Dog Days of Summer No More

Back when my Lovely Wife and I first married, we bought ourselves a nice starter home in the city.  It was great, with friendly neighbors, a good sized yard, and lots of trees.  I love a nice tree.

The weeping birch tree in the front yard was one of the most spectacular in town.  The almost as tall tamarack tree in the front yard was very cool, as it is one of the very few pines that turns orange and loses all of its needles in the fall.  Sadly, both trees succumbed not long after we moved out: the weeping birch from bugs and the tamarack from lightning (!).

My Weeping Birch in Fall with Tamarack at Left

The backyard was nicely treed as well: several big spruce, a small oak, a nice birch, an apple tree, and a lovely Shubert chokecherry.  The latter had been pruned to grow as a tree with several main trunks that arched over your head as you walked under it.  Lovely.

There was also something about the neighborhood that I hadn't counted on: competition.  Many of the houses there had been built thirty years ago, and many of the original owners still lived there.  That meant a lot of these folks were coming up on or already retired and had a lot of time to put into their yards.  The neighbors on our one side were semi-retired and their yard was beautiful.  The neighbors on the other side were even worse: they were both young school teachers and had all summer off to work in their yards, and that they did.  The pressure to have a nice yard in the neighborhood was constant and intense.  I had to kick things up a notch if I were to hold my head up.

So I did.  I bought a really nice cedar gazebo kit and put it up underneath the chokecherry.  It was gorgeous, with its delicate railings and cedar shake roof.  It fit the setting perfectly, and the chokecherry looked like it had grown up around the gazebo.  It was beautiful and it bought me some good cred in the neighborhood but it wasn't enough.

Beautiful, But Not Enough

So I built an enormous pond at the edge of one of the gazebo's edges, and made it as deep as city bylaws would allow.  I stocked it with goldfish and koi, and even built my own floating lights that were powered by the rest of the low voltage lights in the surrounding flower beds.  The fish were really cool, and would swim up to us looking for food whenever we walked by.

Olympic Size

The pond became a veritable black hole of my time and energy.  Things would spin rapidly out of control.  I built a ridiculously long stream from the back edge of the yard that ended with a small waterfall at the pond.  This ridiculously long stream was made even more ridiculous long by meandering it along the way.  A 1200 gallon per hour pump provided water circulation.  The sound of babbling water that crept into our open bedroom window as we went to sleep every night was hypnotically comforting.

This is Only About Half of It

The stream cut the yard in half so that drove me to build a Pete's Pond Page bridge across it.  Its minimalist design was a perfect complement to the rest of the yard.

Heavy Rocks are Heavy

And then at the head end of the stream, I built something made to look a bit like a monstrous beaver dam / waterfall.  This was really big, but it was big for a reason: it hid my single stage Pete's Pond Page biofilter built from a 100 gallon stock watering tank.  Cotton batting served as a filter media and a small bag of barley straw in there prevented algae growth as if by magic.

That Was Easy!

We enjoyed this beautiful yard for several years before moving to another city in search of bigger and better things.  We sold the house to a nurse, and we were hopeful that she would keep the yard up.  What we would learn later was that she actually bought the place for her out-of-control son.  Her son and his friends then turned the basement into a crystal meth lab.  After several years of turning the neighborhood upside down, the bank foreclosed on them.  The chemicals from the drug making process seeped into the walls, and the entire lower half of the house had to be stripped down to the 2x4's and rebuilt before the house could be put back on the market.

Something tells me the drug dealers didn't much worry about cleaning the pond filter on a regular basis.  We moved back into the area a few years later, and I could not bear to drive by the place for many years after, fearing that all the work I had put into the place would have been destroyed by a bunch of stupid dope fiends.  It broke my heart.

