New House Blog: Episode CI - Aftermath

As part of our 100th Episode celebration we bring you a second Episode within 24 hours of publishing the previous Episode.  If I recall correctly, this is the first such occurrence in the history of the New House Blog.

Aftermath 1 - Firewood

In the previous Episode (our 100th, you know) I cut down two trees and mentioned something about firewood.  I am now going to go into a little more detail regarding said firewood.  Both Tree #1 and Tree #2 were made of wood (held together by sap), and it seemed like it would be wasteful to let all of that beautiful organically-grown wood go to the city's composting machines, so I decided to claim a bunch of it for use in our wood-burning fireplace. 

About 98% of the wood you see here is from the two trees.  What you don't see is that I had to leave most of the trunk of Tree #2 at the Parents' House because it was just too thick for me to process with my available tools.

When I took this photo some of the wood still needed splitting and trimming to fit in our fireplace (notice the three logs standing upright in the background).  My hope is that the sun will dry out the wood a bit, and maybe some of the sap will drain out.

Aftermath 2 - Rust

I've mentioned our eSpring water purifier once or twice in the New House Blog.  Recently the time came for its filter to be replaced, and I took some photos of the process.

There is our eSpring, hiding under the sink, out of the way.  It quietly does its job of purifying our water day after day, month after month, year after year.

Why do we feel the need to purify our tap water?  Well, one reason is rust.  Here you can see the aftermath of several months of running water through the filter cartridge. 

Can you tell which filter cartridge is the new one?  Here's a hint: it's not the rusty one. :)

Here you can see actual purified water after it has flowed through the eSpring.  In addition to rust, our eSpring filters out chemicals (including MTBE), and all kinds of nasty little microbes.















Aftermath 3 - Lawn

For the past few years, due mainly to watering restrictions in our area, we have not maintained our front lawn.  Occasionally I would mow it when it naturally grew in the spring, and I might remove the largest weeds sometimes, but that was about it.  This past spring the watering restrictions were lifted, as far as we know, and we decided to try to have an actual, mostly-grass, non-weedy lawn.

The first step was to completely strip the existing growth and basically take the front lawn down to dirt.  This was done manually, with manual tools, by yours truly.  The next time we do this, maybe we'll rent or borrow a rototiller.

After stripping we spread fresh seed, topped it with fresh lawn soil (also called topsoil), and spread some fresh grass food/lawn starter.

To our great delight the new grass seed sprouted and grew.  After a couple of weeks we put out some more grass food.  A few weeks later I put some fresh seed, topsoil, and food on the patches that hadn't sprouted.

Several months later this is the aftermath.  I have mowed the new lawn a few times, and it's mostly staying green.  There is a brown patch under part of the redwood tree, but it was initially as green as the rest of the lawn.  That area does get sun, so I don't think that's the issue, and it gets water, too.  My theory is that maybe the falling needles are somehow negatively affecting the grass, but I don't know for sure.  Any thoughts, anyone?

Aftermoth

We finish up this Episode with a visit from Mothra.

Becky discovered this big beauty on our balcony one afternoon.  It  was still there several hours later, and into the night.  In the morning it was gone.

We believe it is a variety of sphinx moth, possibly a tobacco hornworm.  We don't grow tobacco in our yard (yet), so we don't know why this one is in the area.















As a moth is drawn to a
    bIsh