Cop Car's Beat

My mind is blown

In my on-going effort to obtain some semblance of order in our multi-generational collection of photos, I'm still scanning old photos. One of the batches of photos that I scanned, yesterday, was from the summer of 2000, shortly after our landscaping had been completed in our new home. Wow! Did I ever get a comeuppance. It showed things as they looked in those days - not as I "remembered" them. 

In Tree Work by JoJac's, I waxed eloquent (photographically) on the removal of our big old cottonwood tree. Below are two photos: the photo of the tree from 2000 and the photo of the tree in October of this year. The comparison is nothing like what I would have thought it would be. I attempted to present the two photos at about the same scale by comparing the size of the boards in Fred's fence.

While I'm stalking around the back yard, here's another comparison showing the progress in growing new grass to fill in the bare spots caused by army worms' chomping their way through our back lawn. The newly seeded lawn is shown on the left (10/16/2021), and as the grass appeared while I was watering it, yesterday (12/26/2021). We're not supposed to need to water grass in December, here in south central Kansas. It's supposed to be dormant.

 

Week in review

The photo, below, hit my funny bone.

I know how Carlos feels. I vividly recall in the mid-1980s being plugged into a short-term (six week) assignment by my bosses at The Little Engineering Company for lack of availability of other, more qualified, people who had been identified in the proposal for doing the work. The first time this happened, I filled in for a PhD materials expert whose Special Access Clearance (SAC) was too slow in coming. As I already had two or three such clearances, my additional SAC was granted within hours of submitting my request. To this day, I don't know how badly I screwed up "my part" of the project or whether that project ever saw the light of day.

Another time I was a "plug-in", the guy who had been identified in the proposal just flat did not wish to spend a few weeks in Seattle. (We were never notified when proposal writers identified us as principal staff in a proposal and we were required to keep detailed resumѐs on file for their use. My own resumѐ ran eight or nine pages in those archives.)

This project was a somewhat better fit; but, the timeline for accomplishment was far short of allowing adequate time for developing a good product. In order to fulfil the job, I loaned my SOCAL apartment to a coworker, and lived in a motel in Seattle for six weeks. I chose to ride the bus while in Seattle rather than using a company or rental car. It was during that stint that I was notified of a pickup truck's having rammed into my house in Albuquerque. Ah...good old days! [BTW: The above photo was stolen from Oddball Observations where it had been posted in 2013 with the comment, "Don't blame me.  This is a food truck in Houston.  The picture was sent to me by a (to be kept anonymous) friend.  Thanks, Frank."]

Hunky Husband took his car into Wichita for its annual servicing. Why is this big news? Because I did not go with him to navigate. Fortunately, there are only three changes of street in the 15-mile drive from our house to Lexus of Wichita, and HH was confident that he could get there and back. (He did!) We celebrate small victories. 😊 It helps that the car dealership is a straight shot north from one of the local golf courses, Hidden Lakes, at which HH used to play.

Early in the week I worked up the green tomatoes that I had picked before our first hard freeze. Green tomato relish is a good substitute for sweet pickle relish when one wishes a piquant touch on hot dogs or Tex-Mex chili. As one can see in the above photo, some of the tomatoes had started to turn color (and I added a bit of orange bell pepper). In all, I worked up about two gallons, only jarring four half pints and one quart. Without lid flats, their still being unavailable in our area, I decided to freeze the relish. Our downstairs freezer is pretty well stuffed with normal frozen foods and the Tex-Mex chili and baked beans that are awaiting pickup by Elder Brother. Refrigeration would be sufficient, with the sugar and vinegar included in the relish; but, the downstairs refrigerator is still packed with ripe tomatoes and sweet banana peppers that I put up in 2020 - at which time we were already lacking lid flats.