Fast forward to present day.  We have been on our acreage outside the city for ten years now.  Much of that time we had The World's Greatest Dog on patrol.  We are just past the one year anniversary of her passing, and our new dog Buddy is now keeping an eye on the place.  Now the thing about Buddy is that he doesn't much like the sun.  Black Siberian Husky crosses would much rather be running across the frozen tundra than soaking up the rays on a hot summer day.

The problem we have now is that we don't have much for mature trees in our yard, especially in the area where my lovely wife spends so much of her time in the summer - the garden.  No big trees, no shade where a dog can hang out to help beat the heat.  There had to be a better way.  There is.  I was taking a stroll through Costco the other day and came upon this bad boy.

Meet the Alexa Playvilion Sandbox

The gears immediately started turning.  I would build Buddy a gazebo to call his own.

Careful inspection of the display unit built up at the store showed an impressive level of quality for the thing given its $100 price tag:

• It was made of real wood that was already pre-stained
• There were a ton of screws holding it together.  Screw holes were pre-drilled and counter-sunk
• There were several nice finishing touches, like small ledges near the bottom and decorative railings at the top
• The fabric cover was nice and heavy

Construction began the next day.  Normally I don't have too much trouble with the "Put Screw A in Piece 1" type instructions, but I was was thrown off by a couple things.  There were two different types of "Piece 1" pieces for the left and right edges of each side.  And I apparently have just enough dyslexia going on that I kept getting confused as to which piece should be on which side.  Finally, I got the first few sides together and took stock of the situation.

It would not do.  I held a piece of plywood up to the roof line around 11am and saw that the shade cast by the wood fell about six feet back from where the bottom of the gazebo.  The sides were too high to cast enough useful shade over the course of the day.  The happy young children pictured on the box the gazebo came in are doomed to die from skin cancer for this reason.

Sorry Kids, But I Got Bad News For You

Modifications would be in order.  It would be a tall order for someone with the woodworking skills of Homer Simpson, but I'd be damned if I was going to do a half-assed job of this.

His Spice Rack is Also a Classic

It took plenty of cursing and more than a little swearing, but I shortened the supports by around 18".  This would give a gazebo three feet high at the roofline.  The pre-drilling and countersinking of the new screw holes that would attach the bottom boards was the second worst part of it.  The worst part was doing that twelve times for each of the support posts in the kit.  But once that was out of the way and a test fit against the end customer proved successful, things moved along quickly.

I got each of the sides built up and screwed a few of them together.  Everything seemed to be fitting together pretty well.

The six sides are together now.  The picture on the box also had six sides.  I appear to be on the right track.

Here it is with the ledges attached on the bottom pieces and the roof supports up.  They are hard to see, but there are also chunks of wood angled at 120 degrees screwed across each of the corners.  This makes the whole structure surprisingly solid.  Note that I put something on top of the concrete in the driveway to prevent the wood from getting all scratched up.

Like any good engineer would do, we had to do a final test for fit and finish.  The end customer seems to approve.  Note also how my Lovely Wife has to duck down now that I've chopped the roofline down to Buddy size.

And here is the finished product in place.  We put it up on the north side of a small Scots Pine at the corner of our garden to help cast additional shade.  Note the enclosed pool that my Lovely Wife picked up early this summer at 50% off.

So the job is done so I know what you must be asking yourself.  Does he like it?  Well...

Damn Straight, He Likes It

As I tell my friends, I like all the places I live to have a pond and gazebo.  Anything else would be uncivilized.

It Involves A System Of Pulleys

Engineering is not well understood by most mortals.  As a matter of fact, I gave a presentation at work last week to give others in our company a better idea of what we Engineers do in our department and how we see our role in the grand scheme of things.  This was Page 2.

Engineering, As Seen By Engineers

(Note that "Engineer", "Engineers", and the profession of "Engineering" should always be capitalized, just for reasons of general awesomeness.)

