Trees And Other Things

Sounds easier said than done. But I'll give it a try.

 

(6/30/21) Wednesday

HVAC man, who lives down the road from the farm, was scheduled to come at noon to replace the coil on the heat pump out there. He assured me he had a coil for any system in his warehouse, which is 3 abandoned commercial chicken houses. My plan was to finish work on the mower while they were working. Specifically, lower the height, check fluids and grease. After they leave, try out the mower, unload the chopped up tree in the truck, stop at grocery store on the way home.

He showed up right on time with his stepson. First thing, he presents me with a decision to make. Since the coil is one of the most expensive things on a heat pump, he said it would only be about double the cost to replace the entire system, which was now 13 years old. If it were the house in town, I would go for the new system. But it only needs to last 3-4 more years out there. It's a bet I may lose. They proceeded to take apart the big box outside. I headed for the garage.

There are 5 height settings on the mower---5 holes on the frame where you can stick a bolt. The bolt was in the bottom hole. I wanted it in the middle hole. It was not that hard to switch holes last time. All I did was tap on the tail wheel with a mallet. This was in the opposite direction, so I pounded on the frame instead. Nothing budged. Tried several different things. Nothing worked. The pounding caused quite a lot of noise, and I did not want to attract attention (long story), so I tried my hand at greasing everything instead. The brand new grease gun, which uses tubes and has a hose, didn't work well, so I transferred the grease to my father's old gun.

HVAC man took off to get the new coil, so I went back to pounding. Still no luck. It wasn't looking good. When they returned. I tried my hand at detaching and greasing the PTO shaft. By now there was grease everywhere, including all over me.

This is getting too long. . To be continued ...


.

 

(6/30/21) continued ...

Next time I checked with them, HVAC man and his son had turned on the hose to wash debris out of the big box, couldn't get the faucet to shut off, and had the door off the entrance to the crawlspace under the mobile home to try and fix it. I told them I had the same problem last time and to just turn it off with a wrench and I would fix it later.

While the crawlspace door was off, I asked him if he thought the faucet might be hooked up in such a way that bypassed the main cutoff valve (since he had been back there looking around). He guaranteed me that the main valve would cut off the faucet and turned it off to show me. But it didn't. Not until we shut off the pump. I still don't understand it and neither did he.

Next thing I knew, he had removed the whole faucet, took it apart and replaced a bad washer with one he had in his truck. I found the new part I ordered to stop water from spewing out the top. He put the faucet back on. It is working perfectly now.

Then we all sat on the porch for 30 minutes waiting for heavy afternoon showers to stop. They didn't finish until after 5 pm, and he still had another job to go to. I told him to add some to the bill for fixing the faucet. I can't get to the connection behind the wall. No. I should say, I don't want to even try to get to it. It is a mess to crawl back there on your hands and knees with the spider webs and fiberglass insulation everywhere. Headed back to the garage to work on the mower.

To be continued ...

 

(6/30/21) The End...

Tried to put the PTO shaft back on. It is the most awkward thing. You have pull and push at the same time while stooped over. It seemed hopeless until I used my knees to push and hands to pull. This is twice in one week knees have come in handy.

Only one step left. Drove the tractor out of the garage with no bolt at all in the mower frame. What have I got to lose? One lap, bouncing around, lowered the mower to almost line up with the middle hole. A couple of bounces up and down using the lift arms on the tractor in the garage lined them up perfectly. Stuck that bolt in and bingo... Mission accomplished.

In spite of the rain I went all the way to the cabin at snail tractor speed, mowing one swath down and one back, to see how it worked. The cutting height is just about right. It cuts well, even in wet grass. Saw another bunny rabbit on the way. Unable to escape from the heat all day, I was now also moving at a snail's pace. Unloaded the tree branches from the truck like a zombie, left at 8 pm, picked up a couple of things at the store, in spite of greasy clothes. By this time I didn't care.

