Picked up a cushion for the wicker love seat, got four ferns for five bucks a piece on the bargain shelf at Lowes, planted some pansies. Tomorrow, edging the beds with sandstone rocks, and mulching.
I’m not even going to show you a picture of the backyard it’s such a god damned disaster, but we’re gonna get about 10 tons of dirt hauled to level it out.
Jerzy Russian
Is the 10 tons just a euphemism for “a shitload” of dirt, or has some landscaper run some numbers? Either way you are close to a “metric fuckton”. I hope you don’t hurt your back.
jl
I’m waiting for the pawpaw pix. But, thanks, this will do in the meantime.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jerzy Russian:
You do know this is John Cole you’re addressing, yes?
FlyingToaster
Looking good, sir.
I’m several weeks away from that, as a) I have a broken phone pole on the greenstrip (patch o dirt between the sidewalk and street), b) I expect the contractors will finish rebuilding my porch this week (the “rough” passed inspection Wednesday) as they’ve got the new composite treads screwed in and the wood for the banisters/porch rail painted and ready to construct, and then they can move on to dealing with the broken siding, and c) frozen north.
I’m driving into a “wintry mix” tomorrow. But as I already had my house buzzed by helicopters yesterday*, I am so getting out of here before Monday.
*they were cruising Watertown-Cambridge-Charlestown n back
JMG
Called our tree service today for what’s gonna be a multi-thousand dollar bill for taking down two massacred trees and putting the limbs all over our yard which are too big for me to move without renting a chainsaw, which I won’t because I like my hands. Used these guys for 25 years, they are the best. No can do until at least a week past Mother’s Day. Booked solid. Why DO I live in Boston?
PS: Freezing rain tonight and all day tomorrow. Bill might be going up.
Good luck with your spring, John.
Currants
Dude, I love this. That said: I just finished distributing a (full) truckload of horse manure (well, most of it) that I picked up Thursday night (and unloaded in the driveway) around to various (rhubarb asparagus raspberry blueberry raised beds flowers dogwoods pears) locations. It’s no joke. I hope “we” = mechanical means or LOTS of friends.
I might be getting old for these shenanigans.
Currants
@FlyingToaster: Yeah. This is the worst traffic weekend of the year for me. Helicopters all LONG weekend long, and my road is a by-pass on Monday for folks who have to work despite the marathon.
TaMara (HFG)
My raised beds are all prepped. I planted potatoes and bought tomatoes and basil today. (I have walls of water and a hoop cloth, so I can brave the weather).
The front beds are slowly getting cleaned up and I have a TON of tulips. I’m forever finding something new from the previous owner popping up in the yard.
Doug R
Bobcat has a seatless mini cat with a backup sensor that can lift 500lbs and fits through a 36inch gate. Just sayin is all.
ascap_scab
Dayum, your grass is green. Here in southern Minnesota we’re getting hit with yet another 10 inches of thunder-sleet-snow today. No grass, no daffodils, no tree buds, nuthin.
Ruckus
@Currants:
Try living in the LA area. Practically everywhere is controlled airspace. So the helicopters all fly specific routes and one of those routes is almost right over my apt because the hospital 2 blocks away is a level one trauma center and all the flights have to be 100% controlled that fly anywhere near it. Day and night we hear helicopters. Not quite as bad as living along the flight path to a major airport but it’s close.
schrodingers_cat
Question: How do you get rid of the dry leaves and brush accumulated from last fall. I have gathered them in a spot in the back yard, now what?
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
Helicopter traffic was much worse when I lived in South Central. It’s not too bad where we are, but we’re probably not on the route to St. Joseph’s.
And I think the people in the Boston area are getting the post-Tsarnaev marathon preparation helicopter traffic.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Make a compost heap out of them?
I’ve lived in apartments my whole adult life, so I don’t actually know.
