summer deferred

Here on the hill-top we await the sequel to summer. Late spring was dry and warm, but as we approach mid-July we sit under clouds and showers. We've had almost 3/4" this past few days, nearly the average July in a hurry. No matter, the thrush and grosbeaks still sing and flowers continue to bloom - probably with more enthusiasm than usual!

In the meantime the large yard goes unmown. That is partly due to rain but also to a flat tire on the riding mower. I finally have a spare in hand, but no rush to put it on while showers remain. Once the dry weather resumes I'll definitely have my yardwork cut out for me.

I have yet to attack the blackberry hillside, but I've a better tool for it at least. A rechargable 18v trimmer also awaits better weather, and I have blades to replace the string for more effective vine removal. We'll see how that goes.

Among other items that have been accomplished though, is the stone walk below the deck. It looks nice, far better now that some weed-block fabric sits below it! A nice place to walk, and also less of a hassle when the mower comes out - that corner of the yard was always awkward to get trimmed..

I've also trimmed several trees back, and relocated the weather gage to a spot with fewer branches overhanging it to mess with my rainfall totals.

springummer season

Spring quickly mutated toward summer this year! May had just 0.10" of rainfall. We had much more rain yesterday than all of last month - that's an odd thing to say in June! In any case the Swainson's thrush have begun to sing with much more enthusiasm now.

I've added many plants to the yard recently, thanks to my new part-time job at the Home Depot. And this week I won't even need the sprinklers! Perhaps at some point in the future they can provide us with a new roof and/or a heat-pump system..

Windy

Today looked like the best day to burn some yard debris, as the east wind was forecast to appear soon after. However the northeast wind developed quickly and strongly compared to forecasts so we shall wait a bit. Considering how hard it is to get much wind here for anything but east-west flow the chart looks impressive - but the direction generally states it was from the east, so some serious swirling was going on. Not ideal for an outdoor fire, regardless of how wet we've been!

Winds are now forecast to be weak on Saturday.. we shall see about that!

first mowing of '17

A single beautiful day broke through the clouds today, and we reached 65° for the first time. Portland had not hit 65 before today either, which broke a long-standing record for the latest to reach that temperature! I did not get a chance to relax thoroughly in it, but I did get to sit on our large, loud mower and get the level areas mowed. The tires slipped when attempting a hill but I managed it once I learned to lean over the slipping wheel. It's no surprise I would slip, as over half the lawn is in fact moss.. but in the end the place looks much better.

I hate using my cell-phone camera, but it did a decent job of the late-day sun on our local volcano. No blooms on this particular rhododendron, but others are beginning to blush.

And now, back into the showers. April will probably reach its normal amount of rain, like every month except January.

memories of March

We have now gone a few weeks with no snow; however next week's forecast is now hinting at a little bit more, later in the week. Of course it would be forecast for the day of an appointment that has been cancelled twice by snow.. we shall see about that! They are only expecting 1" but that's what 'they' always say at first.

I recall several late-season snows in Portland that painted the West Hills white - and since we live at 750' those would now be us. Even mid-March photos from my office showed snows just a few hundred feet above my fifth-floor perch! It's therefore prudent to be prepared for a last, brief burst of white in the coming few weeks.

We now have modern cleats for all four wheels of the SportTrac. That will not keep us from slipping sideways off our own driveway, but it's handy once off the steepest part. The Fiat has also shown its worth this cold season, enduring many trips that it should not have been forced to take.

Some day soon we can begin planting our garden, basking on the porch, and looking at the winter of 2016/17 as a distant memory. 
Not yet.

a stunning turnaround

After a white season like we've had, it was quite surprising to see how quickly the year's largest snowfall disappeared. Five days ago we had 13 inches on the ground - and on the trees, which broke many of them and tilted others beyond recovery! Today we are down to small piles wherever I shoveled it into mounds. It was pretty nearly gone by Thursday morning but now it's barely a memory.

All vehicles are back on top of the hill where they presumably belong. Plenty of firewood is now available for the coming seasons.. assuming I can get our chain-saw to work again. Plenty of scars will remain to remind us of this winter.

why do I ache so?

Let me count the ways! 

