Weekend report

I feel like I was fairly lazy this 4-day weekend, but I did get a few things done. I'd told G that I thought the pool would fill in 2 days; he said considering how long it took to drain, he thought more like 3. It took 27 hours, heh. After some careful testing and tweaking over the weekend, the pool is now an absolutely beautiful pale bird's-egg blue, crystal clear, and -- well, probably very cold. :-) Given that it takes like a day (and $$) to heat, maybe I should get a wetsuit!

What else -- cleared off some of the seed debris from the back yard patio, G vacuumed it (think of an outdoor electric blower in reverse, with a big catch-all bag), and I replaced some of the low edging I'd removed to experiment with some cement blocks we're thinking about using to raise the backyard veggie area ~2'. There's also a sizeable (almost the width of my foot) gap between two cement slabs where the wood divider has crumbled away that we need to see about filling before the BBQ. G doesn't think it's big enough to worry about, but I have this vision of hockey and motorcycling friends (all of whom value the use of their ankles) stepping into the crack while in mid-sentence, falling nicely onto the nice, hard cement patio and hurting something, and god knows enough people have to put up with living with bodily injuries these days as it is, so it'd make me feel better to minimize that. :-) And besides, it might give me the excuse I need to buy tools. Hehheh, hehheh, tools. :-)

Watered everything, particularly my young pumpkins & melons in the back, and the 2 grapevines and slowly suffering pineapple guava in the front. The pumpkins are going great guns (as they tend to do) and have just reached the end of the bed, ready for their adventures growing across the hot concrete. The melons, always more conservative, are trying to see in how many directions they're allowed to grow before getting longer. I feel like a parent, having to keep an eye on them so they don't grow in an unauthorized direction. The first round of (bush) beans are doing well, having long surpassed their little support grid and now reaching around to see what else is in the area. The second round (planted 3 weeks later) are about 6" tall now, and just touching the grid. I also did some pruning and raspberry-picking, and dug two holes for two of the four raspberry cane support-posts. This is a new project, to replace the older crumbling wooden support posts with powder-coated hollow steel, stymied for a few weeks by the clay soil underneath two of the posts, preventing them from going in solidly. The posts aren't of the type that would take well to being hammered, so I dug 10" deep holes, filled them with water, pushed the pole in, then refilled the hole with topsoil (from a bag -- may as well replace some clay while I'm there!). Seemed to do the trick; I strung two levels of string around the canes, taming them somewhat, and called it a success. They could use another level in the middle, but we'll save that for another day.

The grapes on my grapevines are getting bigger; my dad tells me I'll need netting soon to prevent pigeons and other birds from stealing my harvest, which (for the curious) will hopefully be something like 3 bunches of table grapes per vine. Until then, I'll just hope the seed feeders in the back yard continue to distract the wildlife. :-P

For April: strawberry production on most of my plants is still very slow, but we'll see; they could still be concentrating on root work, need a year to establish, or just be unhappy with me for the pool-work water shortage. A few of the plants I got from the store are trying to use those tall stems to lean over and make more, FWIW. :-) The ones you gave me are still doing fine and periodically make a strawberry or two. Which reminds me, I need to put out some snailbait...

What else...I sorted through another box or two of household Stuff...we have a long way to go before we can get rid of the storage unit, but at least G's raise has made our household-improvement future seem more cheerful. Re-hung a lamp, cleaned out a litterbox, made a couple of nice cooked breakfasts and dinners, watched a library movie or two, a few 'Twilight Zone' and 'Dirty Jobs' marathon episodes, a CSI two-parter...played a lot of Diablo 2, heh...G worked on cleaning the BBQ...played hockey on Saturday...generally it was a nice weekend, but as always, we finished it wishing we had more of it to do all the things that need doing.