The deck approaches finishment

The new deck project has been a long time in the making. Many moons ago, Wayne and I did the framing for the upper and lower decks. Shortly thereafter, I framed the stairs and laid down all the deck boards that we had. (Some from Parr Lumber and some reused from the old deck.) A couple weeks after that, I got secondhand boards from Craigslist to finish up the decking. Eventually I got around to rebuilding the arbor and starting the plants to grow up it.

The remaining things to do were to screw down all the boards and stain the deck. I had been waiting to do the screwing because screws cost a lot of money when for the volume needed. Also the staining needs a couple days to a week of nice, predictable weather since I would need to scrub and pressure wash the boards, then wait for them to dry, then stain, then wait for it to dry, before we could have any sprinkles.

Leave it to Sarah to put a priority on things. She signed up the deck (and our house) for a friend's baby shower, which is on for this coming Sunday. So starting last week, I put in all the screws and today I stained the whole thing.

I ended up using about three 5 pound boxes of Deck-Mate style screws, 2 1/2" long. Each box was about $25. The screwing was a little laborious because the boards had been down for a while, and most of them were used, so they were a little warped and wowed. Sarah sighted down each board as I pried it into position with a breaker bar and then added screws.

After the screwing was completed on Friday, I scrubbed the deck with some deck-specific soap stuff. It wasn't a serious deck cleaner because the boards weren't seriously dirty and I was going to pressure wash it anyway. On Saturday, I rented a pressure washer for 4 hours and quickly rinsed and sprayed the whole deck. The boards looked great and acquired a more uniform appearance, which was particularly lacking since they came from three sources and were a mixture of fir and cedar.

And then today I used almost exactly one gallon of Olympic Maximum Semi-Transparent "Cedar NaturalTone" stain for the whole deck. It was about $25 for the can. It looks really nice now - the previously different colored boards are now pretty much the same tone. Some of the rough edges are smoothed down. It looks good, right?

All that's left now is to set up the misters under the arbor and paint the railings white.

Wednesday Potluck: You missed a good one

Sarah and I made a huge pot of vichyssoise (cold potato onion soup) with pureed spinach added. The potatoes and spinach came from my mother's and my garden.

For the second time in over a year of potlucking, we had no attendees this week. Pretty good considering we're up to maybe 50 of these things, every Wednesday, every week, rain or shine. There's a pretty good group of dedicated potluckers (Jeff, Melanie and Patrick, Norris and Theresa, and one of the many midwives), and occasionally someone shows up who we've never met before and never see again. And then there are those folks who are good for about once every six weeks. It's a great crowd, and after doing it for a while, Sarah and I have the organization and preparation pretty well figured out.

While visiting with friends and family last week in Virginia, we got a lot of comments from people about how hard it must be or too much work, and I'll admit, we had a steep learning curve, but now it's quite easy to both predict turnout (we don't do RSVPs) and do preparation (makes us clean the whole house once a week). And with so many regular and semi-regular attendees, we're able to relax knowing that other people know where the cloth napkins are kept (in the little basket near the table), where the utensils are (in the bucket on the edge of the counter), where the compost bowls are (they're the green and blue ones always on the counter) and that no one should do any dish cleanup beyond scraping to the compost and stacking plates.

Here's to another great year of potlucks!

We went strawberry picking

Yesterday we went to Kruger's farm on Sauvie Island and picked a little over 20 pounds of strawberries. It took us about 90 minutes. The sun was shining, it wasn't too hot and wasn't too cold. The crowds weren't bad at all, and there were a couple varieties to choose from.

When you get over 20 pounds, the price is about $1.50 per pound, which is pretty darn cheap.

Sarah and I cut the tops off, washed and dried, then individually froze and bagged them. Our neighbor Jeff had a chest freezer he wasn't using, so that's in our basement now, with four big bags of strawberries. I think we'll go back for more in a couple weeks, towards the end of the season.

Up next: raspberries!

Our first egg

About 30 minutes ago, a Rhode Island Red laid her first egg.