I must confess that this public misunderstanding comes as close to home as my own Dear Sister.  When talking to her about something technical, I generally get asked: "Does it involve a system of pulleys?"  A fine inside joke indeed.  It also speaks to the fact that simple things can become deceptively complicated.  Case in point, and something I've wanted to blog about for some time now, is my rainwater collection system.

Water is a precious resource out here on the Ponderosa.  All we had when we moved in to the place was a well to supply our water, and not a very good well at that.  It wasn't very deep and recharged slowly.  It was enough for drinking, washing, etc. but didn't have a lot of margin for watering gardens and newly planted trees.  I figured one thing I could do was build a rainwater collection system.  As usual, no half-assedness would be tolerated.

I based the system around the idea of a dry stream bed.  Building this was a big job.  A very big job.

Had I Known How Big A Job This Would Be, I Likely Wouldn't Have Started.

The previous owner had tried something on a smaller scale but it sucked.  It was just a rectangular-shaped pile of rocks down the slope to the back of our house.  Half the rocks were missing and it was a weed infested mess.  I cleared out all of the old stones and came up with a shape with a more natural flow to it.  I then laid down some heavy duty landscape fabric to keep the weeds down.  On top of that I laid down some 1" chicken wire to discourage any gophers that might want to dig a hole in the middle of it

It doesn't show well in these pictures, but there is a dry stream shape about a foot deep that winds its way through all of these rocks.  This dry stream is lined with a thick EPDM rubber normally used to line garden ponds.  The water I collect from my eaves-troughs drains into the top of the stream and winds its way down to the bottom.  The stream bed is actually functional when it rains.

Laying all of the rocks was a huge job.  There must be thousands of rocks here of various shapes and sizes.  And many of these rocks are heavy, big-assed rocks.  It took me a couple of years to get this part done.  Every rock was put in place by hand, both to give the right mix of large and small, and also to make sure the entire surface was well covered so you couldn't see the landscape fabric or the liner below.  The fact that it is on quite a slope added to the challenge.  Want to get strong???  Move out into the country.

All the water I collect up top gets to the bottom.  Right about here.

There Must Be More To It Than This???

This is where the "system of pulleys" come in.  Let's take away the gravel in the center of the picture above.

A System Of Pulleys

Here is where things get interesting.  Taking off the gravel shows a heavy grill meant to cover a fire pit.  It sits on top of a hard plastic sump basin that I got at Home Depot for $20.  It is just like the one shown in the left of the picture, only the one in the ground right now has a big crack in the bottom.  It didn't always have that crack, but it seems that water expands when it freezes.  The first one I used was left in place all winter to prevent the dirt around it from caving in.  It got some water in it which subsequently froze and blew the bottom out.  So the cracked one is used in winter to keep the shape of the dirt around the pit and the other one is used in summer to hold the water.

The above picture gives a closer look. You can see the heavy rubber liner used to carry the water down the stream peeled back.  The sump pump I use to pump the collected water back up to my holding tank is shown in the bottom left.  You can just barely see the check valve behind the float switch that prevents the water pumped up and out of the sump pit from flowing back down again.  You can also see a couple hoses poking into the sump pit.  The one at about 2 o'clock runs under the rubber liner and connects the sump pump to the holding tank above.  The other one around 5 o'clock brings in water from another downspout at the other end of the house.

Springtime means pulling the old sump pit, putting the new one in its place, connecting everything up, and making it all pretty again.  The dance goes a little something like this.

Step 1: Pull out the old sump basin.  The chicken wire and weed fabric are clearly visible.

There Were Only Two Dead Mice In The Hole This Year

Step 2: Put the good sump basin in place and connect the hose up.  I use some flat rocks to prevent the pump from moving around within the basin.  Otherwise, the float switch could get hung up and prevent the pump from turning on when the pit gets full of water (ask me how I know).  Tie-wraps are also used to keep the hose and the cords out of the way.

Step 3: Put the grill grate back over top of the sump basin, making sure the wires from the pump and float switch are brought out.  Lay the heavy rubber liner back down so the water carried down the stream will drain into the middle.  The picture below shows the setup back together, just needing the gravel to be put back on top of the grate.

