Garden - Disaster Mansion

21/04/201822/04/2018

Silkwood shower

Did I come in contact with poison ivy today? Probably, so Silkwood shower afterwards with an industrial micro-bead type scrub. I had bought a few tops from charity stores with the aim of throwing them away after one use in the garden (the red top I was wearing today), however I needed to wash my pants so I included them. Hot water, lots of detergent and some rubbing alcohol.

I bought some nice Carhartt trousers, which have lots of pockets. I forgot to check all pockets and so my mobile got washed big time. I don’t suppose it will ever work again. I didn’t like the phone but at the same time don’t want to spend big bucks. Maybe I will go back to Nokia 🙂

Tomorrow will tell whether the Silkwood was enough – I bloody hope so…

21/04/201823/04/2018

Poison Ivy Blitz

Well it’s not really a blitz on poison ivy but a blitz on everything. Until the leaves come out it’s difficult to spot it so everything is going. The garden was over grown and lost anyway so everything was going anyway (apart from mature trees). We are going to use Poison Ivy Patrol to clear the place and that is a three figure amount so I want to do as much as possible to keep it very low three figures.

First area was back left of garden, I had started on this last weekend but couldn’t sort out camera so no footage*. I love the tools I have, the bow saw can be hard work but it’s very satisfy and for small jobs more convenient and safer than a chainsaw. I’m pretty sure my swimming has helped with the saw pull stroke. There was a pretty big tree trunk that needed cutting up, luckily it was dry and not too heavy to lift and cut.

After this I tackled the garage ivy which we think is pretty much the bad ivy. By the way the garage is huge, it would probably take four cars, thinking BMW 840/850, Porsche 928, Jensen Healey and the Camry, unfortunately the supporting walls were done very poorly and are now bowing in at least 6″- it’s not safe inside.

The garage had this wire fence around it which was stuck in the ground and needed cutting out. It was tough stuff so I got some Klein bolt cutters, not cheap but they should be handy for other legit activities 😉 I bought the smallest ones and I’m glad I did, only 20″ long but they are heavy buggers and then combined with the cutting action it was hard work. I bagged up all the ivy I cut off so we won’t have to handle that stuff again.

It’s interesting throughout the day to hear and watch all the bird life. Today we had quite a lot of male cardinal songs, the song varies but is always the same and ends up with what sounds like star trek phasers, listen to this recording and you will see what I mean: The inspiration for all sci-fi gun sound effects.

Below is a time lapse, it doesn’t look like I did much but I was there almost eight hours. A real gem was at 2.31 on the time lapse, I had a Downey woodpecker, peck away for maybe five minutes and I was sitting less than five foot away. How cool.

The last few screens I’m washing down tools with with wet-wipes and alcohol to clear all Urushiol.

* unlike regular sd cards, micro sd cards can be inserted the wrong way.

10/04/201813/04/2018

Garden is infested with poison ivy

Well, it’s got worse, my arms are like sausages, with peeling and splitting skin. Aimee is not much better.

The chap from the Poison Ivy Patrol thinks our garden is infested with the ivy, probably due to years of neglect. Could take 3-5 people a good part of a day to clear the rest of the garden and dig up all the roots. We’ll clear more of the overgrowth to keep the cost down, making sure not a single piece of plant touches our skin. We’ll get a dumpster to dispose of our three huge heaps of tree, plants, vines, ivy etc as well as a lot of rubble etc.

After this, we should be able to eradicate any further ivy ourselves.

For those in Europe who don’t know what poison ivy is about, isearch for “poison ivy rash”.

08/04/201813/04/2018

Trying out a new camera for time lapse

The idea behind the time lapse was to chart progress at DM. I’d been using a few Brinno TLC200 Pro cameras which are designed for time lapse. The Brinno’s battery life can be stretched to months, which is great as you can place them anywhere and not have to worry about a power source. That said the quality isn’t as great as I’d like so I thought I’d try something different.