1. Shoveling a long path downhill, to remove icy slush (heavier than snow)
2. Carrying bundles of firewood uphill from the point the Fiat gets stuck - that location is just below where the Explorer is stuck from trying to go down the un-shoveled path!
3. Chain-saw and hand-saw removal of several trees, the big one 8 inches in diameter! (I had help)
4. Walking back and forth to the mailbox, once on snowshoes.. yes it's uphill both ways, in the snow!
5. Removing snow from the cracked porch awning that I built four short months ago, and
6. Trimming and fitting a long stick to support the cracked section!

No doubt I've missed a few points here. Yes I should hurt - I don't believe I have ever shoveled thirteen inches of snow at a time, not to mention how long a walkway I carved from the Big Garage past the house and down to the cars. Oh yes: I also shoveled around our mail-boxes, as the local plow made them almost completely inaccessible for little mail-trucks (I suspect they had to back up to reach them).

Task #3: missed the car, but not by much! The pine in back is a lost cause.

I found a few extra g-free ales in my garage refrigerator.. those won't last long!

adventure and excitement!

Awoke Saturday morning to a radical forecast change: Snow Returns!
Not merely snow - bunches of it. First forecasts were 3-5" then 5-8", then a generic "more than six" from the NWS, assuming it would start around midday Sunday. Weather Underground went 8-12" before Saturday was over.

Well, it started around 8am not noon - and it kept going. The temperature was just above freezing, the best way to get copious amounts since it's the best for moisture content. It snowed about 9" by bedtime, and as the showers failed on Monday morning we had Thirteen Inches on the ground!

That makes three 6" totals and a 13" total this season. Amazing.

Then the fun began!
I noted that a few cottonwood saplings on our slope were none too happy with their heavy snow burden, and began leaning over our driveway. One rested gently on our front porch awning that I had put up a few short (green) months ago, so I shook it until it became more upright. Not truly upright though, it's still at about 30° from vertical even snow-free as I type this. Two others were across the driveway and were not interested in being vertical again. No matter, as our two cars were down the driveway. The Explorer was 2/3 down but off the asphalt, its weighty momentum pulling it down and off the slick driveway before six inches had fallen. I then drove the Fiat gently downhill past it, parking it under the wavy pine at the bottom of our property where it could easily reach the plowed roads if necessary. The pine keeps snow off the car.. well mostly. Unless it snows a Lot..

Then I went down the hill for a visit.
Oops - a large cottonwood had fallen across our access road, so neither car was going anywhere. Not simply that of course: it had fallen directly into the pine and in front of the Fiat; most of the wavy-pine branches hed been stripped off the tree and onto the car!
Time to get busy.

I went to the garage and got out the new chain saw, filling it for the first time with gas and oil. Once convinced that it worked I chopped away the two saplings that rested in our upper driveway, then went down the hill. I swapped out my soaked gloves for dry ones then visited the big tree and Fiat. Once I lit into the 8-inch diameter tree I did fine, but the chain saw kept stalling. Finally it came to a stop at an awful moment and the bar became stuck as the tree flexed. Back up the hill for a hand-saw, then down via saucer to the bottom. After a few moments I bravely gave up & asked for a neighbor's help. He contacted a family member with a Big chain saw while I went back to work.

In the end I managed to use the hand-saw to cut the tree apart and retrieve the power saw - but the chain no longer felt like moving. Just then the man with the real saw showed up, and he carefully chopped branches away from the car. Thanks to its 12-inch coating of snow it seems to have received no dents or scratches; thank goodness that pine tree was such a soft and wavy one!

That was so much fun that I trudged up the hill, grabbed a beer and visited the hot tub for a while.
Enough fun, please?

After a few weeks of worry a friend pointed out the many ways that chainsaws protect their owners, and I was able to push the hand guard forward and thereby disengage the auto-shutoff control. The saw took down several more branches around the driveway and chopped up more of the big tree that beat up the pine. The pine's fate is still uncertain.

preparing for cooler times

It's looking mighty clear (in a cloudy sort of way) that the warm season has ended. October is two days old and we're at 2/3" of rain, with another inch or two coming this week. I may even have heard a rumble of thunder last night with the intense showers!

So Friday was a hasty clean-up day at our Homely House. Many downed branches were put under cover as firewood, and I finally broke out the electric chain-saw on a smaller tree that I brought down over a year ago. It looks like good wood for a fire now, though the bark needed to come off as it was pretty damp in places. Hopefully we can buy some firewood soon but we have enough to get by - it's not really cold yet, just no longer warm.

