Bogieblog

Did I Hear This Right?

I could swear on last night's news that I heard someone say that Obama wasn't doing enough about the BP oil rig explosion. I don't know, do they want him there with a net catching oil-slicked birds? Do they want him manning a boat that places oil barriers? Just what do they want him to do? Didn't make sense to me at all.

Suspicious Mind

Anyone besides me have the feeling that Brett's announcement about his ankle (and, will he or won't he have surgery) is just before a spate jeans of advertisements? I haven't seen any of his ads for a while, but it seems that whenever he is in the news, they come out.

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Anyone but me have a small niggling of a suspicion that the BP oil rig explosion was sabotage? It is mighty strange that just after the President announced that he was expanding drilling, the explosion happens and now the expansion comes with stipulations on some future technology being used to prevent this sort of disaster. I'm probably wrong on this (I sure hope so), but still, a little corner of my mind whispers that it is a definite possibility.

That is all - just two little things that are niggling at me.

Gardening and Critter Control

Yesterday was sunny and in the high 50's, so I took the opportunity to repot the vegie seedlings. Most had come up very well, but there was one whole flat that nothing ever came up. This container had 3 different tomato seeds and the soil was the same as I used in the other flats, so I don't know what the problem was. There were a couple of types of peppers that were a bit slow on the uptake, but they eventually showed up.

   The flat with no seedlings is on the right.

I put them up in 6" pots so they should be good until it is time to transplant. They are up in the greenhouse (which WS put up a couple of weeks ago) so I just have to remember to water them every so often.

While I was potting up seedlings, WS was working on the screen door. Thru the years, the animals have demolished the screen and we had it repaired this spring. We spent some time searching for a solution (at one point, I had glued on panels of thin, clear plexiglass, which worked but cut down on air flow and the glue only held for one summer). I found some stuff on-line and showed it to WS.

He believed he could make something similar, so off to the hardware store we went so I could pick out what I wanted (he did the scouting trip, I had to pick out the pattern). We used decorative aluminum panels that WS cut to size and screwed onto the screen frame:

   From the outside - notice that it is nice and tall as Shadow had learned that he could reach over the 2.5' piece of plexiglass I had put up years ago. You can't really tell the pattern - it is nothing fancy but looks different than the picture shows.

  From the inside, you can barely tell it is there - so we can see the cats when they want in. The holes in the panel allow for air flow. As an added bonus, Missy can see it so she won't bounce off it when she is in a hurry (as she had done with just the screen material in place.

This looks like it should be a good solution. The only issue will be if the cats decide to pick at the screen when they want out, but they usually don't do that - only for when they want in.
 

Work, Work, Work

Friday I was on the road all day; in the morning I took the Jeep in for it's first oil change (a bit late at 6,700 miles - supposed to be at 6k). I got home and did howswork for an hour before heading down to Hudson Massachussettes to discuss doing some contract work for a company. The drive was 15 minutes shy of being a 2 hour drive, I spent a bit over an hour discussing things with them, then spent almost 2 hours getting home.

I have gotten the preliminary part of the job, which entails analyzing their current quality system and reporting their deficiencies. I worked on that some yesterday and hope to finish it up today.

This is pretty funny; the last week of April I will have 4 jobs (assuming they want me to continue to phase 2 of the contract job); I will be training for census work, I will also put in 1 day at my regular job and use vacation pay for the other 3 days, I will be putting in a few hours for contract work, and I picked up a pet-sitting customer for the 24th thru the 29th (visiting 2x per day).

All I have to do is keep myself straight on knowing what I am doing when.

Spring Clean Up

After fighting with the roses and winning the battle (but probably not the waar) on Saturday, Sunday I started cleaning up some of the perennial gardens while WS and Jimmy went for a ride. Since I new this would be one of the few frew weekends I had left, the gardens really had to be cleaned up. Here is just an example of my industriousness:

   Looking pretty sloppy with all kinds of leaves and dead stalks.

  All cleaned up and ready to show the greens as they appear.

It is amazing how different just cutting back and raking up the leaves can make in the appearance. I did this to several of the garden areas; both sides of the driveway steps, along the fenceline in the front yard, and in the garden areas beside the house where the lilacs are.

