2016-05-04 - Wednesday - Bird's Nest

Wednesday I noticed two of what I think are house wrens going into the back of our gas grill. When I opened it I found a large nest in the grill and a whole foundation under the grate built on top of the burner. They were very industrious since I used the grill five days earlier.

I couldn't get them to stop going into the grill so I ended up rolling it into the garage for a few days.

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2014-07-07 - Monday - Hard work and hazelnuts

On Sunday we made a plant rescue run, and got some more ferns and a dogwood.  Let's see if I can get this one to live.  On the right below are some dwarf nandinas that I purchased at a local greenhouse.  I am going to use the nandinas and ferns in the new flowerbeds by the porch, but first I have to till the soil up and amend it.

I have a small Mantis tiller that works great on many things, but rock-hard clay is not one of them.  I turned over the beds with a pitchfork and shovel which was no easy feat.  I planned on using the tiller to break up the chunks and mix in the amendments.  Unfortunately the primer bulb on the Mantis had cracked over the winter so I had to go get replacement parts.

I purchased 800 lbs of topsoil and six bags of mushroom compost to add to the clay, but I guess they will have to wait until tomorrow when I get the tiller back together.

My friend Nick gave me some hazelnuts a couple of years ago and they have really leapt this year.  They are a formidable size and two of the three are absolutely laden with nut clusters.  I have never seen so many nuts in each cluster before.  Unfortunately I have to wait for a month or more for them to ripen and last year the day the ripened the deer took all but two of them overnight.

I'm thinking about a temporary six foot fence...

The dogwood is pretty droopy.
Keep your fingers crossed.

Water break.

Finally!  This stuff is like concrete.

I'm using some of the old pavers to keep the soil in place
when it rains.  I ultimately want to get a couple of
nice rain barrels with planters on top.

The Mantis tiller
patiently waiting for parts.

Amendments.

Tuneage makes the job go easier.

Oh yeah, the grill came with a cover.

The hazelnuts are quite large.

Pods.

Lots of pods.

Lots of pods on each branch.

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2014-07-05 - Saturday - Cooking with gas

Saturday I assembled the grill and set it in place on it's new patio.  The grill is all stainless steel and has a searing burner on the side.  We looked at a lot of grills before settling on this one.  There are many options out there, from searing burners to removable pizza stones, but this one should serve us well.  It even has a slide-out tray for the propane tank, just right for old people like me.

There is a switch to light up the control panel, which seems kind of silly to me, but I guess having too many features is better than too few.

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2014-07-03 - Thursday - Aftermath

After assembling a large group of the porch furniture it was time to take the excess cardboard to the recycling center.  It turned out to be quite a load.  Just think, I still have a serving cart and a gas grill to put together.  Sounds like another trip.

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2014-06-24 - Tuesday - Sidewalk and patio

Since we had the old deck removed we need a new place to put our gas grill.  We want to tie it into the existing walkway and update the walkway at the same time.

We called Home Sweet Home to do the work as our neighbor uses them frequently.  They used the pavers that used to make up our old sidewalk as a border --and a form for the concrete.

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