones to the left of the truck.)