Re-using junk!

[steev]

Thanks; that does look promising, if it comes to that; the time element is a factor (I seem not to be getting younger), as is the space for growing, but one must do as best one can, n'estce pas?

[steev]

Yeah, one has to wander about to see what makes sense, price- and time-wise. I wish I was forty years younger, but one can wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first. Nevertheless, one must make the effort to improve things, just because it's the right thing to do, else why did one live at all?

[oldmobie]

Made a cart out of an old gas grill and the wire baskets from a couple old chest freezers.



I floored it with the main cooking grill that was inside.



I had to buy the angle iron, one wheel, and assorted nuts and bolts. The rest is old junk that needed to go. It's a "shopping cart" to help my mother-in-law get groceries across her long deck and into the house. (If she'll use it.) Otherwise it's my new produce / tool cart for the garden.

[philagardener]

Now, just needs a repurposed motor . . .

[steev]

Good work!

[steev]

Scored three more marked-down stone-pines, which were from a different company, so now I've two to approach in hopes they've got trees they'd rather not have hanging around their growing yards until next December.

Also collected some acorns to plant; I'd set out a potted oak three weeks ago, but a gopher destroyed it; not the first time that's happened; if it weren't for the strontium, I'd stuff lit road-flares down their burrows (works great); if I ever get affluent, I'll get one of those propane apparatuses to fry the little wretches in their burrows.

[steev]

Wondering why I'd not heard from the fire-extinguisher guy in many moons, I fell by to learn that he'd left long ago. I re-established contacts, so it's Friday morning pick-up of free ferts again; yay! I'm broadcasting it on the south ten to rev up the pasture; grossly overgrazed last year; the horse folks kept their stock on lean-enough rations that they ate the mulch around my stone pines, not just the oat straw and timothy hay, but the macerated paper (all excellent rabbit bedding, but damn!); I now only mulch the trees with oak leaves/redwood/pine needles. I don't begrudge the horses or their owners the fodder, but there's a reason why I mulch the trees: water retention!

I guess I have to explain this so it's understood that they're welcome to raid the bunny-bean-bag pile (it's huge), but it's up to them to spread it for their critters: I've got more than enough work of my own.

Scored a little stone slab from a client's re-model-to-sell, my neighbor; hate to see it; there go the only kids on the block; weren't any for ~25 years; I'll not still be in Oakland, but even if I were, 25 years would be too long to wait to hear kid's voices in the neighborhood, again.

The East Bay is in a ferment of demolition of long-empty buildings, new construction, infrastructure renewal, yuppification, and gentrification, all driven by the tech-centric Manhattanization of once blue-collar/unionist San Francisco. Well, the Port of San Francisco is now the Port of Oakland, and it can't even accommodate the newest cargo ships from China, if they're more than 3/4 laden.

I suppose this may be a rant, but I'm having a hard time understanding why (in the USA, at least) we are acting like we can just move to the next cool thing and not maintain the old stuff that supports it; I mean, do we believe that if we build fast enough, we can get to the stars, even though the stairs are falling apart behind us?

[steev]

Scored a clean translucent white 55gal barrel (had only contained ethanol); I'll cut it in half to make two portable, wind-stable cold-frames.

[steev]

At the dump last week, a guy was tossing seven old bowling balls, so now I have eight on the farm; not sure whether I'll use them as ornaments or build a catapult.

[12540dumont]

I vote for lawn bowling...with a catapult back up.

[steev]

Don't want to harp on the heat, but one of the balls, being out in the sun, split! I know about "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey" but hot enough to split a bowling ball? That's a tad extreme.

Ain't no lawn on the farm, nor ever gonna be; been mowing lawns nearly 38 years; not likely to take lawn-mowing with me when I liberate myself from working in town. There are no turf-grasses native to Cali, only bunch-grasses; any non-native plant on the farm will be edible, make pretty flowers, or cast shade. I might consider a lawn if I were more attracted to a ewe, but I just don't swing that way.

[steev]

Craigslist comes through again! A contractor renovating a house for sale is giving me half a pallet of glass blocks (which we hauled home today) and 3 loads of clean used brick. I love construction materials that don't deteriorate.

[steev]

Looking more like 4 loads of brick; humped, hauled, and stacked two loads today; I sweated like a cold pitcher all day; never before noticed that my cap can get wet through the whole bill (I'm getting too old for this shit!); my landlady is perturbed about my staging area, but I can only haul so much to the farm each week; she's in a swivet to use that area, which she's not had any use for in the past 17 years: go
figure. I'd prefer to stack these in the driveway, for ease of unloading/re-loading, but that's long been utterly unacceptable. Feh! Life was easier when I had my own home in town.

Still, those used bricks would cost as much as new (or faux-used); I'm thinking NLT a buck a pop; I doubt I'm scoring less than $1K of materials, maybe $2K, were I to buy them, which I wouldn't, preferring to wait and pounce. Freeconomics Rule!

[steev]

Went for bricks this morning; too many trucks in the way to hump them out; went back in the hot afternoon and got it done; called the contractor to report finishing; having seen some guys planting shrubs, I mentioned that I'm in landscaping; may have just landed another real-estate contact, converting "free" into "paying". Freeconomics Rule, but they aren't everything.

Oh, wait; do I want more work? Even when the Benjamins come thick and fast, it costs me rest and leisure; I don't think my desire is to die rich (in dollars); don't think I ever had any such ambition, which is why I faded on higher education; the intellectual professional pursuit just didn't grab me, my focus being much more short-term, more hands-on. All things considered, I want each day to end well-spent, since no matter how responsibly I work toward it, tomorrow is not guaranteed me. If I wake up on the green side of the grass, well and good; time to go to work; time to behave as if I will not die, today.

[12540dumont]

Steev, you better not die. I have a whole load of used bricks for you as well.