killer cacti

So one of the things that we disliked very much about out front yard is the giant cactus in the center. It is an odd sight. We decided early on to dig up that old cacti and replace it with redwood trees. Because really who doesn't like redwood trees? Even Mr. House who insists ever tree bear fruit or nuts wanted the redwood.

The other benefit to planting redwoods is that we have a seemingly endless (and free) supply from my family who lives in the Santa Cruz mountains. This past weekend we decided would be a good time to obtain our first redwood tree. I don't have any pictures of the process because we were running late for a wedding, but needless to say we had our pick of the trees.

We shopped around their property for the right height tree, with the right number of branches and the right thickness of trunk. We found it a little ways out in the back or front of their house (depending on who you ask). We dug it out and put it with some more dirt and water in a garbage bag then loaded it in the back of the empty van. It fit perfectly! Then we got ready and drove to the wedding where our new tree waited patiently for us to return.

After some delicious cake and a little dancing we returned to the car and drove home. We arrived home just before 8:00 and began digging our hole right away. The ground seemed really hard and we soon realized that there was a layer of gravel on the top. Once we got under that layer we thought we were home free, only to find another layer of gravel, this time about a foot deep. Poor Mr. House kept on digging and eventually he dug through all the gravel and quite a few random roots. We plopped our new tree and some new dirt in the ground next to the cactus for now because we didn't have the time to transplant the cactus it into a pot, nor a pot to transplant it in to. Soon we hope to dig up the cactus and get two more redwood friends.

On Tools

Here at This Old Blog, we are fans of hand tools, which is to say tools powered by muscle, not by electricity, or petroleum byproducts.  This has more to do with aversion to noise pollution I think, rather than air or other pollution.   So we have a rather surprising number of crank drills, hand saws, and the like.

Correspondingly, when we needed a mower, we never even considered a gas mower, even though we have a great deal of grass.  (currently, we hope to remove that)  The only other options for lawns (besides sheep, goats, other ruminants) are push mowers and electric mowers.  Electric mowers are both costly, and powered, so noise.  So a push mower is the way to go for us. 

Here is the result of this impulse:

It is a Scott 18" reel mower, with a catch basket, bought from Home Despot [sic], just like most of our home items.  The whole thing came in a kit, which was sort of a pain to put together, since the handle came in several segments, and had to be assembled.  The various nuts are "tool-less" nuts, which are much looser than a wrench cranked version. we might replace them, since they get loose during use. 

In comparison to my father's reel mower, this one is much smoother in action, but harder to turn due to the multi segmented handle.  Saturday I mowed the whole of the lawn (10 baskets of grass), which took around two hours.   Good times! (let's get on removing some of that lawn!)

Next up, the Rumpas room floor...