New House Blog: Episode LX - At Your Disposal

One thing I have learned this week is that Russell Crowe cannot be thwarted, at least in the movies.  This I learned from the recent movie, Man of Steel.  Something else I learned is that thornless honey locust trees can apparently propagate from left-over roots in the ground.  More on this later.  And it's not just in Man of Steel that Russell Crowe is thwartless.  Think of Gladiator and Master and Commander.  In each of these movies he...he um...you see...um...and then...getting back to the subject at hand, since this is the New House Blog, and not the Russell Crowe Movie Blog, and before we get too carried away...

We would like to warmly welcome back the Parents' House for its second appearance on the New House Blog.  The Parents' House had a seized-up garbage disposal, and I took charge in the replacement thereof.  And like Russell Crowe, I was not thwarted.

Garbage Disposal Replacement

Regular readers of the New House Blog will recall that this is not the first disposal that has been replaced in the New House Blog.  In this Episode we replaced our old, gnarly, gritty, grimy, grody, grungy, disposal with a new Insinkerator Badger.  At the Parents' House I was dealing with an old Badger 1, and replacing it with a new Badger 100.  Both units look identical on the outside, and all of the holes lined up in exactly the same places, so no new piping or routing was needed.  What was needed, however, was a new power cord (not included), wire holder (not included), and wire nuts (not included) - in other words, a new wiring kit from Insinkerator.  This repair went quite smoothly, and when I left the Parents' house all was leak-free.  I haven't gotten any calls, emails, or texts to say otherwise, yet, so I assume that it's all still working as it should.

 This is the offending old Badger 1, before replacement.

 This is an overview of the setup.  Look how clean it is below the kitchen sink.

Badger down!

 Now we see what the setup looks like with all of the old parts removed.

The new flange assembly is in place.  If you look closely you might be able to see a bit of plumbers putty.

 The new unit is wired up.

 The new Badger 100 is in place.  As I said earlier, it looks a lot like the old Badger 1.

It's still clean and dry under the sink.  And look at how nicely the connecting holes line up with the existing plumbing.







Thornless Honey Locust Update

When the Tree Elite crew removed our old thornless honey locust, hereafter referred to as THL to save typing, they only removed the roots in the immediate vicinity of the stump - they left a large crop of roots buried in the parking strip.  This we discovered quite by accident.  We noticed what looked like THL seedlings sprouting out of the ground in our parking strip.  When we dug up one of these seelings we found it to be growing directly out of a buried root.  The following picture illustrates this.

These are seedlings that were growing directly from a buried root.  We decided that we should dig up the root pieces that had live seedlings sprouting from them.

 You can (barely) see one such root fragment.  This one put up quite a fight, but like Russell Crowe we prevailed in the end.

This shows some root fragments we dug up.  There is more rootage in the parking strip, but we will probably leave things lie for now, unless more THL seedlings sprout up.



Cactus Update

One of our prickly pear cactus is in bloom.

 So far it has two blossoms.

 This is a closeup of a blossom.

You are looking at a bee inside of the blossom.  Maybe our prickly pear will produce some fruit.

Our sunburst cactus is also flowering.  Here we see a bud, and we hope to see the blossom in the next few days.







Are you not entertained?  Is that not why you are
   bIsh