I had hoped to bring down some larger branches from the maples this year to be ready in a coming winter but that didn't happen. Maybe next spring.

A late-September storm deprived us of our true-eqnionx sunrise, but two mornings later we were rewarded with a fine view! As of yesterday St.Helens is allegedly covered in a few inches of snow - if only we could get enough clearing to admire its new cloak! This one will and a few more will likely be rinsed off before winter's chill finally allows it to hang about for six months, but it's always fun to see those grey peaks lighten up this time of year.

battening down!

The first tropical connection of the season arrives tomorrow, with ½ to one inch of rain expected.
Several yard tasks wanted doing beforehand, but I could only manage a few of them today:

• Deck staining - deferred. I had hopes but was too tired to pull that one off since pre-sanding will be needed.
• A/C removal from window - done! Hopefully next year a heat pump will do that dirty work.
• Small roof over front/back door - done! Now to see how my rough draft survives a good dousing..
• One last lawn mowing - partly done. The flat area is taken care of, the slopes will be fine without it.
• Rain channels over the spa - done! They are still not locked down though, so more needs doing.

So with that the age of heat ends. Forecasts for next week are in the 60s, and by late September any heat wave will be isolated and brief. Shadows now cover our driveway after 10AM so the asphalt will not contribute to overheating the house - and afternoons are especially shady here. The equinox is nigh!

Bad news - the Explorer 'truck' is making a racket in the engine compartment, one that I cannot pin down. That will defer any firewood for a bit, and hopefully not mess with the budget too badly.

it had to happen -

We bought a riding mower this week, to be delivered on July 2nd. Drat.

It was a great Sears deal - $250 off, then 10%, then 5% more with Sears card.
Add tax and delivery and it's a lesser great deal, but still mighty good.

I hate losing the exercise factor of a push mower, but several parts of the yard have not been mowed even once this year.  And one part wasn't done last year!! Until the two of us are mowing at the same time, the yard will always fall behind with simple maintenance - so this needed to happen.  Maybe we can sell it in a year or two, but for now we'll have a yard with a less forsaken look to it.

This thing may not be able to manage some of the steeper slopes, so the uphill parts can still be done with a walking mower - how nice?

It has headlights too, so we can mow any time we want! 

Neighbors with jobs beware!

speed-mowing and bird-watching

I broke the 35-minute mowing 'record' just now. That's just the second mowing of the upper lawn, which should be more embarrassing than it appears. The lower lawns have not been completely mowed yet, and of course the lowest lawn (that I wasn't sure belonged to us!) has not been addressed yet in our 2+ years here.  Oops.

This heat wave came with a bonus ¼-inch of rain beforehand.  We managed to assemble the square garden and plant our vegetables, which had suffered during the previous warm spell in their pots.  Several plants received larger pots too, so that rain settled them in nicely.  Not everything is where we'd like it to be later, but in the ground beats in the pot when the sun beats down.

I haven't quite assembled the front-porch roof, which would also double as a sun-shade at times like this. We'll get there next week once these three days reaching for 99° have passed.

Our thrush count remains low, so they must be waiting for a major push soon.  Our robins still dominate the airwaves with crows singing bass croaks, and a few whistles and warbles intervene. I spotted our local Towhee again today, with his amber eye and colorful coat - but I do not yet know which song belongs to them.  Hopefully a few more of the Swainson's Thrushes will get here soon and sing us gently to rest and to wakefulness in the coming few months!






Update - how funny!

While shooting the Towhee I caught a Swainson's thrush staring at the funny colorful bird.. that's him on the right side of this other image! I had no clue the thrush was there until I went to crop some of the photos the next day.

more planting, and the first mowing

I had planned to plant raspberries adjacent to the blueberries that came with the house, but a few things made that plan unappealing.  For one thing some wild berries are already in that area, creeping toward the blueberries - so at some point soon the mix could confuse.  The cute new fence has run out of raw materials before it would reach the raspberries so that's also not ideal.

leaf-piles as the snow fell

The final piece came almost by accident.  Last fall I raked the leaves into a long pile, then let it sit a long time as the autumn rains pounded us severely.  Winter set in and froze those leaf-piles, and finally a few weeks ago I moved them to a more properly place.  What a surprise: the grass in those places is quite dead, or stunned enough to appear so.