As one might guess, much of my time has been spent in keeping the new grass hydrated. The front lawn doesn't take much work. Three or four placements of the sprinkler suffices. In back, it takes more effort. At any rate, today will find me watering all the little trees in the back and between our driveway and Fred's fence. I've been negligent and we have several projected nights in the 20s (Fahrenheit) coming up.

Tree Work by JoJac's

Three trees (two ash, one cottonwood) the day before work started:

First to be felled were the two ash trees. The following photo shows Louis (cutting up the trees for chipping) and Cornelio (getting the grinder into position for grinding out the stumps - when the stumps are cut off).

The two ash trees having been felled, the following photos show Cornelio (Cornello?), Corbin, & Louis (Lewis?) bringing down the cottonwood tree. This time, it was Cornelio who did the up-in-the-tree work although the guys assured me that they all did that sort of thing. Previous to this venture, it had always been Benny up there. He trained, at least, Cornelio and then moved to a different department of JoJac's to do landscaping. The strain on one's body of doing the up-in-the-tree work gets to one after a while. Besides, putting things in is not nearly as dangerous as taking them out - even if that didn't figure into Benny's decision.

Below, that's Corbin pulling the branch away from Fred's fence. Even though some of the branches grew out past that line of our property, AFAIK not a leaf touched Fred's property.

Cornelio "caught" me taking photos and "posed" for me (photo, below). I did not wish the guys to notice me and my activities while engaged in their dangerous assignment. Distraction can be deadly! Until the tree trunk was on the ground, I stayed in the house, on the back porch, in the garage, or on the driveway - well away from the danger zone so as not to distract the workers. 

When the main trunk of the tree comes down, they want the mass and strength of two guys on the guide line. That would be Corbin and Louis. Unfortunately, one of Adam's relatives (Adam lives next door to us on the other side of our yard) came over to talk to the guys about doing some work on Adam's trees, at this point - ignoring the distraction he might be causing. He could have waited for the guys to have been on break for the disruption.

Hunky Husband came out of his bedroom from his nap, having been wakened by the "thud" of the trunk's hitting the ground.

At this point, all three guys hustle getting the limbs and trunk cut into "manageable" chunks. Many of the chunks required two men to roll them onto a dolly for transport to the storage area near Fred's fence. The next day would find the guys back with a flat trailer to haul off the wood that was too large to put through the chipper (the yellow contraption toward the right edge of the photo, below). They made several trips with that trailer to get all of the wood hauled off.

Cornelio, Corbin, and Louis had put in a full day. They must eat 5,000-10,000 Kilocalories each day to maintain their body weights with the exertion their jobs require.

The diameter of the trunk at a few inches above the ground was about three feet. I don't have the skill to read the tree rings or I might have been able to guestimate the age of the cottonwood tree.

 

BTW: The JoJac's guys still had other work to do the second day - cleaning out a couple of brush piles that I had made from smaller trees and brush that I had moved since their last foray into our woods, and trimming the front lawn's gingko tree back from overhanging the eaves of the house. The first photo, below, shows the guys getting ready to chip materials from the brush piles while the second shows the gingko tree following trimming.

After the crew left on the 2nd day:

Yard work is never done

We had our first hard freeze, last night. When I arose at 3am, the outside temperature was 27° Fahrenheit - and it stayed there until about 7:30am when it crept up to 28° F. By 8:30am it was 33°. The hard freeze triggered the shedding of leaves by our goodly-sized gingko tree in the front yard. As usual, I failed to get a "before" photo. I would like to have shown the carpet of leaves that lay about the tree, this morning. As it is, I can show you the carpet of leaves that is still in the foundation planting bed. The two pipes provide access to our main sewer line that joins the city sanitary sewer line under our street.