Olivia
So great to see grass and a peek into spring. It has been snowing since yesterday afternoon. We have shoveled the deck 5 times so the dog can go out and cleaned the driveway off twice. There is almost a foot of snow on the patio table. There would be more but there is a strong wind blowing it around. It is supposed to continue to snow until tomorrow evening.
FlyingToaster
@Currants: Oh you poor bastard. And you’ll inevitably end up with the worst fucking drivers blocking every damn thing, because that’s who has to fucking drive on Patriot’s Day.
NotMax
@schrodingers_cat
Your community is almost bound to have green waste collection days, green waste drop-off sites, or both.
FlyingToaster
@Mnemosyne: Yep. On Thursday it was the radiation dectector copters over the marathon route, Friday it was over Watertown-Cambridge-Charlestown, today I saw one in Newton over the route again, and come Monday morning it’s all day, between news copters and “security”.
Mike in NC
The worst of the pollen season is over in this area, and we might soon see steady daily temperatures in the 70s. After fits and starts, Spring is finally here.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I’ve never lived or worked anywhere in LA with this much helicopter traffic. Didn’t notice it when looking at the apt……
Trying to think why you’d have that much traffic other than police near USC. I’d bet it’s because of the air traffic going into LAX.
Jake the antisoshul soshulist
@JMG:
My father could testify about the chainsaw. He was cutting some firewood
and the saw kicked back and he lost grip witb one hand.The blade hit him across the wrist. fortunately his watchband took most of the contact
and he had some nasty looking gouges, but no permanent damage.
Nicole
I wish you would take pictures of the backyard now and then put them up with pictures after the dirt is put in. I love before-and-after things.
Gorgeous weather today in NYC, but it’s back to cold tomorrow. Boo. On the other hand, day 2 of giving the out-of-shape dog some harder exercise (i.e., playing fetch) and while she gets tuckered after ten or so minutes, she’s not limping on her back leg later, so I’m feeling more at peace with the $2700 we had to shell out a few years back to get her CCL repaired.
That said, her ball bounced out of the solo dog run area into the main dog run and I had to spend 15 minutes trying to find it because she won’t deign to fetch anything other than the blue and orange Chuckit balls and those goddamn things are like $10 a pop here.
Ruviana
@Ruckus: County USC Medical Center too probably.
schrodingers_cat
How does one transplant rose bushes without getting pricked by the thorns?
Just One More Canuck
@schrodingers_cat: As Not Max mentioned, your town probably has a yard waste collection program. Up here in the soci alist hellscape of the Toronto suburbs, the town has a depot where you can pick up compost that they make from yard waste for free
Patricia Kayden
@schrodingers_cat: In my area, you put that into brown paper bags which the county picks up once per week.
Ruckus
@Ruviana:
That really isn’t near the campus. It’s over in east LA. It might account for some traffic for sure but memns was, I’m pretty sure, talking about the campus. LAX traffic is routed not all that far from the campus as the flight path pretty much parallels the I10 and turns south east in the general vicinity of the campus or possibly sooner to line up with the runways. It is a very, very controlled airspace around there with planes basically on the approach at that point..
danielx
@schrodingers_cat:
Serious leather gloves, and you will still likely get stuck a time or two.
TaMara (HFG)
@schrodingers_cat: Leather gloves – you can get them fairly inexpensively, and the longer the better.
Also, on leaves, if you’re transplanting roses, add the dried leaves to the hole to compost. I bury mine in all my beds.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: You and your pawpaws, silly jl.
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: Amazon sells sleeves that are made with kevlar, and they help. Google tells me that Target has some also. Nothing is perfect though.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: The flight path to LAX goes further east of the 110, IIRC the ‘beacon” is in Norwalk.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
Wrap them in burlap or heavy kraft paper, like paper grocery bags used to be/still are if you ask for them. Several layers of paper or burlap. Or get old blankets at goodwill etc… Or get leather gloves, like welder’s gloves or fireplace gloves, that come nearly up to your elbows. I’ve had welder’s gloves ever since I took a welding class 45 years ago. They’re good for everything harsh.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I used the rest of the countries concept of naming freeways. That was the I 10. not the 110.
