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We were lucky. The library only charged us $35 per book ($70 total) to do the restoration. Also, it shouldn't have any negative impact on our borrowing privilages.
Now Erika and I are working on end-of-the-semester papers, projects, presentations, take-home tests, and of course studying for finals. I think I'll be up pretty late tonight working on one. Why does the end of the semester have to be so depressing?
So I made the mistake of leaving Annie alone downstairs for about 20 minutes tonight. When I came back, I saw Annie had chewed the covers partially off two library books Erika had checked out. This is a problem. So I look online to see how much it might cost to replace them. The first one I checked was about $270. This is expensive, I didn't want to check the second one. Then I think, maybe the library can just replace the cover, since the rest of the books are in good condition. I call them up, and they say they'd have to appraise the damage, and if that's all it needs, they'd charge about $35 each to re-cover them. I'll take the book in tomorrow to find out. Cross your fingers for me. I suppose I should be happy with my anger management, I put Annie in her pen for the night without so much as yelling. Oh well.
Erika and I love pointing out funny signs and products we see, and we thought we could share some of them on here. So I added a new section to the photo gallery called Funny Stuff. Go check it out.
I posted some more pictures of the fence after the tree was removed. Check it out and compare the before and after.
I added some new pictures today. So we had a tree that was growing through the fence in the back corner of the backyard behind the shed. It looks like it'd been there, growing, for quite a few years. It had grown through a space between two boards in the fence, and had actually pushed one of the boards off the fence, pulling the nails out. After that, it grew more branches, and it actually started to push the fence apart at the top. Anyway, it had to go. So I cut it off at the fence top and hauled off the limbs. Next I pulled the last couple of nails out that were holding that section of fence up, and got better access to the trunk, and I sawed that off as low as I could. I started putting the fence back together, and realized that I had to cut out part of the stump to even do that. I ended up using a large drill bit to take out a chunk of the stump. After that it was pretty easy to put everything back together with some screws. By this time it was dark, so you'll have to wait on pictures of the finished product.
We also hung up the hummingbird feeder that Erika's folks gave us recently.
Then I posted some pictures of Erika's raised bed, and the grass sprouting from about a week ago. That's all for now.
So I have a big math exam Thursday, and I've been studying for that. Wish me luck. Erika's raised bed has begun to sprout. The mesclun is popping up really well, and we think a few pea plants are too.
The new section of grass close to the house is doing really well, I think due to the warmer weather. The stuff that sprouted last week is probably 1.5 inches tall in most spots. A funny thing seemed to happen too. I think I put down either too much seed, or too much top cover. As the grass is sprouting and growing, it's pushing sections of soil upward, so they look like they're floating about an inch off the rest of the ground. I've been breaking those up so the grass below can get some light. I might post a picture to show how one looks while it's floating :)
Erika and I've been spending a lot of time studying for classes lately. We each have exams this week, and several large class projects are coming due soon. Only 2 more weeks of classes left, and then a week and a half or so of exams. And of course the weather is getting really nice, so that makes it all the harder to stick to the books. We can't wait for the semester to be over.
So tonight, when Erika and I got home, I took Annie outside and I noticed the new grass plot has begun to sprout. It looks pretty good too, lots of sprouts. This was definately the quickest I've had seed sprout (8 days), probably since it's much warmer outside now, and maybe my technique is improving. So that's cool. I'll put some pictures on, once it's tall enough to see.
We built a small raised bed this weekend, about 4 feet square, 8 inches high. It's beside the shed in the back yard, where the old tree used to be. Erika's already planted a few seeds to get it going. We'll put some pictures of it on here soon. I used cedar boards screwed into four 1" square posts driven into the ground. The posts are made of that gray recycled plastic material some people use to make decks. Supposedly, these materials are safer to use if we plan to grow vegetables or anything we'll eat in there. Pressure treated wood is supposed to leach semi-dangerous chemicals into the soil, at least according to the gardening book we have :)
The following instructions should help you to learn how to make your own cellphone ringers for free. I think this is pretty cool, since Sprint charges users for ringers that expire after a set time. The ringers you make yourself will never expire, and shouldn't cost you anything except possibly data charges on your phone. If you have a SprintPCS Vision or similar data plan already, the following should be totally free. If you don't have such a plan, you might be charged based on how many kilobytes you download onto your phone.
The first thing is to make sure you have these prerequisites:
Sprint or other cell phone allowing downloaded polyphonic ringers
mp3 file
mbuzzy.com user account (free)
Qualcomm Purevoice (free, download here)
WinAmp (free, download here) Any .wav file editing program
I've decided to add a section, called "Tips from Wayne", where I can help people learn technical things. If you have a Sprint PCS cell phone and would like to learn how to make and upload ringers to your phone for free, check it out. I had a hard time finding a good guide on how to do this, so I decided to make one myself. Let me know what you think of it, and how it works for you. If there's something else that you'd like to learn how to do let me know, and I'll start making a list.
Today is Lara's Birthday! We hope you have a great one. :)
I realized I've been talking about the new grass without showing any pictures, so I posted a few. Here's a picture of the new grass behind the patio. And here's a picture of the new plot we worked on, fenced in by chicken wire.
So after we took the bushes and tree out last weekend, I put up some chicken wire around that area to keep Annie out since it's pretty muddy. A funny thing about chicken wire, Home Depot calls it "poultry wire". I guess they don't want to leave out geese and ducks.
Anyway, that's been working, Annie's stayed out, and another reason for the fence is since we planned to seed more grass in that area. So tonight we finished breaking up the dirt, mixed in 2 inches of peat moss everywhere, raked everything flat, spread some fertilizer, spread a lot of creeping red fescue grass seed, then another half inch of peat moss.
The last section I did really showed how much the peat moss helps. I had spread it too thin by their recommendations, and some patches ended up with bare dirt after watering over a few weeks time. Well, almost no grass sprouted in the areas without the peat moss. This section has more peat moss and is also more heavily seeded, so I'm hoping for really good results in "2 to 6 weeks".
I worked on the tree some more Sunday morning, and finally got it out. Here's a during picture that shows when we got the two bushes out (They're in the wheel barrow in the foreground) and I had started to trench around the tree and saw through the roots. Even Annie wanted to help me dig a little, and we finally got the tree out. After that, Erika helped me lug the tree trunk and stump off to the woods, and I filled the hole in. Here's the finished picture. Note the change in shadows to get an idea how long this all took.
Here's a pretty good before picture: old tree and bushes, with a few differences. The tree was cut back to fence-top level and the left branch closest to the house was cut off close to the ground, so it didn't have any leaves. The bushes had been cut back a lot so they only had a few leaves left, and looked really bad. I'll post some more pictures along the way.
I worked in the back yard today. Those two sickly bushes are now gone, and the mangled tree is halfway gone. The tree has a lot more roots than I hoped it would. This is all in preparation for the raised bed garden Erika is looking forward to, and some more grass. The second plot of grass is begining to look better than the original one, so I was able to take down the extra metal fencing around it. Annie should be able to walk around on it without too much damage. We got some more grass seed and peat moss for this last section too. I've been really pleased how it's been working in the other two sections.
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