We also have two small gingko trees in the far back yard - both of which had shed their leaves within the past three or four days. I love gingkoes. They are immune to nearly everything. Bugs don't really bother them, heat doesn't bother them, cold doesn't bother them, nor does drought or an abundance of water. Another great thing about them is their habit of shedding the vast majority of their leaves, overnight, in the fall. I can get out and rake once or twice and be done with them. Something else about their shedding habits is that, as you can probably discern in the above photo, the leaves are still hydrated when they fall. Good: they don't blow as much as would dry leaves. Bad: they are darned bulky and heavy to handle when one rakes. Below is a photo of the tree as it stood when I finished raking.

Next is how the yard looked after raking. The demarcation between the raking I did before lunch (nearer the camera) and that which was done in mid-afternoon (farther from the camera) is evident. I only did the amount of raking that I thought my back could get away with. I'll do more tomorrow, perhaps.

Below are photos of the two bins and the garden cart of leaves that I raked up. (I take the small green bin out into the yard with me and dump the leaves from it into the blue bin - the blue bin holding twice as much as does the green.) Note that the bins were full, but have settled due to the weight of the leaves, and that the leaves in the garden cart are somewhat swaddled in plastic. I had tried to empty the little green bin of leaves into a huge plastic bag, only to discover the bag's state of deterioration. The least stress caused it to shred and crumble; thus, I rolled the whole mess into the garden cart. There for a moment it had seemed that I was going to end up with a large pile of leaves inside the garage. Whew!

It may seem that the only thing I do is yard work. It seems that way to me, too.  🥴 While we're on the subject: The first photo, below, shows how nicely the new grass had filled in in the back lawn, from its planting on 10/9/2021 until a week ago, with the largest previously-bare spot indicated by the red oval. The second photo shows the crusty frost that was still on the grass at 8:30am, today.

Jo-Jac's tree crew should be here, Monday, so there will be at least one more posting about yard work yet this fall.

The week in review

Wind - This has been a week of rain & blow - not to the extent that others have had, but enough for us. We received nearly three inches of rain driven by winds from 10-60+ miles/hour. The only damage done was that trash from our across-the-street neighbor's overturned trash bin blew all over our yard, some of it ending up against the house (by the back porch), some up against the dense parts of our woods, and some that I caught early enough to stop it in our front yard; sticks & limbs were taken off of our tree and strewn about the back yard and the edge of our woods, and the aforementioned neighbor's trees (along with those of other neighbors across the street from us) were forced to give up their leaves to the wind, being deposited in our front yard and curb guttering.

The photo, below shows the leaves in the front yard. There aren't as many leaves as we've had deposited most years; but I really can't rake them for fear of uprooting the newly sprouted grass. Note the blue bin at the top, center of the photo. It is the trash bin that had previously been deprived of its trash. Today was recycle & trash pickup day for our street.

The bin is frequently overturned by wind; but, the neighbor rarely catches it since he cannot see it from inside his house. I gathered up the trash (mostly, large plastic bags from lawn dirt, but also some trimmings from his shrubbery), placed it into the bin (leaving the bin parallel to the ground), closed the bin, turned the bin around 180 degrees about the vertical , and placed it snuggly up against the side of the garage to keep the wind from causing more mischief.

Garage Door - Early in the week, as the wind and rain were just getting started, Jeff came by to install our new overhead garage door for Hunky Husband's car's bay. I don't recall whether I had mentioned HH's misfortune of opening the wrong door, one day, then backing into his bay's door. Only his lightning-fast reaction and fine coordination allowed him to stop his car before it became a full-blown "thing".

I seem to have failed to take a photo of the damaged door; but, the casual observer might not even have noticed the slight widening of the space between sections, center span of the door. Even so, the door was damaged beyond repair (doesn't take that much damage). The door allowed normal operation; so, we didn't even need to make a temporary repair. 

The new door is, supposedly, a slightly different design from our old door(s); but, tell me if you can see much difference between the new door (on the right) and my car bay's old door (in the center), by looking at the photo below. A coat of paint and it should fit in nicely. (We had told the sales person who came by on 9/2/2021 that we would live with the new door for a while before deciding if we needed to replace the remaining two doors to match it. I'm thinking "no".)