Step 4: Plug the float switch plug into the AC power cord and the pump into that.  I run the cord through Liquatite flexible conduit because a critter will gnaw through an exposed power cord if they get half a chance.  They'll generally just do it once, though...

The top part of the design is a lot less complicated than the bottom.  Here is a picture of the front of the house in early spring where the downspouts are not connected in to the system of pulleys.  No point dumping a bunch of water in during spring thaw that could later freeze and bust things up.

Taking a closer look, you can see a black tube that comes up from below ground near our front step.  This is just a section of non-perforated weeping tile that is teed below every downspout.  The middle part of the tee connects to a flexible piece of downspout extender.

This picture gives a better look of the downspout extender connected in to the downspout above.  Rainwater from the eaves-troughs flows into the downspout, into the downspout extender, and then into the weeping tile buried below.  Silicone and hot glue keeps water in and leaks out.

The weeping tile carries the water from all the downspouts to the top of the "dry" stream bed.  Gravity takes over and the water flows down into the sump basin.  The sump pump cuts in when enough water has been collected and pumps it back up the slope via a hose hidden under the stream bed's rubber liner to a holding tank.

It's simple, really.

Now up top, I mentioned how water is a precious resource out here.  But since I got this baby together, we've gotten our house connected up to "city water" and so we no longer depend on the well.  I also since finished another mega-project to bring water up from the river 85' feet below to water our trees and garden (a topic for a future blog post, perhaps).  Finally, it  seems that every cloud that passes over the house lately brings with it an inch of rain. 

Water is still precious, just maybe not quite so precious as it used to be.

Motivating Myself for 2012

It is that time of year that people look back on the year it was.  I look back and I'm pretty pleased with how it went down.  I've gotten some things done that I've been meaning to get done for a long time, I have challenged myself to learn new things, I have had good success at work, and I like to think that I am a little better person than I was when 2011 was about to roll in.

It is said that one way of making sure you carry through on something is to tell other people what you are doing.  The more people you tell, the more people you are letting down if you fail to follow through.  With that thought in mind, and with 2011 drawing to a close, it seems like a good time to look ahead and set some goals for 2012 in a couple different areas.

Working Out

I have been working out pretty diligently over the past four years or so and have become decently strong on a few lifts.  This despite having the frame of a Japanese schoolgirl and the fact that the testosterone train left the station long ago (i.e. I'm old).  I'm not expecting huge gains in muscle mass but I do think I have the capacity to put on a few more good pounds if I eat enough and don't get hurt.

My best lift is the deadlift.  Pick a weight up off the ground and put it back down.  Simple enough.  I can usually do something like 350lbs to 365lbs for five or six reps depending on the day with a bodyweight in the low 140lb range.  Not bad.  This should translate into a 415lb+ one-rep max.  Should, but probably doesn't, at least for me.  I find that my body doesn't seem to obey the basic predicted formulas for one-rep max

one-rep max = weight / (1.0278 - (.0278 * reps))

and that my reps go down sharply as the weight goes up.  So...

Goal #1: Deadlift 405lbs for a single rep.  That's four wheels a side.  This goal should be doable.  I just have to do it.

This is 495lbs, but you get the idea

One of my weaker lifts is the squat.  Yesterday's workout was 235lbs x 4 for a calculated one rep max of 256lbs.  This lags well behind my deadlift.  I feel my hamstrings are letting me down and will work to strengthen them up.  I really need to build up my bottom position strength before I see some decent gains here.  Because this lift sucks for me, I'm thinking...

Goal #2: Squat 280lbs for a single rep below parallel.  285lbs - 290lbs would be even better, as this would be 2x bodyweight.

