Friday, June 20, 2014

Projects in Progress

There was a week or more between painting most of the bathroom ceiling and edging it. Edging, you see, required climbing ladders. It should have meant opening all the cupboard doors to make sure that no cats got shut into the room with me, because climbing down to let out a yowling furry ping pong ball is perilous.  A white ceiling makes the  tan less obnoxious. And I mind the texturizing a little less. This will do until I can paint the walls.



The patio-to be beside the driveway has had all weeds pulled, and I've carefully raked sand so the patio will be higher near the house and lower  near the driveway. The instructions for paver patios say to buy leveling sand, but the ground here is sand, so I've forgone that step. I rake, allow rain to level that, and rake again before placing pavers. They are heavy-ish but possible to move one at a time.



Small stones from this area get moved to the dry creek in progress by the back patio. The rocks removed from the vegetable garden would line the sides so much better without landscape fabric. The dry creek runs diagonally, so landscape fabric must be laid in overlapping strips. At this point it looks as if I will run out of rocks long before I run out of trench, but the trench is keeping the back patio from being a  pond.


The garden has produced two tomatoes and one green pepper from purchased plants. The plants grown from seed are doing well. We managed to find homes for many of the extra tomato plants grown from seed. There are beans on the bean plants, figs on the fig tree, and lemons on the improved Meyer lemon. The carrots grow well for awhile and roll over and die. One squash plant died, and another appears to be ailing. All the radishes are fiery, despite oodles of water. There are okra plants. The supposed zucchini plants produce flowers but nothing else happens. This makes it sound as if progress has occurred. but it sure doesn't feel that way.