HH's Ears - Today, HH had his every-three-months checkup with the audiologist. All that was required was for her to clean impacted wax from his "better" ear and turn the gain down on both hearing aids. I would have guessed that the gain would need to be turned down by about 10 dB, which I did not share with Dr Combs; but, she turned them down only 2 dB. He can try them for three months to see if they need turning down more. 

New Grass - I took some photos to show the green fuzz that we now have in most of the previously bare spots. They may be compared to photos in The seeds are sown, that were taken just before and just after planting.

There are still a couple of noticeably bare spots that are next to the fence beyond the little tree. It shows that we're not getting full coverage with our sprinkler heads. That's not surprising since the sprinkler head is a few feet from the fence (there was a planting bed full of trees and shrubs between it and the fence when the sprinkler head was installed) and is adjusted to clear the fence. The photo, below, of the largest bare spot that we had after the invasion of the Army Worms also shows a bare strip toward the camera from the bluebird house. Again, water wasn't getting there. Again, not surprising since all of that patch is beyond the real lawn and in the drainage easement.

Irrigation System - We had some ill luck and then a stroke of good luck. I had asked the lawn service people to service our irrigation system for the winter, this week - pushed forward from our original schedule (of having it done last week) by the pushing forward also of the planting date. (It rained on the originally scheduled date, which I had considered late; but, what can one do when they are hurting for employees?) When I hadn't heard from the lawn service by Wednesday, I called them. Oops! That change in their schedule had not been accomplished. They couldn't get us this week - perhaps next week, they hoped.

This is where the good luck came in. Yesterday, as I was striking out on my morning walk, I noticed that a neighbor who lives a couple of blocks from us was having his irrigation system winterized. I waited for the lawn service guys (not the same company as our lawn service) and the home owner to return from the back yard and asked if they would have time to do our system. (I did ask a "by your leave" of my neighbor, of course.) Fortunately, the answer was "Yes".

I turned around, came home, and unpacked the backflow prevention valve assembly. They arrived as  promised and perhaps 20 minutes later had our system ready for the 24-26 degree (F) weather that we are expecting early next week. Below are photos of the unpacked valve assembly of the eight bags of mulch that I had packed around it. (No photo of the sheets of heavy plastic, old bed sheet, old drapery, and wastepaper basket that had been in the mix of insulation.)

A little Fall color

Today, the sun has been elusive. One minute we've experienced overcast skies and five minutes later, not a cloud in the sky. Thus, some of the photos that I thought would be sunny, were cloudy, and when the sun reappeared, some of the flora that I wished to photograph were in the deep shade of Fred's house. Oh, well.

The first photo shows the entirety of the rose garden that I had planted for Hunky Husband in March 2019, and re-configured in 2020. Obvious in the photo are the Midas Touch bush in the front and one blossom on the Oklahoma! bush that appears just below the garage window. Other blossoms don't show up in the photo.

In front of the house are three bushes of Mini Lavendar Lace that were planted in April 2009. Those little bushes have been overgrown by the sedum groundcover and overshadowed, in most years, by the Leather Leaf Viburnum that towers over them.

Although some people are sensitive to the sap of any sumac, I have never been; thus, I plant them. When we landscaped our yard, after building this house, I had a Staghorn Sumac planted at the far back of the "good grass" of the back lawn. Eventually, the redbud tree that was in that corner of the yard overshadowed the sumac. It withered and all but died, after which I removed it with my trusty axe. Three years ago, I bought four plants of Staghorn Sumac, planting one just outside our dining room windows and the other three in the planting strip between our driveway and Fred's yard. Each location should help me defeat the sumac bushes/trees in their efforts to populate the world. They were planted for their fall color and, this year, are proving their mettle.

The first two sumac photos show the "tree" outside the dining room windows.

 

 

 

Below are the three sumacs, and their offspring, between our driveway and Fred's yard. The nearest sumac, with the flower cones stuck out to nearly the driveway, is the only female in the bunch.