The path ruffly parallels the 10 and 60 till it turns south east to line up with the runways. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen exactly where they turn but have flown in and out of there more times than I want to count and I’m saying that any helicopters flying in the area of USC or south central would most likely be impacted by the flight path into LAX or the other smaller airports in the vicinity.
My point really was that most if not all of the LA area is controlled airspace for all planes/helicopters. In certain areas they have to fly specific flight paths to make it work at all. My current apt is on a helicopter flight path,
Currants
@schrodingers_cat: My town (in MA) has a recycling center, and it includes areas for dropping off brush, leaves/grass, and christmas trees. Yours may too? I’m suburban Boston, but (from a DEP research project I did a few years ago) most MA towns have something similar. You might need to bag the leaves/brush to transport/drop off, but the bags themselves are usually recyclable/compostable too. (I got mine from Costco—Lowes/Home Depot also have them).
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
The TV stations have used choppers for Marathon live coverage for decades, before the bombings
schrodingers_cat
@Currants: My town is too small to have one, we go to the neighboring town to drop things like that off. I am going to find out what facilities they have.
Currants
@FlyingToaster: YES! I’m barely south of the route (near the half-way mark) and the helicopters just don’t stop, from today through all day Monday.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus:
That’s just crazy talk.
ETA: My guess about choppers over the area near U$C in the late 80’s and early 90′ would be the cops.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Thank you for agreeing with me!
That’s what I thought as well but I was only about 2-3 miles east of there and in the infamous LAPD Newton station area and didn’t see much helicopter traffic. Of course maybe they didn’t want air traffic to see what they were doing.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Many towns have sites where one can deposit yard waste.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Another Milky Way shot from Pt. Mugu State Park.
FlyingToaster
@efgoldman: They didn’t used to buzz the houses along the route starting on Thursday, though.
Pre-Tsarnaev, they didn’t think that Watertown would be a target of anything but people trying to get from Cambridge to Waltham. Which, I believe, is what the Tsarnaevs were trying to do.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: We finally started composting our own yard waste. It’s not hard but I wouldn’t do it if my yard were any smaller.
debbie
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Nice!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@debbie: I think I handled the light pollution from LA better than I did with this morning.
ETA: I’m really liking this place to shoot the Milky Way, there’s not too much light pollution if you shoot to the south over the ocean. East towards LA is a problem.
raven
@Ruckus: My sis lives right across Imperial from LAX. Standing in front of her house watching them stack up is a full time gig.
raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Or spraying malathion.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: That’s the late 70’s.
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
Please protect your eyes!! Rose thorns have a fungus which can cause blindness. It’s also very painful. I learned the hard and expensive way.
CaseyL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I am gobsmacked that you’re getting those gorgeous Milky Way shots anywhere in Southern CA. Would’ve thought the light pollution was too much no matter where you went.
Patricia Kayden
@MomSense: WTH?!! Never knew that.
raven
Welcome to the Los Angeles Helicopter Noise Initiative’s
Automated Complaint System (ACS)
The system uses WebTrak, which allows you to watch the movement of helicopters throughout Los Angeles County and file complaints about helicopter noise. If you are a first time user of ACS, please take a few minutes to read the how to use ACS page.
debbie
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Is that LA light at the lower left?
MoxieM
@schrodingers_cat: The plus side is there is often free compost and or mulch available at the dump/recycling place. I’m in Hamp (haven’t been to the dump yet), but I’m pretty sure they have the give-back. Where I used to live they did. I built a berm with a core of old bricks and stones, and many gallons of compost from the dump. Holy cow! did everything grow in that thing.
raven
And the lights of L.A. County
Look like diamonds in the sky
When you’re driving through the hours
With an old friend at your side
Schlemazel
Here is the scene in my backyard at this hour
https://i.imgur.com/m5i8TEA.jpg
Mel
@MomSense: Yep. Sporothrix Schenckii fungus is the cuprit.