I cut back some of the shrubs in those areas like the Cotoneaster that was trying to smother the poor Dwarf Barberry (as well as parts of the yard that WS mows). The Snow Mound Spirea got cut back and thinned as did the Autumn Clematis and another shrub (of which the name escapes me at present moment).

I was very satisfied with the work I had gotten done and the appearance of the places I had worked in by the time that WS got back from his ride. I had expected to get to do some yard work done this weekend also, but the weather is like this:

   Friday morning. The snow melted in the afternoon, but it rained when it wasn't snowing.

  Satruday morning (and the scene repeated itself in the afternoon).  Once again, when it wasn't snowing, it was raining (and never got out of the 30's).

However, since I picked up the contract work Friday afternoon, I haven't had a problem filling up my time this weekend!

Workings

I may soon have more jobs than I know what to do with; my regular job, Census work (starts in 2 weeks), and Friday I go talk to a company about doing some consulting work to help them revamp their quality system in ppreparation for getting their ISO cert (which they lost last year). Of course the last job isn't in the bag, but since they approached me (and not the other way around), I think I've got a good shot.

Sightings

Monday night The Wonderful Spouse pointed out a cardinal in the backyard. Tuesday night I saw a brown headed cowbird and a chipping sparrow at our feeders. Wednesday night, on the way home from work, I spied a grey heron in a swamp in Deering.

Just the normal spring excitement over first sightings for the season.

Early Spring Garden Inventory

Yesterday was perfect; about 50 degrees, sunny and windy - the perfect day for hacking down the Rosa Rugosas. On a day like this, I can wear a lined nylon windbreaker that the thorns will slide off of (usually), lined leather gloves and boots without sweating too much. And, maybe "hack down" aren't quite the right words to use, I trimmed them up as I do every 2-3 years so they don't take over the universe:

   Before
After

Okay, maybe "hack down", was a pretty apt description. I am pretty ruthless, aspiring to cut off at least 1/2 the growth and thinning out the center. Toward the end of this several hour job, I get so tired of being stabbed by thorns that I am less than judicious and really go to town on them.

All the stuff outside the rock wall (see top picture) will be poisoned today. I have tried being nice by just digging out the canes, even tearing out portions of the rock wall to get to the roots, but that hasn't worked. I will use vine and brush killer brushed on the tips of the cuts to the canes and hope it works (I'm figureing it is about even odds - RR's are so tough that I would not be surprised if they survived it).

After spending several hours on this project and ruining one pair of leather gloves (I plan for that), Karen showed up and we took a tour of the yard to see how things faired and what was blooming. Naturally, the forsythia are blooming, I didn't take a picture because this doesn't seem to be their best year (or it may be that they aren't at full bloom - they weren't blooming at the beginning of the week).

Birding

This is a crappy picture, but I was excited to see two pairs of Purple Finches (NH's state bird) at our feeders. Theyve been around for about a week, so are probably here to stay for the summer:

 

There are two males and one female in this picture taken yesterday evening. Just after snapping this shot, I looked up to see the second female come into view from behind the No-No feeder. Unfortunatly, they all startled and took off as I was trying to get the camera back into position for a snapshot (taken from the bathroom window - double paned and at a higher zoom than my camera takes smooth pictures at).

I put out a small hummingbird feeder on Sunday so that any early hummingbirds can get a meal. There haven't been any takers yet (the feeder is so small, it is obvious if anything has fed even a little from it), but I'm guessing it won't be too much longer.

Mole

As the snow receded this spring, we found that we had aquired a mole during the winter.

 

I'm hoping he had his fill of ants and Japanese Beatle grubs, then left. The only problem with this theory is that it is only in the front right section, the tunnels aren't anywhere else, meaning there are plenty of ants and grubs to be had in other areas of the yard.

While he was tunneling, he figured the chipmunks had done a bad job of landscaping and moved some of the crocus bulbs (the chipmunks had moved them all from where I originally planted them several years ago):

 
 

I wonder what other things he has repositioned for me!