On November 15, the JoJac tree team (minus the guy who has always led the team when they've come to my house, because he now works in their landscaping department) are to come. Sadly, one of the things I'll be discussing is possible removal of the grand Cottonwood Tree that graced this property for many years before we bought the land. Below is a (possibly) farewell photo of the cottonwood. I love that tree; but, I don't love the fire hazard it now presents to our house, nor do I love the extra work engendered by its bad habit of shedding branches and twigs most months of the year, shedding cotton to blow in the wind like heavy snowfall during a couple of weeks each year, and the growth habit of its roots that brings roots to the surface causing large bumps over which to mow. I spend a lot of time cleaning up after my love.

The Low Boy Pyracantha bush that was gifted to me by co-workers upon my retirement in 2004 required a lot of cleanup trimming & pulling of vines & other plants that had grown up through it, this year; but, it rewards me with its pretty berries. Just in front of the bush are several sprigs of redbud seedlings that I've allowed to grow in the spot from which the clump of redbuds were removed last year.

Lest I forget, here (below) is a photo of an ill-placed mum that was planted in about 2012 as one of several that I planted to give fall color. Unfortunately, the crepe myrtle bushes, while lovely (and of nearly the same pinkish-purple hue), have overgrown this survivor mum.

Below is a photo of a bare spot left by the army worm attack of several weeks ago. If you strain your eyeballs, you may be able to discern the pattern of vertical, green, hair-like sprouts of new grass - planted on 10/16/2021. Except for yesterday, when we were blessed with 0.36" of rain, we have run the sprinkler system for a few minutes, thrice daily. These are the first sprouts I've seen; although, the sprouts were not confined to this one bare spot.

Lastly, is a beauty shot of the way in which I prepared our sprinkler system's backflow prevention valve assembly to withstand moderately freezing weather. As I wrote, recently, two or three times, we've had to have the valve assembly repaired or replaced when the outside air temperatures dipped into the high teens or low twenties for too many hours. I had purchased (and used) electrically-heated tapes in past years; but, the newest installation is a configuration that makes use of such tapes impossible. Over the assembly I arranged: a slight bit of fiberglass insulation strip, a flannel bedsheet, heavy plastic sheet, inverted plastic wastebasket, rubber-backed window drapery (from circa 1968), plastic sheeting, and 8 bags of cedar bark mulch. (Oh! And I had brought the ground level, to mate with the inverted wastebasket, with two bags of top soil.) If, in spite of my efforts, the assembly freezes, I shall probably drown trying to get down to the valve in order to turn off the water, manually, instead of merely freezing in the spraying water.

The meter that is visible to the left of the piled bags of mulch is our smart natural gas meter. The valve assembly is too close to that meter (and to the house and to the downspout for the roof guttering) for it to be easy to work with.

The seeds are sown

BEFORE Seeding

TenderCare's lawn service team was scheduled to core-aerate and slit seed on Monday, 10/11/2021. Unfortunately for that scheduling, we received 2.61" of rain that day, starting at Midnight and ending at about dinner time. TenderCare rescheduled us for Friday, 10/15/2021. Now, understand that there are a couple of things driving us to have wanted to have the seeding done two weeks ago: 1) I had originally scheduled our sprinkler system to be winterized on the 20th, and the grass seed would need thrice daily watering for at least two weeks following sowing, taking us out to having the system winterized no earlier than 11/3/2021 - by which time we will surely have had temperatures that will risk freezing the backflow prevention valve assembly* and 2) Kansas State U Extension Service recommends sowing fescue seed no later than October 15, to provide the new grass the opportunity to mature to a stage less likely to be killed by fluctuations in winter temperatures.

The photo, below, is a paste-up of two photos that I finally thought to take Wednesday, 10/13/2021, showing the bare patches in the back yard that were left by the voracious army worms - after I had completed pulling out the Bermuda grass that was prominent in those areas. BTW: We received an additional 0.53" of rain on Wednesday.

