When It Rains, Gullible Takes a Break

The weather has been delightful the last week and a half and I got a lot of chores done during that time.   

There are a lot of "I"s in this story, but I'm the only one who did all this, so there you have it.   This is my first day off from outdoor chores in a long time and I'm too brain-weary to change verbiage.

So, among the chores:

I pressure-washed and applied a penetrating oil to the 167 lineal feet of cable rail guardrail around my decks, and then applied a semi-transparent stain to those decks.   The pressure-washing along consumed five days of my "work days" because hanging onto the wand of a  hose blowing 3200 psi is quite a job for me and I could only stand three to four  hours of it at a time.

The photo above shows the washed rails and oil applied to the right side.

This shows the cleaned, oiled rails planks protecting the surface until it dries.

Washing the side deckwalk.

Before I began

Standing on the top rail with one foot on the ladder gave me the right angle to pressure-wash the top board.

Rails oiled and the bird deck stained.

A nice place to sit in the shade with a glass of lemonade and a camera.

I cut brush that was encroaching on my house, lawns, and driveway.  

 I started bucking up some logs I scavenged for firewood.   Still have to get back to that.

I applied stain to a second story staircase on another building on my property.   

On the roof of my own house, I stained some facia.   To keep from sliding off the roof,  I sat on one haunch on the asphalt shingles with the other foot below me and then leaned over the edge of the roof to stain the facia.

I took the below photo with my iPhone and since I can't keep from shaking, this turned into a mini-video.

While I was up on the roof, I also stained the facia along this upper deck.   That was easy, except for hauling the ladder up there.

I chickened out on doing this facia (below).   The roof is far too steep for me to be leaning over the edge.   The little pebbles one the roofing are like ball bearings.    Had I not been sitting while I did the far less steep pitch, I probably would have fallen.

This job will take scaffolding.

I cut as many limbs off the spruce next to the woodshed as I could reach.

One of many favorite tools, chain saw with a four-inch bar.   Stihl calls it a garden pruner, but because I don't have a garden, I put it to real work.

Just a small bit of the brush I've cut.   I have two utility trailer loads and more on the ground.

I got up on the metal roof of the woodshed and cut spruce limbs that overhang the shed and prevented snow from sliding off in winter.   Down the ladder I went and back up with my new toy--a battery powered leaf blower--and removed the piles of dead needles and other leaves and twigs on the roof.

Some of the limbs I cut. More are soon the other side of the shed.

Lots of debris on the roof.

The battery-powered leaf blower.   I love it.

All the debris is off but I need to get up there and wash it with the pressure washer.

Down the ladder I went to get a battery-powered screwdriver and the bit that holds roofing screws.   Up the ladder to replace and tighten some screws.

Down the ladder to get a stiff brush and a garden hose.   Up the ladder  to hose and brush off the remaining debris.   I decided that was too much work and I would need to haul the pressure washer up here to finish the cleaning job.   Some day.  The roofing does look solid, though.

And then the fun started.

The hose knocked over the ladder and I was stuck on the roof.   My cell phone was in the basket of the four-wheeler.   Julie wasn't home and my neighbors are too far away to hear me yelling.

I'd cut away too many branches from the spruce trees to be able to climb down them, so I looked to the far upper corner where a willow was growing.   As it turned out, I'd cut enough dead branches off of it that I could manage top ease my way down to the top rail of the 6' high fencing that was adjacent to the shed.

The lay-about ladder.

The willow, the wall, the fencing.

I thought for a while that if I could get to the far branches of the willow (left in photo), I could use them to rappel/swing down to the ground.   Getting onto the rail and moving along it was not easy, believe me.

Once I reached that position, however, I saw a dead limb that I'd cut and it was right in my proposed landing spot.    Dead limbs don't give.   They puncture.   I gave up on that idea and moved farther along the rail to where the spruce boughs were piled.

SO, this is what I did.   I eased myself to a sitting position on the top rail of the fence.   This wasn't too tricky because I had the shed to lean against.   Then, thinking I could hold on to the rail, spin around and land in the spruce boughs.

Spruce boughs are soft, they tell us.   I've read dozens of articles about people cutting them to spread out  their sleeping bags and such.

DON'T LET ANYONE TELL YOU SPRUCE BOUGHS ARE SOFT!!!    

They aren't.   I plummeted to the ground.   I wasn't hurt.   I laid there in the scented boughs and thought about all this, laughing about getting myself into this situation, and thankful I wasn't hurt.    I had a lot more to do before the rainy days started.

I woke up the next morning with a very sore left shoulder, but it wasn't from falling onto the spruce boughs.   My left shoulder has been compromised for decades, so long that I can't remember exactly how I injured it.  

I can't raise my arm above shoulder high.   I always get patted down at airport security because I cannot assume the position in the X-RAY  thing.

I had two smoke alarms beeping at me, so I hauled the 8' ladder up to the loft floor.   Have you ever tried to change the battery in a smoke alarm using only one hand?    It can't be done.   In the loft, however, I was able to climb high enough that my left hand could somewhat hold the alarm while I inserted the battery.

In the garage, it was a different matter.   This alarm had a design that required unplugging the wiring harness, inserting the battery by attaching it to positive and negative sockets, replacing the wiring harness, and then replacing the alarm on the bracket.   Not gonna happen with one hand.   So, I forced my arm up.   Forced it beyond its limitations.  

And that's why my shoulder is sore.   Not from all the exertions of the last ten days.   Not from all the ladders and equipment I've been hauling around.   Not from falling onto the spruce boughs.   It's sore from replacing two smoke alarm batteries!!!

