Interludes and Fear Factors. May 28, 2010

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Interludes first.

Mikka found the catnip! We'd never seen this before, so it was kind of funny.










What is the world coming to? First the Japanese Beetles and now the cat.





We got some much needed rain.





And found that the French drains we put in work great!





This one above the greenhouse has gravel over the end of it.



Now on to the scary part of putting the pool together. The part you can NOT take back if you mess up. Cutting the holes for the new filtering system. The pool is half full at this point.

We have had two cordless drills over the years, but the batteries are all shot now. We are loving this old drill. Yup, it has a cord, but it's faithful!





This is the return jet hole. We began by cutting a small opening into the liner where the return would go. This was to stuff wet paper towels inside to absorb any metal filings that might want to fall between the wall and the liner while we work, damaging the liner at a later time.





Then we pulled the liner away and drilled a starter hole in the center of the hole we needed to cut out. I used the gasket as the template for the hole.





The tin snips were used to cut out the circle, while we held the paper towels against the area from the other side.





Pulling the towels out, now that the cut is finished.





We put the return through the hole.





So we could trim away the excess liner.





A razor blade works perfectly.





Put the jet together. Simple, just follow instructions with box.





And fasten it permanently to the wall, using the gaskets and some marine grease if you have it. You should get some.





Ours did not come with instructions, the box had been broken into. The gaskets were a little confusing. We had two rubber gaskets and one cork. I looked up many places online, and they all said something different. Just make sure you've got your two rubber gaskets on there, inside and outside, and do what you want with the cork. We put it outside next to the nut that tightens the whole assembly on. I don't think it's doing anything there anyhow.

The next one was harder. The skimmer hole. We used the gasket for a template again, and had to cut out the square hole and 10 screw holes. We used the paper towel trick, which worked great.





It took a long time, being careful not to drill my hand (Michael got me once), cut or poke a hole in the liner, lose any metal shavings inside the liner, or get the drill bit wound up in the paper towels. But at long last, it was done.





Then came screwing it all together and trimming away excess liner.





I would like to tell you we completed it by ourselves, but we did not. We really needed some muscle to get those screws tight on the skimmer. My dad came over and loaned that to us, along with the marine grease.

After this, it was just a matter of filling it and seeing what leaks! There will ALWAYS be leaks. We just have to be ready to fix them.

~Faith

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Car Repair and... Tapeworms? ~~ May 27, 2010

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As things tend to continually fall apart, we have been watching our little mini-van begin to struggle. Just like me, it's beginning to get old, tired, and things are going wrong. I try to get it serviced when the time comes, but sometimes we are a bit late.

A year ago, the hatch quit staying up. Gotta love the loading and unloading of groceries in the rain while one hand holds the door up, the foot hold the cart from running away, the other hand loads the bags, while rain runs down your arm.





The tires we continually have trouble with, and one has had a slow leak for well over a year. The A/C quit working two years ago, and with my window not working, that leaves us with one window to let airflow in during summer - (Gasp). And the remaining window is just now beginning to not work. THIS is going to be a challenge!

But it starts every time!!! YAY!

So when the tire was not holding air even for a couple of days, we took it for a hopeful repair, which worked! Can I hear another "YAY!"





We also splurged 60 bucks and felt it was worth fixing the hatch door to make our lives so much easier. Michael took charge of replacing the lift supports.





And he did a great job!





We moved on to working on the pool. We finished up getting the sand just right and began filling it, making sure to keep the liner as wrinkle-free as possible.

The best way to do this is to spread your liner out evenly and clip the edges up on the pool walls with heavy duty tool-shop clips. These work great. Put one about every two feet.





Then pull the liner tight, evenly all the way around, taking all the slack out of the liner, then actually pulling almost all of it off the ground except for the center. Leave about 6 feet touching the ground. Begin filling with water. As the water fills and begins moving out, it will pull the liner down, and you can let out the clips little by little as you walk around and around. Each time you loosen the clamp, the liner will slide down just a bit and there will be no wrinkles in the pool.

Conversely, you can use a wet/dry vac to suck air out from between the liner and the wall, avoiding the tedious walking and releasing of clips, but my vac is too small and this is how I'm familiar with doing it. Once your water actually reaches the wall, the liner will be done pulling down and you can affix the top coping and rails to finish the walls.

Michael got in, when the water was about knee high, to work the inside of the pool as we installed the top rail. He said there was something swimming at his feet, that looked like a snake.





I took one look at that and stopped in my tracks. All I could think was tapeworm, and WHERE DID IT COME FROM?

It went into a jar of water and I took a trip to the Great Storehouse of Modern Knowledge - Google Search.

Learn something new every day!

Remember all those stories you heard about horse hairs turning into worms in water troughs? Yeah, I didn't believe them either, but this is where those stories came from. These are Nematomorpha, otherwise known as hairworms.