It can also cause painful nodular skin lesions that periodically open and drain, and can infect the lymphatic tissues, the lungs, and in rare cases, become a systemic infection.
It truly is nasty stuff, and the antifungal meds used to treat it have some seriously harsh side effects.
So sorry you had to deal with that illness. I have always wondered why, considering how painful and serious it can be, that health departments and med professionals don’t provide more education about it.
SteverinoCT
@Ruckus:
I’m in line with one of the Groton-New London Airport runways and so have a lot of small plane traffic. Not minding it; I grew up under the pattern for Teterboro in NJ. What I do mind is the Air National Guard detachment; it’s for helicopter repair, and we’ve got everything up to Chinooks flying in and out on weekends.
Ruckus
@raven:
Yes it would be.
Used to fly in and out of LAX several times a year even when I lived back east. My first flight was out of there in the 60s, before your bout of army ugly. I flew out of there last year and I don’t hardly ever fly any more. I remember flying into LA when it was so smoggy that you couldn’t see the ground even after the planes entered controlled airspace east of Palm Springs. You could see the tops of the mountains sticking out of the smog though. Inviting.
Ruckus
@raven:
I bookmarked that. Interesting site.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@CaseyL: Thanks. Basically you have to go to the desert(Joshua Tree or Mojave) or the mountains, or (as I did for this shot) south facing coast. This website showing levels of light pollution helped.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@debbie: Yup.
rikyrah
House looks beautiful, Cole?
Gvg
@schrodingers_cat: wrap the whole bush up in something thick like a rug or old thick bedspread. Or tie it up like a Christmas tree wrapped with string and put a cardboard box over it while you dig.
I dispose of rose bush clippings by putting them in cardboard boxes that aren’t bothered by thorns and can be hauled away by trash men without touching a thorn. Card board is compostable so they don’t need to dump them out. I can get a lot more in easily if I cut it up more. Every time a branch splits I cut it so they can lie more compactly. Green wood is easier to cut so I don’t let it lie and cut right away.
Ruckus
@SteverinoCT:
If you lived where raven’s sister lives you might think that the Groton-New London Airport was grand. There are two runways north and two south of the terminals. Flights in constantly 24 hrs a day, where she lives they can’t be much over 500 ft off the deck. It’s far better now than it was decades ago because the planes are much quieter. Helicopters not so much as most of their noise is from the rotor blades, so that’s a negative point for you. I used to know a fellow who flew copters out of Van Nuys airport for the LAFD who explained to me that the military teaches pilots to fly with the blade control for max lift at all times (that is if I’m remembering correctly, it’s been a while) which makes a huge amount of noise. A good pilot will adjust that, the military wants the things to fly and doesn’t care about noise. If that’s still true then another neg point for you.
James E. Powell
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
The school where I teach is on Central and the planes turn a bit east of us. By my amateur reckoning, I’d say it’s closer to Huntington Park. And those planes are heading for the south runway. The north runway planes are going over West Adams. One of my students is a plane spotter. By they time they are passing us they are in easy photo range.
Corner Stone
Obama is not even in office any longer.
James E. Powell
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Dude, that’s amazingly good. Are you selling these?
Another Scott
@Schlemazel: Adam will be happy that you’re staying frosty.
;-)
Zooks! Good luck!!
Cheers,
Scott.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@James E. Powell: Soon.
Immanentize
The helicopters along the race route starting Thursday we’re, in part, taking baseline radiation readings in case, you know, dirty bomb.
chris
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That’s a very fine picture. Very clear, I’m guessing that humidity isn’t a concern. Here we get very few really clear nights, even in the winter the humidity is over 50%.
Thanks for the map too. I thought I lived in the Dark but the map says I need to go a couple of miles up the road to experience true darkness. Mapmaker should come and visit some cloudy night when it’s like having a bag over your head.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@chris: We had some offshore winds that dried things out. The first two attempts to shoot from this location were met with fog and clouds.
chris
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Those winds come off the desert which certainly helps. Most of Nova Scotia is forest so it’s always damp no matter which way the wind blows.
