A Little of This and a Little of That

In between posting I have been working on crossing things off my winter preparation list.  Examples are:

• Changing out the wooden screen to storm windows
• Cleaning out gutters after the white pine sheds all it pine needles.  Every year in the first half of October my White Pines have anywhere from a third of its needles turn yellow and fall off the tree and clog my gutters.  This year I filled five 5-gallon buckets of pine needles from the gutters.
• Putting a tarp over the air conditioner unit.  I have central air and most people do not need to cover this unit but I do.  The reason I cover my unit  if I need to rake the snow off the roof this winter, the air conditioner unit is located near enough to the roof edge that snow falling of the roof into the unit could cause the fan blades to bend.  That could cause a problem on the motor and destroy it.  So I cover it to void any repair cost.
• In an earlier posting “Living Room Curtains”, I show on set of curtains I finished putting a hem in.   I finished the second set in upholstery class except for hanging them and putting in the hem.   The unfinished curtains have been sitting in the dining since June and I finally found time to hem and hang them before Thanksgiving.   Having guests for the holiday always moves items up on the “TO DO LIST”.  Here is the finished project.



The living room new curtain completed.  Forgive the antenna hanging off the
curtain rod but this is the only way I can get good reception.

• The garden been through several frosts since I pulled most of my garden in September but I did leave the all the Brussels sprouts, broccoli, 2 cauliflowers and 1 cabbage in the garden.  The weekend before Thanksgiving I harvested all those plants.  The cauliflower did not do well this year because of the drought so the heads were small.  There was enough broccoli left for two serving and an 8-inch head of red cabbage.  I have a second one in the refrigerator so my mother was the beneficiary of this cabbage.  I planted 6 Brussels sprouts plants.  The two Long Island Improved plants did poorly and one plant never formed heads.  I harvested the smaller leaved off that plants and sauté them with caramelized onion for Thanksgiving, MMM.  The Falstaff Brussels sprout did fair only forming small heads.  Jade Cross variety did the best these plants were the best producing variety I ever planted for Brussels sprouts.  I am not going to plant any Long Island variety next year.  I will still plant Falstaff because of the beautiful purple color and they taste good.  I spent the weekend after Thanksgiving blanching and freezing the sprouts.
• Since the weather is turning cold and we had several raining weekends I did a through cleaning of the house.  Pulled up the rugs and moving furniture to wash the floor and dust and molding before Thanksgiving.  I needed to look good since Mom was coming for Thanksgiving.  The rest of the family was working over the holiday or going to theirs partner’s family event.

Revised end of  year “HOUSE TO DO LIST”

• Cover up the 3 season porch windows with plastic inside and out.  Outside is done but this weekend I will be straightening up the porch and working on the windows.
• Finished painting the basement floor with waterproof paint.  YES that DAMN basement still, excuse my language but I am sick of working on it.  Is this the 5^th or 6^th year I been working it?  Who knows!  Now that we are in the holiday season I will not be able to finish this until next year but I do plan on beginning work again in December.

Those two items are enough to work on until my new 2013 TO DO IT LIST comes out.

Way Laid for the Moment

For the last week I have been ordered to slay off the roof since I wrenched my back on September 11. How did I achieve this? Well I was sitting on the roof scraping paint off the wall. Trying to keep your balance on the roof and keep both hands free (one to hold the heat gun and the other to hold the scraper) is a feat. I twisted my body in funny positions and aggravated a minor back injury to a major one. I spent most of last week off from work barely able to get out of bed. I guess four to six hours a day for four days in a row was more than my body could stand.

I did get most of the scrapping done with only about 2 hours left to do. My biggest problem is that most of the caulking along the roof and wall needs to be replaced before winter comes. I can leave the rest of the work until next spring. I hopefully I will be able to get back on the roof in the next two weeks to caulk the roof line with removable caulk for the winter then next spring I can properly prepare the wall by sanding and priming it before applying the permanent caulk. I also removed all the old glazing from the window on this wall so I will most likely be using the removable caulk there too.

The small area on the wall left to scrap.

Roof eve area left.

My brother is visiting me for the next two weeks and will be helping me clean up the yard for winter but he is not a handyman when it comes to working on the house. I am more afraid of him falling off the roof than I am going up there to do the needed roof caulking for the winter. Yesterday I received a notice from Burpee’s that my raspberry plants are coming in the mail this week so Art will also be digging the holes so we can plant them too this week.