And so the crest of our hill has now become an ideal place for planting!

The first step was placing the new magnolia, which had a good spot in that area - we had a natural hole in the ground that would break an ankle if it were not filled, and both of us felt that was a good magnolia spot.  With bare ground to either side the raspberries had found a home, so they will sit just south of the magnolia to stay in the sun as the tree rises higher.

This is subject to change, but for now it's better than them sitting in pots awaiting a firm decision.

In the meantime, here are our first magnolia blooms!

better

Both health and weather have improved - a few days in the 70s, and perhaps 80° tomorrow! I have added a few  nice features in the yard: a dark-grape vine, two hanging flowerpots, an azalea and many new bulbs.  Even a Willamette hop, in memory of yards and ales past.  I also bought two raspberry plants, and then took as much of the old layabout 2x6 wood-ends as I could find & created a zigzag wooden wall behind the blueberries.  It turned out well, and oh my I ache - I was racing a rainstorm at the time, and carrying several 4x4 posts with four 2x6 stubs attached adds up in a hurry.  I'll need to craft a few more so the raspberries have a similar layout.

Looks nice though, after the heavy work!

a few good days

Our autumn debris-burning season was deferred by the long parade of strong, wet storms that refused to relent before the cold weather arrived. This past week brought a day or two in the low sixties, and my head-cold relented just in time for me to get out and clean up some of autumn's trimmings!  With rain in the afternoon forecast I was only able to get about 1/3 of the debris and none of the leaves into the burn pile, and once started it crackled nicely even as the rain attempted to douse it a bit too soon. Today was nice again so I cleaned up another part of the yard, and separated larger sticks from the branches and got them to separate areas for later treatment.  Since the big rake broke before all piles were removed from the yard it's time to shop for a durable one before all of that is shifted toward the burn area!

My eight-day head cold terminated with a day of gluten poisoning, so at the end of it all I weighed 163 pounds, or 17# less than my peak just before retirement.  Some of that weight will come back but 165 would be a great place to stabilize, maybe even a few pounds less.

In the meantime - the daphne is just starting its aromatic bloom, tiny iris are popping out of the ground and the croci are soon to follow.  Pretty soon the lawn-mower will have its turn.  The slope below the burn pile is entirely made up of blackberry vines that need to have some control - that will take some doing probably about 900 square feet of prickly trouble about to resume its takeover of the known world!  I have a fine machete ready to take it on, but something tells me I shall need something more powerful before I can succeed in controlling the nasty vines...

Coal Creek Crest is (finally) Reporting!

Well it took longer than it should - but I finally have the proper items in the proper places for the streaming to Weather Underground to work.  Hopefully it will experience a long and happy life of reporting the conditions here on our humble hilltop. I swear that I used to be pretty good at making computers do my bidding.. someone even paid me for it!


Today was a marvelous 61° with randomly-filtered sunshine.  I spent some time sticking crocus and iris bulbs into the ground - better late than never, I hope!  They were supposed to go in last fall, but perpetually stormy weather kept me inside and I lost track of the bulbs.

Yesterday was 59 or 60° -- yes I should know precisely, but did I mention that I was having wx-station problems? My default weather station seems to be in LaCrosse WI, so once a few more virtual wires are unscrambled I can be more certain.  Let's not rain on this parade just yet, OK?  Rain is coming in 24 hours anyway, more or less.  The last three days have been special, especially for February.

And now back to our regular, wet programming...

Update!  I finally turned off the AcuRite data feed with the LaCrosse crosse-wiring and it only feeds W.Underground - works fine that way!

transition time

Several transitions this weekend.  While recent wet forecasts have ended up less wet, the odds improve a lot by late October.  With that in mind, I mowed the uppermost lawn one last time, and munched up plenty of leaves in the process!

We also took Zuzu in for her neutering appointment so she can become an indoor cat before cold rains make her miserable.  She's a bit freaked by Duncan so far (24 hours in), but he is mighty thick compared to her family thanks to his Siamese coat (Zuzu is a short-hair study in black and white, Duncan more of a downy caramel mocha).