Nonetheless, the next day was supposed to be the last of the nice weather and the chores continued.

I mowed all the six lawns twice over this period.   The roots from quaking aspens were sending up shoot that threatened to take over one lawn.

I carried the ladder over to the lawn shed on the right with the big windows.   From the roof I was able to cut a lot of spruce branches away from the roof, then blow the debris off with the leaf blower.

Cutting down the vegetation on the leach field of my sewer system was another chore that really needed doing.      If I didn't, the saplings and fireweed growing on it would seek the water that drains from the elevated perforated pipes, eventually penetrating growing inside the pipes and clogging them.  Very essential chore.

I started my brush cutter with the metal blade but it died and refused to start again, so I did what I could with a string trimmer.   Those 3/8" thick fireweed stalks were too much. 

I put the metal-bladed, gas-powered brush cutter in time-out, and (surprisingly) drove the John Deere lawn mower up a gravel/dirt ramp and cut down some more vegetation.

The brush cutter in time out.

That night, I thought about the metal bladed brush cutter and it being in time out.   Had I acted hastily?   Was the punishment unjust?

The next day, I  verified what my late-night thoughts suggested.   I had neglected the proper care and feeding of Things Gas-Powered.   Once I filled its tank with gas, it started with a mighty roar and joyfully cut down the vegetation on the tricky parts the lawn mower couldn't do.  I still have to cut away a lot of brush growing in from the sides, though.   That's chain saw operation right there.

While all this was going on, I sanded a slice of cotton wood that I'd found and dragged home a couple years ago.  It was so heavy that I had a lot of trouble lifting it onto the back of my truck.    Now, it's very light.

I wanted the chain saw marks to be visible, but I also wanted to be able to wipe away any bird poop.   While it isn't sanded smooth, it's good enough after two coats of Varathane.

Some day I'll do something with the stump the cottonwood is laid on.

Speaking of sitting, I don't care to sit in bird droppings.   The birds like to perch on the chairs and poop.

After I cleaned the deck chairs for the third time this summer, I decided a way to poop-proof the poop perches and draped them with a tent fly that I'd found.

Poop-proofing the poop perch.

Like this, but on the deck.,

The next day I decided that was too much trouble and just turned the chairs over.   They can poop on the bottoms of the chairs.

The wild red currents are ripe, but now it's raining and I will get soaked if I go out to pick them.   Maybe I'll let the birds have them this year.

Now, it's raining.   The forecast is for something like forty days and forty nights of rain, or whatever.   It's rained almost 0.6 inches just today.

I haven't done anything but feed myself, go to the post office, and put this post together.   Tonight, maybe I'll watch some TV.   Maybe old episodes of Supernanny, or something.

And feel sorry for this drenched Steller's Jay.

 

Excuses Galore

 What can I say that would excuse my absence here?   Only this:   it's summer.

Like the little tree swallows below, we Alaskans cram a lot of living into a short period of time.  The swallows arrive, build nests, incubate and hatch their young, feed them non-stop unless the little ones fledge and then they're gone, leaving us to deal with the abundance of mosquitos they leave behind.

A wee tree swallow waits for food to appear..

Alaskans are much the same--cramming a lot of living into a few short months before the arrival of yet another long, cold, dark winter.   This year is worse than usual.   Some of us aren't sure if summer has yet arrived.

April, May, June and now part of July were n on-stop gloomy gray and rainy.  Cooler than normal.   We had a few nice days here and there, but for the most part summer has been a bust.

Everything is late.   The birch trees didn't fully leaf out until mid-June and that "fully leaf out" thing is the cue for everyone to start planting their gardens and hang their flower pots.  No more can we count on Memorial Day as "the day" because they've gone and messed with its date.

INCOMING! Open wide!

Even the swallows have chores to be done.   Here, an adult is removing a fecal sac from the nest.   The little hatchlings don't stick their butts out and poop.   No, their feces is encases in a mucous sac that makes it easy for the adults to remove it and drop it in my yard.

This load appears to be extra large, and contains something that looks like a mosquito wing.

Chores.   I haven't even begun the gazillion things that need to be done around here.   However, my friends Mary and Shawn decided they were going to split, haul, and stack the firewood I bought and they are almost finished.   Four cords in the woodshed and one to go.  They won't let me help, either.

The spruce bark beetles have bored through the bark of the mature white spruce, girdled them and killed them.   It breaks my heart to see so many brown trees.   They have to come down.

Looking at these photos reminds me of another horse I've been putting off for several years because I can''t figure out how to accomplish it.   All the facia board on this big house needs to be refinished.  I figured out the part about lying on the steep roof and reaching o ver and down with a stain applicator.   What I can't figure out is how to keep the stain in whatever utensil I use and not spill it.

So, here I sit like this swallow, trying to figure out how to get things done.   All the deck rails need to be pressure washed and restrained.  Deck steps need replacing.   Some siding needs to be sanded down and restained.

It never ends.   Not for me or the swallows.  

In the meantime, I drive off every day and pick up litter along the Seward Highway.   At least I can see what I've accomplished by doing that.  I've reached the far side of Turnagain Pass, which is the right place for this far into summer.

EXCEPT:   My friend Mary is dedicating one day a week to cleaning up litter , too.   She can walk farther and carry more weight in the litter bag than I can.  She's doing miles 48 through 56.5.  Thagt's the only reason I'm on schedule time-wise.   We couldn't even start until the first of May because the snow and ice lasted so long.

Oh, well.   The wildflowers  in Turnagain Pass are magnificent this year and are making "spectacles" of themselves.