Jager
Cole, don’t bitch about your backyard, okay?
Our old house is built into the side of the canyon. We’re having a retaining wall built, the side yard is so steep, the trench for the wall has to be dug by hand. In some spots the engineering calls for a depth of 7 feet. For two weeks we’ve had three guys with picks, shovels and electric jackhammers working along the back and the side of the house. They started the re rod on Thursday. The concrete pump arrives late next week, then it has to be topped with interlocking block filled with re rod and concrete, then back filled. So John, I’d be happy as shit to just have dirt to move around.
Anne Laurie
@schrodingers_cat:
Depending on the size of your yard (and your aesthetic tastes), you could always drag everything over to an inconspicuous corner to start a wildlife-friendly “brush pile”. Birds, bunnies & other small varmints appreciate the hideout. Grass clippings and fallen leaves can be dumped on the pile to compost… mostly the contents will degrade swiftly enough that the pile doesn’t expand very much over time. (We did this for about 15 years, but our yard is tiny, and the Spousal Unit eventually claimed that corner for a storage shed.) Of course you may have reasons NOT to encourage particular varieties of wildlife to share your space!
Does your town / township have a web site? Most MA towns do, and quite a few of them have a relevant link for “yard waste disposal”. There may be specific days or places when you can drop stuff off, depending — lots of towns do their best to turn yard waste into mulch, that can be used in local parks rather than costing space/money to discard. Leaves & small sticks go in brown-paper bags (which should be available at all the local hardware stores, and probably at the larger supermarkets this time of year), and actual branches get tied up in bundles. (Local rule is ‘up to three feet in length, no more than 2 inches in diameter.’)
Rose sleeves are highly recommended — if you can, try them on before you buy, because the sizing is *very* inconsistent. However, the rose people I know always joke that “roses demand blood sacrifice”, so you’ll probably get some scratches regardless!
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Come on. You didn’t look online before asking us?
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That’s very cool.
OT: Has Cheeto Mussolini fired Rosenstein yet to make a Saturday Night Massacre?
seaboogie
@?BillinGlendaleCA: This is beautiful – thank you for sharing it!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@chris: Actually, it’s blowing through the mountain passes that heats and drys the air out. Heating the air via compression.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho:
@seaboogie: Thanks.
chris
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Ah, yeah, we’re a little short on mountains here.
Mike J
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: PA-13 weighs in:
LaNonna
Spriing maintenance indeed, spent the day clearing the veranda of a winter’s worth of dog paw prints, cleaning dog bedding, and sweeping off all the heating wood debris, now that the March rains have really stopped. Monday is my day with the weed-eater, the weeds are almost knee high, we had more rain this spring than the past 3 years (no complaints). Somewhere out in the weedpatch is my succulent and aloe decorative garden, def putting down more barrier and more rockery.
stinger
@schrodingers_cat: Duluth Trading has leather gauntlet gloves that offer great protection.
T S
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You mentioned these to me last night. You shoot pretty well for a lead-ingestion enthoosiast.
Steve on St. Simons Island
@raven: love that song!
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: I bought this 3-bin wire composter from gardener’s supply and it works well to break down leaves that I then use as mulch: gardener’s supply compost
I’ve grown roses all my life and have never heard of this terrible fungus disease until this thread. But my rose-growing days may be over. All of mine but one antique rose have succumbed to the new rose virus and aren’t leafing out at all. They were magnificent and I am heartbroken that they are no more.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
There’s a reason why South Central native John Singleton’s movie Boyz in the Hood has multiple scenes where helicopters swoop noisily overhead — Darryl Gates loved to have his officers patrol South Central that way. And USC was not excepted from those patrols.