 I get mistaken for Tom Platz all the time

My other lifts are decent enough, so I'd be OK with basically maintaining them as I bring these others up.  I can pretty easily Military Press my bodyweight, and I can do weighted chinups with an extra 77.5lbs of weight (around 55% bodyweight) hanging off a belt for 5 reps or so.  Bench press?  Screw it.  It has done my shoulders far more harm than good in the past.  I might play around here a little bit, but pushing serious weight with them isn't something I'm planning on.

Work

Work isn't really something I talk about this on this blog, so I won't.  Suffice to say I just hope I'm not putting in crazy amounts of extra time that would take substantially away from all this other stuff I want to do.

Hacking

This year we went away for a few days to spend Christmas with the family.  We had our neighbor check in on the place while we were away.  You never know if the furnace might go out or a pipe springs a leak or something like that.

Actually, you can know.  And it isn't that hard.  I've spent a bunch of time researching this lately.  There are a multitude of ways that data can be collected and made available so I could know right away if my furnace stopped working or a pipe sprung a leak.  Then I could just make a phone call for somebody to check into it rather than having them waste their time when everything is fine.  One strategy would be to collect the data with some JeeNodes from JeeLabs and the incomparable Jean-Claude Wippler.  JeeNodes are a kind of Arduino clone with built in network capabilities and an emphasis on low power such that a single remote node ran on a single LiPo for a year without breaking a sweat.  More here.  And did I mention that these things are crazy cheap?

Now, that data has got to get onto the net, so why not just hook up a JeeNode to my router and write a script like that used to collect data from my weather station and push it out on to the web?  If only there was a site that was willing to store all of this data for me and make it easy to get to.

It turns out that there is.  Pachube is happy to take all of the data I send to them.  They have an open API.  Look at the data from their web site or pull the data into a Google gadget and display it on a web page.  And you can retrieve the data whenever you want in three different formats.  All for free.  So how about...

Goal #3: Get some basic home monitoring going by Christmas 2012.

This is what I have in mind.

One more thing that I have been playing with for some time is trying to understand how the Davis Weather Station outdoor sensor suite is monitored by the indoor console.  What I'm working towards is some means of building a standalone receiver that could listen in on its transmissions and collect the data without depending on the console.  I had initially proposed a Pretty Pink Pager for this task, and indeed, I was playing with this just the other day.  Unfortunately, I'm struggling with some kind of problem with my GoodFET where it doesn't want to talk to the IM-ME, and this is slowing me down.

There is a problem with this approach though.  The number of people that have a Davis Weather Station, an IM-ME, and the means to hack it is a number one less than two.  The IM-ME is a good prototyping platform for this kind of thing, but it isn't an accessible solution for others.  The biggest problem is the CC1021 chip in the console is not exactly hacker friendly.  The documentation is great, but actually building a board around this thing is not: the components are tiny and a good layout is critical to decent performance.  Development boards also tend to be either expensive or very expensive.  Then I came across the XRF module from Ciseco that puts a CC1101 processor (CC1021 RF compatible) onto an XBee form factor board for just £10 plus another £2.50 for shipping.  What a deal!  This leads us to:

Goal #4: Get a standalone receiver picking up the transmissions from a Davis outdoor sensor suite by the end of 2012.

Let's Do This.  You and Me.  Mano-a-Mano.

Wrapping Up (Finally)

Well, that is enough for now.  There are still a lot of other things I want to get done this year, such as

• I have a bunch of landscaping to get done.
• I'd like to get a little hydroponics setup going so I don't have to wait until fall for a decent tomato.  Life is too short for shitty tomatoes.
• I'm going to keep working at improving my breadmaking skills.  Incidentally, this Sourdough Rye bread is outstanding.

These things lead me to...

Goal #5: Keep this blog going, share the adventure, and enjoy the ride.

What are YOUR goals?  What do YOU plan to do?  We live in a great time where pretty much anyone can learn about anything.  The greatest threat to this is a lack of motivation.  Don't waste the opportunity you have.  Get started today.