I also took partial advantage of the last dry day to get our wood-pile in a better place, and under some rain protection.  It will now sit near the wall of our metal outbuilding to minimize carpenter ant interest in a pile of wood leaning on our home! The main stack must sit under a temporary blue-tarp roof.  At some point it will be more of a wooden lean-to structure, but time's up to get that project underway. It's a longer walk now, but perhaps later I will set up a staging area with some wood near the front door (after the porch roof is built - another item that didn't get done in time!).  My wrists already ache from picking up and setting down so much wood, and I didn't get finished either - so the next dry spell will see me out there again.

It would be nice to see some seasonal weather though; we were quite mild last winter and quite dry since early Springtime.  Real October weather would be a nice change of pattern, in more ways than one.

one more excuse to get dirty

Our nearby yard place had some late-season deals on mums, asters and dahlias.  We still have plenty of space for plants along the wood wall, so they will go in this week before the next rains.  Besides the flowers I also found a Honeycrisp apple tree for about $30; that will go on the slope below our withered grape vines where it will receive plenty of sunshine.

I hope those vines are surviving below ground because the hot summer was not kind to them - and our watering system could not reach them.  We now have a 100' hose, when added to our other ones the sprinkler can now get beyond the hill-crest.  Next year we are ready!

p.s. It took over two weeks to get these in.. but they are in!

the Steps arise!

I'm tackling a staircase to the patio at last.  We had held off with the idea that our house refinance could allow us to pay someone else to do it, but that might not be complete until late October when the weather has broken down.  So what the heck: let's make it happen!

After picking out the basic framework it was time to raise the bottom of the stairs to match up with the stringers. That process has been .. interesting! My first attempt was not high enough to end with a solid connection to the deck, and rather than lower the huge deck the answer was a higher base from which the steps would rise. I now have tall concrete blocks for the base, and the steps come to just below the patio height.  The metal clip for the stringers' upper end lands solidly on the deck foundation so everything should be quite sturdy!

I didn't think beforehand about the need to level so many parts in three dimensions though!  First see how off-level the deck is, then align four concrete blocks in a reasonably rectangular array, square to each other And all at the same height - or enough so that the bottom of the staps are as level as the deck itself (i.e. not quite).  If that is all done properly the planks should sit on the blocks without any wobble so the stringers can rest securely on those.  Once all that is done, check that the stringers reach the deck while maintaining their own level bases and top ends that are square to the deck pillars. My first iteration was too close to the deck - so down came everything so I could shift the blocks back several inches from the deck. After re-leveling, re-planking and re-measuring the result is..
It's pretty close :^)

I have a couple of spare blocks that I placed upright on the corners - whether for plants or candles remains to be seen!

In other news Zuzu (ex. Sue from Ms. Pac-Man) has renounced her feral affiliation and now lets us pet her, and she rubs against our legs & occasionally gets kicked when we start walking (oops).  She followed me out to the work site and played around under the steps, through the concrete blocks, and pounced on weeds.  Very helpful.. I suppose?

 

something changed

This region has been in rainfall deficit since late winter.  Spring rains were minimal, summer as dry as usual.  Portland reset its #days with temperatures above 90°!  Given all this it's quite the surprise to see the weather do what it always does, which is break from one pattern to another.  Cool and wet will prevail for the next week or so, and decent widespread rain will quench wildfires and restore greenery to the brown lands.

Often this can happen as other areas of the Pacific fill with late-summer typhoons and Hawaiian hurricanes; these inject plenty of energy and moisture which inevitably gets carried to the west coast of US/Canada.  Here comes the first of them.

We live near the boundary of the Willapa Hills and Lower Columbia forecast zones.  One has a High Wind Warning, the other a Wind Advisory.  Boundaries do that, and we must have boundaries!  It doesn't really matter though, as our home is strongly sheltered from the south wind - we will hear it and its effects, but feeling those winds is unlikely except as they swirl around the highest areas to reach us.

I planted several of our potted plants yesterday, feeling like one warm day followed by an inch or more of rain might settle them in nicely.  Our wood wall now has a sunflower, bush and rock roses as well as our potted daphne are now in place.  The exceptionally dry ground did not wish to yield but I put them in place and gave them an advance sprinkle  Hopefully they will enjoy the rain on their leaves as well as their roots.

UPDATE - here's how well the south wind is blocked here.  The hilltop behind us shows the firs waving in the strong breeze, but we recorded no south winds at all!  Unless one of those trees is uprooted and hurled about 30 feet horizontally, we just won't know about wind storms from the south..