SgrAstar
@Mnemosyne: We have weekly garden waste pickup- you put the leaves, etc in a special bin and it all goes into the city compost pile. They also collect leaf bags weekly. Very convenient. You don’t have that service? :(
rikyrah
Just finished watching The Darkest Hour: I really liked it.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
That’s what I was first thinking but having worked within Newton station’s boundaries I can’t recall much of that where I was. And then I remembered that there weren’t much more than street people living where my shop was. Now a mile, mile and a half west was housing. And DG was a massive asshole even as police chiefs go. Have posted here before that the LAPD used to drive around the area 6 men in a full sized unmarked car (it was a tight fit to get the 6 of them in those cars, they were big boys) and harass any black person they saw. I never saw them beat the shit out of anyone but there is not doubt in my mind that it happened, and a lot. The LA sheriff had a similar group called the Special Enforcement Bureau but I don’t think they were as bad.
So anyway you could be 100% correct.
frosty
@Ruckus: I flew in and out of LAX in the same era. I remember looking down at the brown soup, then getting outside at the airport, seeing a blue-ish sky and thinking, “Oh, shit, this is a clear day!” These days I’m just astounded that you can see the mountains every day.
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
” You and your pawpaws, silly jl. ”
Loser. Pawpaws are a great, and original native fruit. MAGA!
That is the secret of Trump’s complexion, pawpaws. Trump is pumped with pawpaws.
Villago Delenda Est
Wrapped up watching Season 7 of GoT the other night (on DVD).
I wonder if Kit Harrington’s sigil in the opening credits is going to change next season?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Yeah, Trump is full of something; ain’t pawpaws.
Anne Laurie
@jl:
I’ll admit, I’m really curious about pawpaws — don’t remember ever having tasted them. But they don’t ship well, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to spend $80 to get 10lbs air-shipped from the one Michigan boutique site I know of that carries them in season.
One of my few regrets about our property is that we don’t have the room for more fruit trees — we have two dwarf multigraft cherry trees, one in the front yard (where it shades far too much of the available space for flowers) and one in the side yard (which blocks the light to the storage shed & the rest of the yard), but that’s really our limit. Of course we never get more than a handful of our own fresh cherries anyway, because the birds / squirrels / raccoons / ants always get there first, but at least the Spousal Unit has the satisfaction of seeing them in bloom every year. He grew up in the self-proclaimed Cherry Capital of America, which is why I got away with planting our trees in the first place!
sukabi
@Anne Laurie: Raintree Nursery has several varieties of paw paws. They do a good job of packing their products for shipping, and I’ve had good luck with the quality of their plants.
NotMax
@Anne Laurie
When was on the mainland tried a couple of times to grow quince. Grew well and hardy but never had much luck getting them to bear fruit.
Aimai
@FlyingToaster: since we just bombed syria. And we have been deporting and letting hundreds of people die. They are right to expect retaliation/attack. most of this is security theater. But the blowback to trump’s policies is coming.
J R in WV
@Schlemazel: That’s a great snow falls at night photo. Congrats!
TerryC
@sukabi: I’ve got several young paw paw trees planted, and two hundreds yards behind my property there is a paw paw patch that is 100 yards long. The taste will absolutely surprise you the first time. Nothing like it.
karensky
Your porch is awesome!
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I did. Their website is not too helpful and neither is it particularly convenient to take stuff there. I am going to have to call them when they are open, which is limited hours on the weekend. So I was trying to see if there were other alternatives. I am new to the whole yard upkeep and the gardening thing. So I am also talking to my neighbors and jackals here to see what they do.
Elizabelle
@Schlemazel: Looks like Spring to me.
schrodingers_cat
@Gretchen: @stinger: Thanks for your suggestions, now I will know what to look for when I am shopping.@Anne Laurie: My yard is fairly big, and right now I have gathered all the stuff and piled it near the bushes at the edge of the property near a small side road and gathered 2 bags of leaves. There is more to come because I am not done yet with all the garden beds.
I am still quite new to the town and the whole home and yard upkeep.
ETA: We moved here in Nov 2016 and last spring I was not well, so I didn’t do much.