Happy New Year from all of us here at Mad Scientist Labs.

How To Feed A Rabbit

Boy Howdy, has it been a long time since I have blogged.  I anticipated as much though.  My time is very short in the summer, as I think I mentioned the last time I blogged.  With the Great Landscape Redesign decided upon, I spend most of my free time outside busting ass in the summer time.  I'll give you one example of that ass-busting today.  Here is my secret technique for feeding rabbits.

First find a nice spot to dig a hole.

Now, start digging!  This starts off pretty easy.

But life isn't always easy.  You might hit the odd rock.

It might take a bit of effort, but you'll get that rock out.  Aren't those little bunnies worth it?

There might be more than one rock.  Don't start slacking off now!

Now get your ridiculously expensive tree planter out of the garage.  Head on out to the garden and set it up around one of the trees that you have been nursing since it was just a couple inches high (the tree only took five or six years to get this size: it all went by in a blur, really).

Now take that sledge that shows up on the left side of the tree planter.  Lift it up and drop it down to drive the tree planter spades in to the dirt.  The sledge weighs something like 35 pounds, so hopefully you ate a good breakfast this morning (feeding rabbits is no job for wimps!).  By the way, you better hope that there aren't any rocks that the spades of the tree planter will hit as you drive them down.  Otherwise you'd have to dig those rocks out from under the spade so you get enough root and the tree doesn't die on you later.  Boy, wouldn't that be a miserable job (ask me how I know).

OK, now that the tree is dug out, it is time to cart the tree over to the hole we dug before.  My, there sure were a lot of rocks that had to be dug out of that hole.

The tree isn't going to grow in all those rocks you dug out.  You're going to need good topsoil to fill it in, but where do you get the topsoil from?  Good question.  You can't dig it out of the garden, or you are just shooting yourself in the foot.  Best to spend a pile of money to get a truck to bring some in.  But what is the right amount to get trucked in?  Well, considering that you are going to need a lot of dirt for all the other projects you have going on, that you live out of town, and that mileage makes up a significant proportion of the costs, you might as well get a semi-trailer load full.  That is 20 square yards of dirt.  Let me tell ya, whoever coined the phrase "dirt cheap" had no idea what the hell they were talking about.  But think of the bunnies!

Fill in the hole with some proper topsoil. Add a little water.  And prayer.

Rinse and repeat.

Now do a bit of cleanup.

There you go!  Now you know all there is to feeding a rabbit.  I hope you've found this useful.  I've searched around on the net and haven't seen a similar approach, so I think I'm on to something pretty novel here.

What's that you say?  This has nothing to do with feeding rabbits?  Au contraire, mon ami!  Take a look at the trees we planted last year.  These trees used to have branches right down to the ground.  Thar's good rabbit food, I must say.

Anyhoo, enough about rabbits.  Faithful readers of my blog (if there is such a thing) might be relieved to know that I have a couple things in the works now that fall has finally arrived.  I'll be putting in an order to Mouser Electronics tonight for another Davis Weather Station Hack, and I've been getting the odd batch of bread making in.  Things might still be sparse for the next month or so until I can clear a logjam at work (don't get me started!), but hopefully I can get back to making this blog semi-interesting again.

This post has been brought to you by HARE: Help A Rabbit Eat.

The Great Landscape Redesign - Now Underway

I am on a break from work for a couple of weeks so I've been able to put some time into the landscaping redesign I've talked about.  Part of this involves a ring of willows that will serve as a windbreak around part of our property.  Unfortunately, we have some very poor soil in areas around our yard.  So the first task was to give the future trees a better chance at a good start.  I dug twenty-four holes spaced fifteen feet apart.  Each hole is 24" across and 18" deep.  They will be re-filled with good topsoil, plus some organic material to enrich the soil.