They are ingested by insects, grow, then drive the insect to water where the parasite exits the body, killing it's host, looks for a girlfriend at the local pool, gets married and has little ones all over again.

How romantic!

Really cool, interesting and icky pictures!

And YouTube has some nifty videos too, if you have a young person who enjoys watching recreations of the scenes in "Alien" where a parasite exits the body of a victim.

Ours was about a foot long.





It's dead.

~Faith

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Bright and Early ~~ May 26, 2010

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The plan is to get out there and get it all done before ten am, when the sun hits. That never happens. But we got out fairly early anyhow, and began unloading the blocks we would need to set under the joints of the track that the pool wall sits inside.

There Michael is, holding up the door and seeing that the tire is flat, yet again.





We dig down in the sand bed to see how much we've got to work with; about 4 inches in the center and 2 inches around the perimeter.





We begin placing stones. They have to be level, both from front to back, and from side to side. Not only that, but the pool must be completely level in it's circumference. So you find the lowest spot and place the stone level, then you dig the rest down to meet it. Never build up to level what you are constructing. The soil will move away from the point of pressure.





By the time we'd worked for a while, we began wishing we had more sand. It would reduce our time out there a lot. I asked Michael how much he felt would be worth. We both came up with the amount of 50 dollars.

Within an hour we had this sand, delivered, for just over 50 dollars. What a great thing!





But putting it in the center was a bad idea. If I had a surveyor's site to find level, we'd have been OK, but I didn't think it through. I usually level the whole place by driving a center post, attaching a straight board to it with a level riding on top, and taking it around and around, leveling as we go. Now that was impossible.

Leveling them all was now rather tedious. We began from the lowest block and worked our way out from each side of it, measuring for level from the block previous, and hoped it would come out well by the time we were through.

I'm so thankful that it did.





And friends arrived just in time to help us with the last pavers and then put the wall into the track. We could not have done it without them. Well, I suppose we could have, but it would have added another week to the project.





Here's how the wall goes into the tracks which are placed on the leveled pavers.





Beginning to spread the sand. This was too much. The guy had been very kind and given us extra sand for free. I wish he hadn't. With the sand we already had down, I think 1.5 scoops would have been plenty, and he brought 2.5 scoops.





Water..... water...... gasp.... water....





Bolting the ends together was difficult. Being a used pool, the pieces were rusty and some of them bent. Getting them to move and slide into position took a lot of muscle. WD-40 became our very best friend.





This is one of those cheap WalMart pools they used to sell. It comes with one hole and a very limited filtering system. We will not use it, but install the better filtering system we already had that you see behind the pool. Better, but more work.





There I am, taking more photos of the beautiful sky the Lord has given us.





Extra sand went outside.





It was really hot in there.





Make sure you cover the bolts with duct tape to protect the liner.





We took breaks. We are fans of fans.





When we could take it no longer, we went in for relaxing, dinner, games, and just visiting. Ahhhhhhhhh....

~Faith

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Has It Been Nine Days? ~~ May 24, 2010

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I've honestly been so tired I have not felt like blogging.

Also, I don't know how many of those who read my little-blog-of-grand-adventures watch the news, but so much has been going on that it's a little overwhelming. I am a firm follower of Jesus Christ, and I believe what the Bible says about the coming end of days.

For years I have been watching, paying attention to things to see when they line up with what the Bible says. For the last few years events have been happening so rapidly that I always said my head was spinning. Well, I had no idea what I was talking about. The last couple of years of head spinning have been a cake walk compared to the last couple of months, and I don't see things slowing, but instead increasing.

I have unsaved family members, including the man who is still my husband yet refused to take his place as one, and my heart is burdened for them greatly. This could all be drug out for some time, or it could happen very quickly. But what is coming for those reject Yeshua Messiah as Lord in their life is terrifying.

How's that for an opener?

This pool wore me out! As of today's entry, it is up and operating, though not completely finished. I'm seriously getting old, here! I do not remember being this physically tired before. I guess I should not be surprised, what with menopause and lupus, but it is strange to see yourself decline, you know? We are so glad it's up!

I wish I'd had time and energy to document everything we did, like a very detailed pool construction tutorial, but being so tired and planning so poorly got in the way. I will share some of it, and hope that it will be useful to anyone who wants to set a pool up. Including Michael and I at any later date.

This is the third steel-walled pool I've set up. The very first one I did myself. I was very young then. I can't believe I did it alone! LOL But the place was level, easy to prepare, and the weather not quite so much like a sauna.

Here's Michael, trimming the replacement deck boards for the three that were so tweaked.





It's really not the best job. But I am sacrificing looks for the budget. We bought only what we had to for making the deck safe and comfortable, four boards and some screws. We actually had to rip one of the boards to make it narrow enough to fit here. That means we ran the saw all along the length of it, lowering the resting plate on the saw to adjust the depth enough not to cut through the joists below.