The next photo was taken merely to show our daily invasion by "our" flock of turkeys. They came up from the creek bank just as I had come inside from taking the above photos and was closing the patio door.

Came Thursday, the 14th, I ran an errand, returning home to Hunky Husband's news that he had called TenderCare. He did not recall how he received the word (phone? text? email?) from TenderCare that they had scheduled winterization of our sprinkler system for the following day, regardless of the fact that I had asked them to change our scheduled date from the 20th to sometime the week of the 27th, after which I will need to water the seed/new grass by hand. They told him that they would not turn off the sprinkler system before seeding. That is good. However, HH's memory of what transpired is not always accurate these days, so I wondered what would happen on our re-scheduled seeding day of Friday.

Came Friday, the 15th, at 3:30pm, we had still not seen anyone from TenderCare. I called the office to inquire and was told, "You are on the schedule." We waited. No one showed. Now the office was closed and I had no idea what was happening. I decided that, if their team showed up, today (Saturday - usually a non-working day for TenderCare), I would let them seed. If they hadn't shown up by Monday morning, I would tell them not to seed - we'll do that next spring. Spring isn't the ideal time to seed a cool season grass, here; but, then, neither is it ideal after the 15th.

Thankfully, today, one of the TenderCare lawn service guys showed up, bright and early, to do our lawn. He had missed work, yesterday, and the remaining members of the lawn service team had been overbooked and could not possibly get the scheduled jobs all done. Since we are friends of the owner, I suspect that he chooses to take care of less sure customers, first, and that we were scheduled last. The guy who showed up had help, his bride of 19 years who is a member of TenderCare's landscaping team. As they were dragging two trailers behind the Tendercare pickup truck and one was filled with balled-and-burlaped bushes, I suspect that he would be her helper at their next job.

AFTER seeding

The photo, below, shows most of the bare areas in the back lawn, after core aeration and seeding. I immediately took up all of the flags that we had put out to mark locations of sprinkler heads and other obstructions that the workers should not hit with their equipment, and programmed the sprinkler system to do the thrice daily chore. Keeping my fingers crossed that our weather cooperates for the next three weeks, at least.

________________________________________________________

*To the best of my remembrance, we have had to pay to have the backflow prevention valve assembly repaired or replaced three times in the past 21 years. However, that's not the worst that happens. The worst that happens is that I get soaked with 32 degree F water, getting to the assembly to turn off the water, once the ice in the assembly melts and the water starts gushing forth. I have packed the assembly for resistance to low temperatures (we were at 35 degrees when I went for my walk, this morning, with frost on our roof and on the grass along my route.) Unfortunately, the last time the assembly was replaced, the new assembly's configuration makes it impossible for me to apply electrically heated tape to it. Grrrr....

More of this and that - early October

Grass - not the smoking kind

Today was a nearly perfect day for me - something to write about. Nothing exciting happened, nothing out-of-the-ordinary happened; but...well...maybe it was a bit out-of-the-ordinary. Much of my day (5 ½ 6 hours of it) was spent pulling Bermuda grass out of our back lawn. (I wrote a tiny bit about this project at Big accomplishments this week.) We've been having such hot, sunny weather that I dared not spend too much time out there (besides my hands not being up to too much grasping and pulling) - until today. Today was mostly cloudy and cool. Tomorrow, I'll take an update photo and post it below this sentence. It is too dark, now, and I didn't think of taking a photo before.)

ADDITION of 10/7/2 021

The yellow ovals indicate areas not yet de-Bermuda-ed while the diamond shows an example of a small patch that has been completed. The Bermuda is a bluish color in the dew - before I put in my first hour this morning.