The hard part in all of this was that about half were in soil with a lot of rock in it.  I had to use a five foot pry bar in a lot of spots to dislodge the rocks and lever them out.  Some of these holes took two hours to dig because of that.  But after four days of work, the holes are dug.  It gets easier from here.

Next up: I'm thinking of digging a trench that would be roughly 90 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 1 foot deep.  This would be serving a similar purpose as the holes above, but this time for a hedge of red osier dogwoods.  They are hardy around here, and they've got a really nice red color that would look great against the winter snow.  That's the plan, anyway.

But the morning will start with a trip to the nursery for a Kerr Crabapple.  This apple is supposed to be very good eaten fresh, and it also is an excellent keeper (I've heard as much as 27 weeks).  Best of all, it is extremely hardy.  With this, I should be able to get some production out of our Rescue Crabapple.  This tree has bloomed nicely for us for the last couple of years, but produced little or no fruit.  How was I supposed to know that it required a different species for cross-pollination?  D'oh!

More on propagation

My experiments with propagation continue.  I've tried willows, blue honeysuckle, and shubert chokecherry so far.  All the leaves on my willow shoots turned black and fell off.  But closer examination of the shoots did show signs of rooting.  Even if the willows do root, they are off to a poor start.  Not so good, actually.

So I turned to the internet and read that willows will do well if you just cut a 9" to 12" long stalk about as thick as your thumb and stick it in water.  I tried this and am seeing signs of rooting in less than a week.  Score!  So I've expanded the program now for some red osier dogwoods that are also supposed to support this method.  Popplers work this way too, and I know where there are some great looking monster popplers to try.  These three types of tree apparently have some kind of hormone in their bark that allows them to root readily when stuck in water.  Let's give it a go, shall we?

Meanwhile, I'm thinking of the overall landscape plan.  I need some kind of hedge on one side of the property.  I'm thinking now of a kind of an S-shape that flows with the existing plantings and the driveway.  I've laid out a piece of garden hose as a prototype and will let that shape percolate for a bit.

Canada Day, Eh?

It is Canada Day.  Which is nice if you are a Canadian.  Like me.  I will be taking Friday off as a vacation day, so that gives me a sweet four day weekend away from work.  Best of all, I really don't have anything from work I need to get done over this long weekend.  That will let me get a bunch of stuff done around the house and yard.

And there are many things to do.  More trees to propagate, lawn to cut, landscapes to plan, etc.  I also want to try getting in a few fasted training sessions.  My last couple of cracks at this have worked out pretty well, but given that I work a regular day job, is only really practical to do on a day off.  My workouts in general have gone very well lately.  Military press, deadlifts, and squats have all been good this week.  I consider bench press to be lagging somewhat, so I've been reading a bit to see if I can improve my technique here a little and get my poundage up.  One of these days I will put together a Body Lab page that talks a lot more about this stuff.

The Great Landscape Redesign - 2010 Edition

We had a professional come in some years ago to design a landscape for our acreage.  That was a mistake.  This person did not appreciate the issues when planning a landscape in the country.  Trees were selected that were borderline hardy for our zone (Zone 2).  Some plants happened to be a deer's most favorite food in the whole wide world.  But the biggest problem was the importance of a windbreak was totally ignored.  So I've got to fix this.

Today I tried propagating some acute willows based on this technique.  They are a beautiful tree, very hardy, and work well as a windbreak.  I've started off with about a dozen and I'll watch them over the next few days.  If it seems like they are taking, I'll go into production and do about 50 more.  I've also got my eye on a bunch of other trees in the area around where I work.

The idea is to eventually fill in the yard with all kinds of trees and flowerbeds.  It is way too open right now.  The wind gets in and whips around and tears stuff up.  If I can get enough stuff planted, I should be able to create my own micro-climate and do some interesting things out here.  At the same time, that will cut down on the amount of grass / weeds around this place that I need to mow. 

I've started a layout using Google Sketchup to help visualize how this will all look in the end.  Naturally.