There is a lot of cameras out there to choose from, the obvious choice being the GoPro. Ideally, I want a few cameras but with GoPros costing around $300, the GoPro was out. I saw the Sony AS50 on eBay and was so impressed by other peoples’ time lapses that I bought one. I’m quite happy with the quality and the fisheye effect can be lost if I film in HD and not 4k. Battery life is only about two hours so I will have to come up with some hack as this camera can’t be used when plugged into USB power supply (seems a bit of dumb design decision).

The first part of the video here was fixing up a plywood covering over one of the broken windows. Dave put a hinge on it so we could open it up and get some sunlight in there now and then 🙂 The bit where we vanish is us popping down to HomeDepot. The last section is us starting to clear away part of the rear deck which had been covered in roofing tar, kitchen cabinets and a lot of drywall. The heap must have been there for years as it had decayed into one big lump.

The actual deck supports had been placed directly on the soil so were mostly crumbling away with rot. Why do people have to do such poor work and did the people who paid for it know how bad a job it was? Even a few concrete support blocks would have made a big difference to its longevity.

Aimee: I was shell-shocked after last weekend’s poison ivy and the weather has been crummy. It was hard not to get a little down this week with all of the itching and scratching, but this week the Poison Ivy Patrol will come and hopefully we can get rid of the shack in the back, along with the nasty back stairwell soon. There is a big hole in the back of the yard where we think the pooper lives, but we haven’t seen any evidence in weeks.

08/04/201808/04/2018

How fast things grow

It’s amazing how fast trees grow. From the google street view photo from 2013 it looks like it’s not higher than 7-8′ with a trunk diameter less than your wrist. Skip a few years and it’s taller than the house. The rings became unclear towards the center so I may have under estimated the age.

[Show slideshow]

04/04/201804/04/2018

Calling in the Poison Ivy Patrol

Aimee has got so bad that a Doctors appointment is needed. I have it a bit but it’s manageable. A couple of people told us about the Poison Ivy Patrol so we have a consultation next week at the property. It’s nice that after the consultation you’re armed with enough knowledge to safely remove the ivy yourself if you wish.

It’s harder to identify this time of the year as the leaves aren’t out, that said it may be safer to remove in this leafless state.

02/04/201803/04/2018

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

The joys of poison ivy. Difficult to spot in winter, come summer however it will be eradicated without mercy. Can’t wait to go to the O+ Gala in less than two weeks with a sexy rash!

This is a great site on identifying poison ivy, season by season.

[Show slideshow]

01/04/201813/04/2018

Wild life in the garden

Saw maybe my first woodpecker in the US today, I think it’s the Downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens), it was pretty small, probably no bigger than a Starling.

Came across a lovely big bumble bee, we think it was the Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens). It might be common but it was pretty cool. These bees are known to be hardy and will be the first to appear in spring.

The good pictures were taken from internet, mine are the rubbish ones.

We also had a bald eagle fly maybe 100m over the garden which was nice. We’re lucky to live by cliffs which seem to attract eagles and vultures.

[Show slideshow]

31/03/201831/03/2018

What is this tree?

Can anyone tell me what this tree is? It’s over 100′ tall, the trunk must be a good 4-5′ across and it has lots of small red blossoms on it. These trees are numerous around Kingston but I haven’t been able to identify it.

A beer or substitute for the first person who identifies it correctly.

[Show slideshow]

26/03/201811/12/2019

Clearing out the Garden

According to the neighbours the garden had been unattended for about a decade. In that time many hundreds of saplings (they looked like ash) have taken root. The small ones could be pulled out by hand but most needed digging out. Not hard but when you have hundreds it can get tiring. Spend two weekends on it so far and probably have half the garden cleared.

Worse than the trees are the creepers which are thick on the ground and like to put down roots every 6 or so inches which makes pulling them out hard.

The garden is a good space and we will first get accustomed to the levels and how we start to use it before we do anything. Currently we are thinking of some lovely blossoming trees and beautiful blue stone walls. We will visit https://www.opus40.org/ again to give us some inspiration.

[Show slideshow]