What made the day so spectacular for me was how quiet it was. No one was mowing. No one was running power tools in their garage. McConnell AFB didn't have a bunch of KC-135s and KC-46s taking training flights and shooting landings, Fred was at work so his dogs were indoors, air conditioners were not running...you get the picture.

By now, my right hand is a bit swollen, but not too bad since I switched to doing extreme grasping/pulling with my left hand about mid-morning. In all, I took six turns outside pulling Bermuda for that 5 ½ 6-hour total time. Even the 1 3/4 hours that I put in after dinner were extremely pleasant. (Hunky Husband let me get away with our having DQ treats as dinner - he had a Blizzard, I had a Mocha Moolatte - which is okay considering the totally nutritious meals we had yesterday and for lunch, today.) Fred was at home and his Labs were outdoors, but I was far enough away from their side of our yard that they ignored me. (The Great Pyrenees dogs whose fence is fairly near to my work area bark "Hello", then ignore me.)

I am desperately trying to get the visible Bermuda grass pulled before Tendercare comes out on Monday to core aerate and slit over-seed the lawn with fescue. Because of my progress, today, I have a shot at making it; although, tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday are supposed to be hot - and Sunday will be dedicated to other activities. 

Microsoft Ergonomic Desktop

I'm almost getting used to my new keyboard. I'd been putting up with the truly awful keyboard that came with this computer, for nearly two years - basically because I was too lazy to look for a different keyboard. A couple of weeks ago I got irritated enough that I decided to go for a new keyboard. Doing a very little research, I decided on the Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard which was easy to order online through my Microsoft account. Only after it arrived did I discover that I had accidentally ordered the Desktop (keyboard+mouse) instead of only the keyboard. Oh, well. I won't use it when, as now, I am using the mouse to the left of my keyboard; but, I may try the mouse sometime when I am using the mouse to the right of my keyboard. The mouse is configured with a couple of controls that are located for use by one's (right) thumb.

In the above photo, I have pulled the keyboard tray all of the way out (the truly awful keyboard is above the ergonomic keyboard, resting on the desk.) That is not how I normally position it, which is most of the way forward; thus, you would (now) see four keys with white tape over them. I don't have a great sense of touch in my fingers (it's a good thing I don't try to use Braille), so I use little self-sticking bumps or tape to help me "find" certain often-used keys. It reminds me of 1951 when Elder Brother and I put our pennies together to buy a portable typewriter (EB was a junior in high school and taking typing - I was in 8th grade and would not take typing until my own senior year in 1954-55.)

Dad intruded. He covered each key with a square of electrician's tape (he was, after all, a Journeyman electrician.) His theory was that, if we couldn't see the labels on the keys, we would learn to touch-type properly. He was right! By the time I did take typing (which I took only to learn proper forms for letters), I typed so proficiently that Mr Bills put me on one of only three electric typewriters that he had and, later, onto a 10-key adding machine to learn it. Actually, the electric typewriter slowed me down since my throw of the carriage on a manual machine was faster than the electric carriage return.

BTW: It seems strange, but this ergonomic discontinuous keyboard showed me that I was in the habit of striking the "6/^" key with my right index finger. This keyboard has the "6/^" key located to the left of the discontinuity - for striking with the left index finger. Which hand is standard? I no longer know; but, I note that the "7/&" key is nearly twice as wide as the standard letter keys, so I am suspicious that my using my right index finger is "standard".

Big accomplishments this week

Well...not big; but, it beat not getting anything done!

Hunky Husband, it turns out, has been looking for a chronometer to replace his favorite (photo, below). I offered to do the research for him, which offer he gladly accepted. Not by skill, but by luck, I found an online video that told how to solve the problem he was having with his current piece, followed the simple directions, and restored his piece to full function. Note in the photo how the long, red hand (the timing, second hand) is pointing between 1 and 2. The reset indexed that hand back to the 12 position. That was all that HH needed - saving him $600.

