Legos Forever (Day 604)

Tom, our son, just loved Legos when he was a kid. Still builds with them on occasion. Its just a guy thing with construction, so I had to get my own Legos. I went in for 334 of the 4"x8"x12" concrete version, to be precise. The back of the lot slopes toward the rear of the house as does the south side, so some corrective measures were in order.

I dug out a space about 3 ft wide around the the east and south sides of the house at a level about 4 " below the top of the basement vents, which are protected by curved vent wells. If water gets higher then the top of these wells, it will flow into the crawl space. By building a little (8"-16" high) retaining wall around the house, I can reverse the slope and have water flow away rather than toward the house.

The back wall is 54 ft long and the side wall is about 22 ft long, so I have 76 ft of retaining wall. On average it will need to be about 12" high, and the blocks are 4" x 12", so I ordered a mess of building blocks (gray concrete): 230 blocks and 104 caps. At 40 pounds a piece, this amounts to about 7 tons of blocks to move from the driveway area to the rear of the house. Advil.

First we put a layer of 48' wide landscape fabric down to keep weeds from growing in the pathway. Then we started with the base course of blocks. They are tapered: 12" wide at the front and 10" at the rear. So if you lay them side by side, you get a curved wall with a 36" radius. If you alternate them (12" in front, then 10" in front) you get a straight (±) wall. Pretty much like adult Legos.

Once the base course is in, its a piece of cake (a large cake admittedly) to build the remainder . Alternate rows, keep them tight and all is well. We put in some steps so we can climb out of the recessed paths, and they worked out fine. Once all the blocks and landscape fabric were laid down, the gravel was next.

We took Tim Hamm's big truck (1 Ton Chevy) to the Discovery Bay pit and had them load 2.5 tons of 5/8" minus. This means all the crushed rock that passes the 5/8" screen, so the gravel is "dirty." The fines act as a binder and make a really nice compacted base for the paths. Conversely, if you've never shoveled almost 3 tons of gravel from a pickup and wheeled it repeatedly down a path (as much as 50'), you just haven't lived. More Advil.

After this little job was done, it was time to tackle a set of steps for the sun room deck. Jim Quandt and I put the decks in last fall, but waited on these steps until the irrigation lines were in and we had a plan for the adjacent patio. The steps are 4 boards wide (23") and wrap around the deck. From here, you'll step down to the patio. Had to build a set of forms for a footer (6" wide and 4" deep with 1/2" rebar), 22 ft long. The amount of concrete for the footer is pretty trivial (3.5 cu ft), so I got 10 bags of sacrete and rented a little barrel mixer that holds 3 bags at a time. Way cheaper than getting a mobile cement mixer to deliver a single yard (27 cu ft) and figuring out what to do with the extra mud.

After the footer sets up, I bolted down a pressure-treated sill plate, extended the 2x6 joists from the deck, and will screw down a bunch of new Trex decking to match last years stuff. The only wrinkle here is the Trex company has stopped making our style decking, which is 1.1" thick. The new stuff is only 3/4", which seems pretty thin for a composite (bendy) material. Fortunately, Magic Melissa at Carls called around and found enough old style decking to do my job. If I ever have to replace any long boards, I'll have to replace all the decking in that porch with a different brand material. That sucks. Nevertheless, it should look good in a couple weeks when I finish it all up.

Ginkgo—A theme? (Day 590)

Ginkgo, the Chinese National Tree, has taken hold in and out of our house. Nancy and I have loved this tree (and especially leaf shape) for many years. I first recall seeing it next to the library at San Jose State, were we met and both attended. That was 41 years ago (but only 29 for Nancy).

We've been looking for a theme in the house, without much success. Salmon, dragonflies, reeds, etc; something that would fit in with the Craftsman look. When we bought a small sconce for the mudroom, above Nancy's desk, we picked out one with a Ginkgo on it. Didn't give it much thought, just liked it. Then the other day at Four Corners Nursery (the Gardens at Four Corners, Port Hadlock), we picked out a few more trees and one was a darling little (5 ft) Ginkgo Bilboa. Yesterday it took root near the entrance to our house, where we can see it from the kitchen and the sun room. Looks good, and perhaps it is the second item of a theme for the house.

SO WHY IS THE GINKGO SO SPECIAL TO US. Remember, Michael is a paleogeologist, i.e., a living fossil.
(The following was abstracted from Wikipedia)

Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba; also spelled gingko) also known as the Maidenhair Tree is a unique species of tree with no close living relatives. The ginkgo is classified in its own division, the Ginkgophyta. Other plant divisions contain hundreds of plant species, such as the conifers (division Pinophyta with 630 living species).

The genus Ginkgo is the ONLY extant species within the Ginkgophyta. It is one of the best-known examples of a living fossil, because Ginkgos other than G. biloba are not known from the fossil record after the Pliocene (2-5 million years ago). The first Gingko fossils appear in the Permian, dating back 270 Ma. (Photo is of Ginkgo biloba fossil from the Eocene, collected at MacAbee, B.C., Canada). If you are a creationist, then this fossil was put in a rock in MacAbee just to confuse everyone. Go figure.

Going green (Day 588)

Going green—and I mean the color—is the goal this month. The rains have let up after a wet spring (12" YTD vs 7" normally) and its time to get the rest of the plants and lawn in before it warms up too much (i.e., 80°F).

I managed to get the remainder of the polypipe in the ground for the drip and sprinkler systems, and although the basic distribution boxes are not built out yet, I could finally fill in the trenches that I dug last winter with a Ditch Witch. Most of the lines are under gravel pathways, which will make it easier to repair leaks if or when they occur.

Tim Hamm (Castle Rock Landscaping) returned for another bout of rock-wall building and helped with the pathways. We built a gravel apron off the driveway that provides a convenient place to turn cars around and allows access to the buried 500-gal propane tank in the back yard. We've been getting propane about every 3 months, typically 350 gallons at a time. As we settle into a regular heating pattern and our seasonal usage stabilizes, the fill ups become more regular: probably Sept., Dec, and April. Then I can join the 500-gal club, which is a group of Kala Point homeowners that collectively order propane based on their large volume. This typically saves about 20 cents a gallon, or $100 on a full load. But I digress, as usual. Back to the green thing.

Of the 25 trees we planted last fall/winter only one didn't make it. It was a large, clumped river birch from Secret Gardens. Sheila (the owner) was good about replacing it, but didn't have any of the same trees, so we have a store credit there. Conversely, Four Corners Nursery has a nice selection of more reasonably priced trees, so we may plug a hawthorne in the river birch's place, and pick up a couple more flowering dogwoods, which Nancy and the deer like a lot (to eat).

This week I've been hauling and spreading mulch to cover the yards and yards of unvegetated space on our lot. I can get a cubic yard of mulch—in this case composted fir bark—into my little trailer, which works out great. I can unload and spread a load, which covers about 12 sq. yards at 3" thickness, in a few hours. Pulling the weeds takes a bit longer, but hopefully the mulch will keep the weeds down. Once all the weeds are pulled and mulch laid, we'll tackle the lawn and mounded plantings that cover the septic field. This will probably take a couple more weeks (the rest of June), then I'll call Tim back to lay the flagstone patio off the sunroom. Meanwhile, we keep pecking away are our inside punch list: hanging light fixtures, trim rings on the sloped ceiling lights, ceiling and wall speakers, and unpacking in general. That should keep is off the street for most of the summer.

P.S. It looks like the visitor meter will top 10,000 by the time I post this blog. We started counting last November and hit 5,000 on March 20th (Day 500). Maybe I ought to post some ads on this thing and see if I can make a buck or too off all your eye balls.