Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1589
Weekend chores! Pollinator bed, greenhouse, fruit trees, attic studio work
Good morning good morning hi hello how are you what is up this fine Tuesday morning. Went to bed early, woke up before my alarm, feel wide awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed woo boy. Jane, somehow, didn’t fall asleep till well after ten and she was wide awake this morning too. Came downstairs early. We got to school early, second in the car line. Played a lot of tiles. Almost collaboratively. She is getting there, she is getting there.
Before I begin, I would like to send my condolences to my uncle Skip, and my cousins Casie and Josie for the loss of their wife and mother, Anne. I haven’t seen Anne since 1992, but she’s been a part of my life forever, and my heart goes out to them. RIP aunt Anne.
Just back from the grocery store, ran out of every single lunch item this morning. Also needed low-dose aspirin for my heart. Seems everyone else does too, they were completely sold out. World’s not just all on Ozempic, everyone’s on low-dose aspirin.
Shall I continue on my recounting of my weekend, by telling you about the chores, glorious chores? Oh so many good chores.
I completely redid the pollinator bed. Well, okay, I did not completely redo it, I killed it. Which is sad, I admit. But it is temporary. I am still recovering from that bum batch of “North Carolina Pollinator Seeds” from American Meadows that included some batshit tree of a plant that grew to ten feet tall with a three inch stalk and just did not vibe with other pollinator plants, maaaan. I tried to get rid of it last year by carefully pulling each and every one before they could go to seed and, you know, I probably did a 75, 80% thorough job. It worked shockingly well, actually. But there were still a lot.
So, this year I have decided to resort to landscape fabric, which I generally hate. But we’re gonna go with it. At least I bought the stuff made from recycled materials. I hacked away all the flowers with my weed eater, raked all the material and threw it in the compost (there was a lot), and laid down the landscape fabric, leaving holes for the two apple trees growing in the patch.
The plan is to then build a couple cool-shaped custom beds for the pollinators, rather than have them fill the entire area. Give it a bit of shape, you know, and leave room for the apple trees to grow. Then I will lay down mulch in the rest for now (I know, I am sorry Emily, you hate mulch but it is a way of life down here).
The problem with this brilliant plan is that I gotta make custom-shaped raised beds. And that is going to be a pain and time consuming and I don’t know exactly what I want to do. Well, I do, I want to make them out of stone, maybe a foot tall. But that is a lot of stone and stone ain’t cheap, and laying stone, well, that’s gonna be a thing. I could, maybe, half-ass it out of Birdie’s Beds or some equivalent, but that won’t be any cheaper and they are not really designed for that.
And I can’t order the mulch for a few weeks cuz I gotta go to Portland this weekend.
Well, Gresham.
Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!
We are listening this morning to Geckøs, a new collaboration between M. Ward, Howe Gelb of Giant Sand and a gentleman named McKowski? Don’t know who he is. Ahh yes, Mark McCausland is an Irish songwriter/producer/musician, best known for his work as one half of The Lost Brothers, Discogs tells me. Well okay! Anyway, this is a second listen, I kinda love this album, it is cheesy-ass southwestern-desert infused with Mexican folk and Spanglish and it is a good time.
So then I transplanted all of my citrus trees into larger pots, and moved them into the greenhouse for the winter. It is a bit early but like I said I gotta go to Portland this weekend well Gresham and it got into the low 40’s this weekend and you never know, a freak storm could come while I am out of town, so I am playing it safe and doing it early even though I probably don’t really need to for three, four more weeks. But I bought five big pots and transplanted each tree — two orange, a lemon, a lime, a banana, and, um, actually I don’t know what the other one is? huh. And then moved them into the greenhouse, irrigated them, mulched them, fertilized them. I cleaned up the greenhouse, closed all the summer vents, set up the thermostatic space heaters in case it gets really cold while I am gone just to be safe.
I also planted some spinach and shallots and lettuce. Have not had good luck with spinach or shallots in the greenhouse and I am not sure why. Carrots and lettuce work great. Might be a seasonal thing, which is why I am trying it at this weird time.
The whole thing is ready for the winter now. And it looks very nice. My god I still love that greenhouse so much. It really was a great purchase/project.
And then, of course, wouldn’t be a weekend if I didn’t work on the studio, and I am happy to report that after, like, a month of planning, everything worked absolutely great with my cockamamie scheme to scribe OSB subfloor to line up perfectly with the spray foam on the ceiling to make it so there are zero gaps along the edge of the attic. It is so fun. I put a strip of subfloor down, butt it up against the ceiling, and use a sharpie and a complicated contraption involving a clamp and a protractor angle finder thingy to make a scribe, and then I trace the outline of the ceiling onto the board, go over to my cut station and cut out the weird-ass outline and then go place the board. It works great! I am very happy with it. The corner was kind of hard — you have to do a corner in three pieces, but I worked through the weird geometry of it while falling asleep each night for, oh, ten nights, and eventually figured it out.
Here is a picture of it, which I realize looks wildly unimpressive, and yes we are back in a corner of the attic that will never be seen, is behind the HVAC unit, is outside of the studio envelope, but a) every spot matters when it comes to sound protection, and b) I need to get good at these techniques before I do the parts that matter.
Anyway I am so relieved it all worked out.
I also did some leaf blowing over at Chore House — fall is in full effect and there are so many leaves on the ground and, you know, the Neurodivergent-affirming Pediatric Speech Therapists have clients and I try to keep the place looking nice. I popped over there last night and so far it still looks decent! Leaves are falling but it’s nothing like it was. Also I found a Chick-fil-a straw paper litter on the ground which bummed me out.
Chick-fil-a. The one place no one seems capable of actually boycotting.
(Sorry for the leaf-blowing Emily but it’s electric it’s really pretty quiet and I am not raking that long-ass driveway and the leaves stain the concrete).
Did a pool/boat storage meeting last night, went great, we are getting so close to opening up Red’s Boat and RV Storage it is all very exciting.
We do the meetings at Chore House, and when my partner Levi arrived, he spied this giant owl sitting on the gate. And when Levi opened the gate to enter Chore House, the owl just sat there on the gate, didn’t move as the gate swung the owl around. CREEPY.
I’ve seen this owl a few times around the property through the years, but he is reclusive. This is definitely the best siting. Well done, Levi.
Jane was cranky last night, real rough night, not enough sleep. And so I don’t understand how she woke up so early and bright-eyed this morning, it is a real mystery. Last night we got one of those sticky things stuck on the ceiling and I had to get out my grabber reacher thing to pick it off the ceiling, Jane wanted to help, I let her try a bunch, she couldn’t get it off the ceiling. Eventually I had to do it, and she was so sad. Just so sad about how she wanted to help how she loves helping. And all my explanations about how the important thing is trying to help, and I appreciated her help anyway went nowhere. It was kind of heartbreaking! Total meltdown about not being able to help.
But also I was kind of proud of her for it.
But then she was a total pill for the rest of the night too so never mind.
Got a smooooth playlist for you today, so smoooth. This US Girls/Bootsy song came on this morning and I had forgotten about it and it is so great and it inspired me to finish this one. Enjoy.
Well I hope you have a lovely Taco Tuesday. Have a taco today. Maybe two. See you tomorrow.
—
Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.