This was one of the most fun days in the last two years. So many puzzles to solve. Learned so many new things and how more stuff works. I just love doing things I've never done before, when it all works out in the end.

 

Two mockingbirds and two bluejays have moved in and all the little birds, including bluebirds, have disappeared in town. One robin. Nothing was interested in the bird house in the short time before they left. I think I'll take it down and put it up in the fall or winter. There will be time to make it less conspicuous.

Assumed I'd have to give up on the hummingbirds out at the farm, because I don't go often enough to change the feeder now. Then read that they don't need it to be up 24/7. Just put in enough sugar water so it is gone before it sours. I only saw one hummingbird all spring until last week, and that was by accident out of the corner of my eye. Very shy.

Then Wednesday, the day of the HVAC repair, a male, 2 females, and a smaller one came up within a 5 minute period while I was sitting on the porch, just before I left. The male was not the least bit afraid. I wonder if he isn't a repeat from last year. A pleasant surprise to a good day.

 

Lost and Found:
The 3rd TV receiver was under a small throw which was draped over the seat and back of an upholstered chair. I caught the cat up on the back of the chair and found out she had been scratching the cloth. The throw was an emergency fix to make it less attractive for her to get up there, and I just left it there. I wonder if I plugged the receiver back in, would it show up on the bill again. Think I'll try it using the broken 13" TV.

While looking for the garage keys I found a pair of barber scissors down in the side of the reclining lift chair. Just what I wanted. Scissors that grab the hair. Don't know if they belonged to the previous owner. I've never seen them before. The missing screw for the pressure washer turned up, but it doesn't matter now.

Troubleshooting: Make sure it's plugged in:
Light/ceiling fan in the TV room. When you flipped the switch, the light came on a few seconds later. More later, as time went by. Then, not at all. Internet said a delay like that is likely a bad wall switch. I have another switch, but procrastinated, because I didn't want to go through all that trouble if it wasn't the problem. Finally dawned on me to try the fan, which I never use. How can you be so dense? Turned out it was just one of those crazy corkscrew lightbulbs, which do unpredictable things when they finally go out. An easy check off the to-do list.

 

A toothache!

This may not sound like good news, but it has forced a dentist appt Monday, which will set in motion the implant, first cancelled because of Covid lockdown last April (2020). Then procrastination set in. Needed something to light a fire.

This is the very back tooth, which is the least important. If it has to be pulled, the same surgeon that does the implant will pull it. Hope I can talk him into doing two things in one visit.

The thing flared up all the sudden Saturday (weekend jinx). Had a stash of antibiotics, saved one pill at a time over decades worth of prescriptions. Beat that thing down in 36 hours. Dentist called in a new prescription. Picked it up already.
As far as I know, knock on wood, I shouldn't have to leave the house until Monday.


"How I Really Feel about Going Back to Normal" - The Holderness Family

 

The dentist called in a prescription for a complete round of Amoxicillin and allowed one refill. Bless his heart. Now I don't have to worry about getting another toothache, or whatever, on a weekend in the future. I'm a whole round ahead. He probably doesn't want me disturbing him on a weekend (just kidding). He knows I won't do anything stupid.

So much for the idea that used cat litter will scare away ground squirrels. I dump used cat litter in a pile outside, and after it sits there a while, I use it to fill in low spots in the yard. Ground squirrels have dug holes right down into that pile now. They must have left the front yard for some other reason.

 

By process of elimination, I had to be 4 years old, so the year was likely 1950. It was after dark.

My mother and her girlfriend were volunteers going door to door collecting for The March of Dimes. Their territory was the road I lived on. I tagged along, but mostly sat in the car. We stopped at a house on the only curve on our road. When we got out, a car came speeding south and didn't make the curve. It went over the guard rails down into a swampy area. All we could see was the headlights. We waited until the ambulances left. As I recall one woman was killed. It seems I recall there was another passenger who survived, but I could be wrong.