About a month ago, the army worms hit our town - hard! Nearly everyone's lawns were hit. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to photographing the damage until this morning. In the photo (below), one can see that the army worms missed eating some of the roots of our fescue grass, and they have sprouted up. The part of our back yard that gets shaded by the cottonwood tree, was spared - something about trees seems to repel the army worms. Tendercare is to come slit seed the barren spots in back, and all of the front lawn, on October 11.

While the army worms readily devoured the fescue grass, they eschewed the native Bermuda that has, over the years, invaded the sunny area of the back yard. While Bermuda grass is much more suited to our current climatic conditions on the sunny side of the back yard, I won't have it, having fought it my whole life (starting at age 4 or 5 when Mom had Elder Brother and me pull the native Bermuda grass out of her rose beds). While the fescue grass is sparse is the ideal time to pull the Bermuda grass - which task I've been attempting since the mornings have cooled down during the past several days. Most days, I've been able to put in 30-60 minutes of work on that tasking, limited by when the sun starts hitting that area and/or my weariness.

In the photo, below, the yellow oval shows some of the Bermuda that has yet to be attacked while the yellow diamond encloses the visible part of the area on which I spent 55 minutes this morning. (The orange tubing running across the upper, right corner of the photo is part of the watering hose that I had out to water the newish trees in back.)

I had but one instance of performing IT services, this past week. It turns out that HH has been carrying a separate subscription to a Norton (Symantic) anti-virus suite that is installed on his laptop. I'm not sure that HH even knows his login for his laptop, these days, but I can state with confidence that the anti-virus suite on his laptop is not worth the $89.99 that he is paying each year - especially considering that he can have the coverage, free, from the up-to-5-machine subscription that I have from Norton, for which I pay $97.19 per year.

Currently, since removing Norton from the laptop that I've prepared to give to Elder Brother (Norton is a space hog and EB only accesses one website - to update his data on the stock market), there are only two machines using my subscription, HH's and my desktop machines. As I recall, at the time HH bought his laptop several years ago, my subscription was fully used on five machines; thus, HH had purchased a separate subscription.

Follow-up on Tools

In Tools and the comments thereto, I wrote about having purchased a cordless leaf blower, and that the first use produced an over-heat condition in its 2 Amp-hour battery. Bogie suggested returning the blower to the store to have them check it out. There were three store employees eager to tackle the issue when I did so last week.

After running the blower (on "high speed") within the store for several minutes (gathering up dead bugs and tracked in dirt), one of the employees observed that the battery was, indeed, heating up - although he didn't run it long enough to get the full effect. Another of the young men went back to where they kept their own tools to fetch a 2 Ah battery that he knew to be in good shape and charged. The same heating happened with it. Their observation was that I had put a light-duty battery to a task up to which it was no match. Since the blower is the mid-duty of the three offered in that brand, this puzzles me. Why would the company do that - sell an appliance with a poorly-matched battery? The employees told me that the 2 Ah battery was usually used with hand drills, etc.

I am now using the blower with a 4 Ah battery, for which they charged me a reduced price, with quite satisfactory results. You can bet that after I've used the blower with the heavier-duty battery for a while, I shall follow up on the whole thing with the maker; but, I wish to have more data, first.

The old, corded electric leaf blower was placed out at the street end of our driveway, along with assorted other goodies (Benz-O-Matic kit, partial sheets of light-weight plywood and fiberboard, metal legs from the workbench that I had torn down when it failed to be picked up several weeks ago, old manual sprinklers, buckets) and the 100-foot extension cord, wound on the device by which I had hung it on the pegboard. By the time Hunky Husband retrieved the mail that afternoon, everything had disappeared except the workbench legs and plywood. Three minutes later, trying to decide whether it was time to bring the items inside for the night, I noted that everything had disappeared except for one of the "FREE" signs that I had posted. We are never attentive enough to see anyone in the act of retrieving our "treasures" - mostly, because we have no interest in knowing where they go. (We are just happy that they do go!)