A couple weeks ago, Lily and I made a fake egg out of a pink plastic easter egg. We filled it with lentils (to add weight), and wrapped it in white masking tape to keep the halves together and make it more egg-colored.

I added some comfy straw to the nesting box and plopped the fake egg in the middle of the rounded-out hole. And we've been waiting ever since.

Every day or so I check in the box to see if anything has been laid, and this morning, I opened the little nesting box roof to discover a hen sitting in the box, looking a bit pissed at being interrupted. An hour or so later, and she's off the nest and next to the fake egg was the real deal!

Upon cracking it open, we discovered two yolks. Bonus! Lily and I prompted cooked it and ate it.

Article: Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Nothing to do with gardening, home repair, potlucks or unschooling, but indirectly related to them all. From the article:

"Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. Then again, the Net isn’t the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking."

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

Wednesday Potluck: Steak and cake

It was my birthday potluck today (the 15th is the real date, but we'll be traveling then), so I got to pick the meal.

Sarah made a fabulous Kentucky molasses or brown sugar or something kind of cake, which disappeared very quickly.

I grilled a flank steak and sliced it reeeeeally thin so everyone got a belly full. A lot of people showed up! No potluck next week since we'll be in Virginia visiting family.

Pouring concrete carriage track

A couple weeks ago while Sarah's parents were here, I took the time to clean up the driveway. It was a total mess.

At some point, someone poured a single (left-hand side) carriage track but neglected to pour the second one! No one I've shown it to has offered any decent opinion as to why the previous builder only poured one track. Nonetheless, that's what we've been dealing with. Every winter, we slosh through a muddy driveway, getting mud all over our shoes and mud all over the car. I've been vainly mulching or strawing the area and have even gone so far as to put down some gravel to little effect. But no more!

I dug out the whole rest of the driveway (maybe 10 yards of dirt), levelled it, and put down about 2 inches of 3/4 minus crushed rock. Smooth it, compact it, then build the forms. I was able to use old rotten deck wood for the forms, which was a big money saver. Well not really, since I never would have paid money for forms wood, but it was nice to have a good supply of it hanging around, and then to toss it all when the job was done.

After the forms were in place, I got a delivery of concrete from a mix-on-site truck. What a cool contraption! It basically consists of a GIANT truck with four separate bins: one for cement, one for sand, one for gravel and one for water. He pulled up, yanked out the chute and pushed a button. Out came the mixed concrete, in perfect proportions. Because it was fresh-made, it was a little wet, but that made it easier to pour and fill in the voids. The coolest thing about the truck was that the driver had a remote control system for the truck so he could stand up in the driveway and watch the progress while turning on and off the concrete chute for the three of us in wheelbarrows. We had the entire driveway poured and screeded in about 20 minutes. Compare that to pouring by hand and it's a no-brainer. The cost was about $300 for about 3 yards of concrete.

It's been a couple weeks, so we're already driving on it and enjoying it. I've even started the next project along the driveway: a fence between us and the neighbors. More on that later.

Comfy, fresh straw

I've not been updating the blog regularly, but that's not because we've not been doing blog-worthy things. Until I get caught up, here's a funny picture of Lily enjoying some fresh straw laid down in the garden.

Wednesday Potluck: Let's build a salad bar

This week was a heavily-themed occasion. The first theme was celebration - Sarah graduated on Tuesday from OHSU. Yay! Cake was served! Booze was quaffed!

The second theme was salad. Our garden was bursting with greenery. The lettuce mixes and chards were just babies, but oh-so-tasty. They're already bouncing back. We provided greens of all varieties and guests provided toppings of all varieties including hard boiled eggs, cheeses, nuts (lots of nuts), dried berries, other veggies, seeds, bite-sized meats, and more! We also bought about a dozen salad dressings since our supply was running low.

Naturally, some folks brought bread and cheese, and there was enough beer on hand to fill up bellies. I, for one, was stuffed at the end of the night. We'll be eating a LOT of (free) salads this year, I think.