Streetview shows they have widened the road a lot and straightened out the curve a little. The house looks a little different. Likely some remodeling done.



"Jonas Salk, a March of Dimes grantee, moved on from a routine virus typing project to the creation of a vaccine in 1953 that spelled the end of polio in a matter of years. Salk chose to not patent the vaccine or seek any profit from it in order to maximize its global distribution."

 

Back to the Harmonica

Harvest Moon, by Neil Young, is the song I want to learn next. It should be the easiest to play song ever written. It's in the key of G, and nowhere on the internet could I find the entire song written in the key of C, for free.

Tried playing the tabs for the key of G on the C harp and it worked except for one note, I think. I have no idea what key it was in by doing that, but it wasn't C or G. Wish I had learned music theory.

Finally transcribed the whole song into the key of C on paper by trial and error using the keyboard. Then put in harmonica tabs. Fortunately it's not very long and has a lot of repeats. After all that my head hurt.

Found a karaoke version in C on YouTube (thank you). Btw, how come when you slow a video down to half speed it doesn't change the pitch/key?

(Did anyone notice he left with a different girl than he came with?)

 

One might say I wasted the entire weekend. Got all the lawns mowed early last week in anticipation of the tropical storm. The only major thing left was to clean up a short patch of hedge on the east side. It didn't rain that much, but it sprinkled enough every day to make working in the yard too unpleasant for that. Good excuse.

I mostly played music. Not 100 different songs, but a few songs many times over. And listening to reactions. They obviously have learned that it doesn't pay to say they don't like a song, so if you pick songs you like, it's always fun to hear them review those songs. I guess that's equivalent to living in a silo. Harvest Moon was very easy to learn on the harmonica. I need to enhance it, but have no imagination.

Likely I'm such a misfit when it comes to music because of that player piano we had when I was a kid. It came with at least 50 piano rolls. Most were songs from the 1910s and 1920s. I played all of them. When I started piano lessons, my mom's friend gave me a bunch of sheet music from the 1930s. When the other kids were listening to The Purple People Eater or The Witch Doctor, I was humming Over There, or Barney Google, or Ain't Misbehavin'.

 

(7/13/21) Monday

As much as I like to hear mockingbirds, they don't play nice with other birds. I think they're worse than bluejays. The two new ones have been patrolling the back yard, sitting atop the clothesline posts and chasing off all others. Today they were gone, and I saw what I think is the fledgling bluebird from the first nest back on May 12th. I only ever saw one from that nest. There could have been more.

There is more blue, but otherwise still speckled. The only information I could find on when they start to molt was from a blog by a man who tracked first molt of 6 different bluebirds. The point is, it takes much longer than I imagined.

"There is no predicting when they start to molt (unless you will accept an answer like, "between 75 and 135 days.") However, I do think you can say that regardless of whenever each juvenile ultimately does start, the process will almost always take 40 to 45 days to complete. LINK

This is the way it looked to me (not my pictures):

May 12


July 13th

 

(7/14/21) Wednesday

So far... Power went off for no apparent reason for 2 hours at 10:30 this morning. So I started another cycle of lawn mowing in the back yard, in spite of heavy dew. We are getting afternoon sprinkles almost every day. It's not that hot, but the humidity is stifling.

The insects are taking over. Spotted some yellow jackets up ahead, so I stopped mowing long enough to see if I could tell where they were going. Just long enough to pick up about a dozen fire ants, but they never made it past the knees. The back yard is now covered in fire ant mounds. It only took 3 years for this to happen.

Two young men have come by the house in town recently looking for small jobs. I keep up with things in town pretty well. If they were out in the country I could think of dozens of things they could do. I don't suppose they would consider dusting.

I wish I could mow the lawn with more enthusiasm, like this girl.

 

A neighbor's scarecrow, out at the farm this afternoon. It was raining, so not a very clear picture. It's kind of creepy.