When ever we go to Granny's house X gets to sit in these little plastic adriondak chairs her cousins got. She loved them immediately because they are exactly her size. Knowing that the wood ones from Pottery Barn Kids are expensive I was trying to put off getting her a chair. Her aunt told me she thought they had been bought at Toys R Us. I had nothing else to do so I decided to brave the toy store. We checked out the prices of so many things. She seemed to like the lego's more for the noise they make in the box they come in. She was completely into the little trikes they had but she is still slightly too short for that so we had to leave it at a short ride around the store. But she also found this little plastic chair. It is slightly too big for her to just "sit" in but she really loves it. She uses it as a wheel barrow. She backs it up to the couch so she can climb into it without it bucking her out. And I caught her standing on it while she was engrossed with "Nacho Libre". Before you get after me for allowing my child to watch a movie about Luchadore wrestling let me express to you that I am all for good clean fun but I push the classics too. That last shot is her trying to read "Tom Sawyer".
X discovered canteloupe. She liked it so much that she was trying to dig it out by hand before I had a chance to scoop out more with the spoon.
I got around to a project I have been thinking about picking up the hardware for for a while. I have been trying to find drawer pulls for this dresser that was given to us for the baby's room. After trips to Home Depot and Lowe's I found that there are not drawer pulls commercially produced that are long enough for the space between holes on this piece of furniture. I had to pick up 8 individual pulls for the four drawers that needed something done with them and soon. The bottom picture there is what the old pulls looked like thus why they needed an upgrade. I was smart about it though and used the knowledge I gained from the summer I worked for a construction company and used some lock-tite bolt glue to keep the knobs from becoming loose because of use. I can still get them undone with tools if I need to but I don't see that being necessary.
Ok the next two are out of order. This is my jar of dirt on it's way to the dirt lab. That is, on the way to the county extension office.
I bought a book from the half price book store about what you need to know about starting a lawn from scratch. One of the things they recommend is taking a dirt sample to the county extension office to find out if you need to augment your soil to give your lawn the best chance to grow. I called the master gardeners and they said to collect the sample you should dig down at least six inches and put samples from this depth in a bucket, you need samples from several areas in your yard since different parts can have different issues. You stir up the dirt and put a sample in a glass jar (mason or otherwise). I used an old washed out 16 oz. mayo jar and it was plenty for a sample. I took it in and paid $10 and will get to know in a couple of weeks: what is "in" my yard and what I can do to give my grass seed project for this fall the best chance to work. I am kind of excited. For me right now it is more nerve wracking that waiting for a report card since I am sure nothing healthy has grown in my yard, probably in 10 years or more.
As you know from a previous post some of my projects got relegated to back seat status because of what I am going to talk about next. See my neighbors had this garage that has structural damage and is a hazard to . . . probably the whole neighborhood. They finally had a company come in and tear it down. The way things go in this state I thought it would be a two day process, one day to come down and one for clean up. I came home Friday evening and found they had done it all in one shot and exceeded my expectations when it came to the clean up. You'd never know they had a garage. It created a huge problem for me though. It left this huge hole in my fence as when they put the fence up they neglected to put anything where the rear wall of the garage stood. Fortunately my immediate neighbor had the sense to let me know when they told her the she was going to come down. I had supplies delivered that afternoon and the process was started the next day. Unfortunately for the dog he had to be on the back porch for two days while the work was being done. After a discussion as to whether the 2x4's should face in or out, since my back yard sports fencing that goes either direction, we got it done before noon on Sunday. I have had to take measures in other parts of the yard to keep the dog from digging under the fence but the cement slab here is going to be effective for that purpose and he hasn't even tried to start digging. I think he is just grateful that he gets to run around outside and pee when he wants to. Cost of this project - just under $100.
Having friends like Mr. Donnie who will drop everything at a moments notice to help you address your emergencies: priceless.
Since we had to do some digging to get the fence up I decided it would be an ideal time to get my yard soil samples. I wanted to get that done before I put down the herbicide and the pesticide so it wouldn't spoil things. I waited long enough though that some of my weeds are starting to pop back up. Weather permitting, this weekend will be a yard work weekend, anyone and everyone is welcome to help. Also since there is significantly less bird poop on the back porch and none in the dog's bowl I think the feeding container I put out is doing fairly well at keeping the birds out of the dog food. I am certain that he ate all of what was in his bowl this morning. As it turns out the best thing for controlling mosquitos is purple martins. So I will be trying to figure out how to get some purple martins in my area to take care of the skeeters.
The best kind of dog to own is one who is happy because he can eat and poop freely in his own back yard.
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