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The groundskeepers finished their hatchet job on bushes growing on the eastside of 2005 this week. The job was started last week as a trim but said bushes had gotten so overgrown horizontally and vertically over the years that it was necessary to take a chain saw to them and put them in their place. Here’s hoping they come back. I think they will but only time will tell. There was a considerable amount of dry leaves underneath which we ran through the shredder and used to mulch the bushes. There is a large area of bare ground now in front of the bushes where the former overgrowth had shaded out the grass. We also spread the mulch over this after seeding it with buffalo grass. Perhaps in a couple of years the bushes will have filled in again (and properly trimmed) and there will be grass covering the formerly bare area. That’s the hope, anyway. This trimming was the first step in cleaning up the border bed on the south side of 2005 generally. The rest of the job should be easy by comparison; a little trimming and raking here and there, not much more.
June 20
It has been several weeks of heat and no rain and the place is showing it. Where it isn’t watered, the green is fading fast. Yesterday Abigail mowed around 2005; it needed it because Kari waters around the house. Speaking of Kari, she has jumped with both feet into container gardening. She has covered the cellar with canvas bags with tomatoes and other things planted in them. There are several other such bags under the big pine west of the patio in which, I believe, she has planted lettuce, among other things. Then there are the things planted in the garden north of the shop. She has two or three beds of potatoes and I see other things sprouting up here and there. Joyce has several tomato plants and I have planted flowers in other beds, all of which Joyce waters regularly. It is challenging to garden when it is hot and dry. Thank goodness for the cool and rainy May.
Abigail and I used our Bluff Wednesday to pay a visit to the Alibates Flint Quarry. Texas Parks and Wildlife publishes what they call the Great Texas Wildlife Trail map to encourage interested parties to visit areas of the state. The map divides the state into regions such as the Gulf Coast, Piney Woods, Hill Country, Panhandle Plains and others. Within each region there are loops consisting of hiking trails and other outdoor-oriented features. The state being so large, TPW asks the Texas Master Naturalist chapters around the state to “Adopt-A-Trail.” The Panhandle Chapter, as you might guess, has taken on the Panhandle Plains section. Our members have volunteered to visit loops and trails in the Panhandle and provide TPW with information to verify and update the information in the GTWT map. I volunteered to assess the Alibates Flint Quarry trail, thus the visit there this week. Access to that trail is controlled by the National Park Service and is only available through scheduled ranger-led hikes. Our guide was a delightful person named Elaine who made the jaunt pleasant and informative. I plan to file my report before the month is out. TWP asks that we file a complete report once a year with shorter reports from visits during each season of the year for a total of four reports annually. I never seem to be able to pry myself loose from SA to visit that area as often as I would like and I’m looking forward to this commitment forcing me to do so.
June 13
The mojave sage out front is in full bloom. The many blossoms are deep purple on a background of light green. The penstemons that bloom in May are about gone but the sage is more than making up for that for us bipeds and the humming birds.
Abigail spent 6.8 hours mowing this week, long enough to get the whole place mowed. There is some trimming I need to do to complete the job and I’ll try to get that done early this coming week. We have been dry for a couple of weeks so the grass is beginning to lose its green. If we don’t get rain between now and the 4th of July, the place won’t be looking its best for our 4th celebration on the 3rd but we won’t let that stop us.
We had some hot weather this week. Our thermometer showed 105° one day. Fortunately, Friday a cool north wind dropped the temperature down to something more reasonable. We were in the shade when we watched Rebecca play tennis Saturday and the breeze was still pleasant, though muggy. That evening we went out to the Bluff about an hour before sundown and watered flowers. Clouds in the west blocked the late evening sun and made for a pleasant time as we sat on a bench next to the butterfly garden while the sprinkler sprinkled. In spite of the clouds we still were treated to a pretty sunset and the coyotes were holding choir practice which further enhanced the evenings entertainment.
June 6
May wasn’t a record month (since 2009) for moisture but it was nearly double the average. It even rained a little the first few days of June. SA is as green as it gets. Shoot, Potter and Randall counties are probably as green as they get. Poor Canyon got hit with a flooding event during that wet spell. Abigail will log some hours on the mower this coming week, I can tell you.
Speaking of Abigail and the mower, for some years now the mower has been occasionally and out of the blue just dying while mowing. It usually starts back up, but there have been times when it didn’t until it had completely cooled down, usually overnight. It usually happens toward the end of a day’s mowing when it is good and hot and consequently is very frustrating when one is trying to finish up. Because of its intermittent nature of the problem, it would be very difficult for a mechanic to diagnose the problem. Safety features include a kill switch which immediately kills the engine if the driver rises from the seat and this problem I’m writing abut acts very much like that. One of the dealer mechanics suggested we replace that switch and see if that takes care of the problem. He said it was easy (for him) to do and the part wasn’t expensive so I ordered one. I’m loath to tackle things like that because there can be more than one outcome and, while the problem is annoying, the mower still gets the job done, which is critical at a time like now where you can almost see the grass growing. Something needed to be done, though, so one rainy day when Abigail and I were stuck in the shop, we tackled switching switches. As soon as we got the old part off we saw that the new part wasn’t going to fit. The new switch had multiple electrical prongs and the old switch only had two. The old part was dirty so we cleaned it up as best we could on the off chance that would correct the problem. In the mean time I returned the new switch. Several days later when it dried out enough to mow, the problem persisted so I ordered the correct part. After a couple of hours at the Bluff last Wednesday, we headed home to get a little done there before we called it a day. I gave Abigail the option of continuing the raking in the lane she started the day before or picking up the part at the dealership and, if she had time and wanted to, installing it. While she did all that I was spraying weeds and wasn’t around the shop when she got back. She went ahead and installed the new switch and tested the mower to make sure it started but didn’t run it long enough to see whether it died on her. Yesterday she mowed around 2005 while Joyce, Kari and I were watching Rebecca play tennis. I haven’t talked to Abigail since then to find out if she had any problems but, given that she’ll be mowing non-stop this week, we shall soon know.
AT&T has been wanting me to switch from DSL internet access to fiber optic for some time and I was willing, but the installers that came out to make the change didn’t see any good way to get the WiFi signal down in the basement. When FO was installed in 1911, they just drilled a small hole through the garage wall and set the router up on table out there. Setting the router up in the shop didn’t seem feasible because there is so much concrete between the shop floor and the basement. It could have been done by going down through the basement wall but seemed like a clunky approach to me and the installers. I had no problem with the DSL so I chose to simply ignore their requests to change. I figured they would eventually force the issue, which they finally did by more than doubling the monthly charge. That got me into action and I spent a couple of weeks exploring alternatives. When the shop was built the basement was wired with coaxial cable and my research showed that it was feasible to use an adapter to connect FO with coax. I asked Jill if she knew anyone within AT&T who might help me with that and got a call from someone in the Office of the President. I presumed that was the president of AT&T. Anyway, the person I spoke to talked to a technical person who seemed to think FO-to-coax was a possibility so I made a date with yet another installer. This fellow was named Jack and he listened patiently to all my ideas but during the course of conversation we realized none of those ideas were going to work. He suggested a normal installation to see if the signal would go from the shop to the basement and, if needed, there were a couple of things involving extenders that we could fall back on. To my great relief, the WiFi signal reached down in basement just fine. My PC needed an adapter and, after going a few rounds with Dell and then having no luck with an adapter I bought at Best Buy, Agent Larry in the Best Buy Geek Squad replaced the first adapter I couldn’t get to work with one that did and now I’m on to the next headache, whatever that is.