Still, somehow, the ends did not line up. We lined up the curved ends and found that shrinkage over the years had affected length as well, something that surprised me, considering these were all screwed down quite tightly. So we used a board to guide the line I scratched with a screw tip.





The ends had nails in them, from the little duck barrier we'd installed years ago. They could not be pulled so trimming the deck had to wait until we could get a diamond tipped saw blade.

It was very hot, so we temporarily used plumber's tape and some screws...





to affix this nifty shade umbrella we found at the dollar store. Wouldn't a dollar been a great price? It was 20 dollars. I almost got 4 for twenty dollars, but then they found the price was labeled wrong. Too bad!





And we laid down the guide rails to get an idea where we needed to level the ground a bit better.





After that I wimped out. Standing there with the heat reflecting up from that dirt did me in. What's with aging, anyway!

~Faith

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Yawn....... Update request?

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UPDATE - I would like to add some comfrey and Echinacea to my herb garden. Does anyone have some roots and/or dried flower heads they would be willing to send to me, if I pay postage?

Back to the original post! :o) ~~~

Sorry, that was the best title I could come up with this morning.

It was a big weekend, despite there being two Shabbats to enjoy, they were busy ones spent in our very favorite way, with friends. I wish I had lots of photos to show you, but honestly, I was too busy just sitting around talking and I missed most of the adventures.

However, there was a little work to be done before it all began. Friday morning we really tried to get to get the pool deck done, but we hit a snag.

First thing we did was screw down the outermost deck boards, flush with the joists underneath.





The reason we wanted them flush is because we hope to put umbrella holders on the sides, and deck boards sticking past would get in the way.





Then we had to find the center point and mark it, as well as having the boards lined up straight on their ends.





Here, this board is screwed down right up to the center line. Spacing can be a little intimidating, so I usually lay them out and get an idea for how much spacing to go for.





Screwing them in is both fun and aggravating. Fun ~~ who doesn't like to operate power tools? Aggravating ~~ the boards are rarely perfectly straight, and have to be pushed or pulled in various areas as you screw them down so they line up neatly.

In this photo, you can see the garden tool we used as a spacer to hold the boards apart while I shoved on this end and Michael screwed it down quickly.





That ax head makes a nice wedge spacer as well, anything you can find is handy. Oh, and don't you love the numbers on the boards? LOL Michael did not hear me say "pencil" and instead used permanent marker....

Here is one side of the deck where we did not get the spacing right. The old board just would not give enough. At a distance it is not that noticeable...





But up close you can see the end just would not get over enough. We are trying to economize and not buy new boards, so we let this one go.





But at the other end we had three boards that were excessively tweaked as you can see here. There was no amount of pushing and pulling that I could do, feet braced against the poles, that would do the job.





So we had to call it quits and get some new boards when we went to town for office cleaning, gymnastics, and some grocery shopping for the Big War the next day.

Saturday morning, amidst a bit of house cleaning, I quickly planted some Dwarf Grey Sugar Peas, some Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, and a couple of cucumbers.





I don't know how well the peas will do, but I really wanted to try a second crop. I'm hoping with the mulch the beds will be cool enough to see something come of them. This variety is a low bush type, that trellising is not supposed to be necessary for. I will transplant them closely so they support one another.

The lettuce variety is a hot weather resistant type, and is going to be my attempt to grow in the summer, out in the garden area. I may plant them underneath another crop to shade them.

The cucumber plan for the year is to not harvest a bushel a day, like we did last year! So I want to plant just one or two a week, to have a slow but steady supply of salad cukes.

The eggplants are doing great, so far! At least a lot better than I expected. They are withstanding the flea beetles. I believe the mulch is helping. They all have flowers, though they are still on the small side. This is quite an accomplishment here. Usually flea beetles completely prevent the growing of eggplant.





Then we were blessed to have a good supply of friends over for the afternoon and night. Michael had been planning an airsoft war for months, and about 10 young people came to participate, bringing along parents as well.

I wish I'd taken lots of photos, it was a wonderful time, but I was too busy visiting and being spoiled rotten by help!

This brought tears to my eyes. 10 heads out there, all picking strawberries for us. What would have taken over an hour for the two of us, they all swooped in and got done very quickly. I hope they enjoyed a lot of berries while picking, they are so good when fresh.





They brought in 3 large bowls of berries, and we ladies enjoyed chatting and processing them. Then we went out and picked a salad with all sorts of things from the herb garden thrown in. It was fun to pick and choose what flavors to add.

The young people came back from war for dinner, promptly ushered me out of the kitchen, and proceeded to finish fixing dinner for me. I'm so spoiled!

I did manage to snap a couple of shots of only a small portion of the battle paraphernalia strewn about the house and front porch.









Good times!

~Faith

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