Ourdoor Christmas Light Put Up

We were at the Manti Temple this morning and made it back home around two this afternoon.  Changed clothes and went right to work on removing the rest of the outdoor lights.  As I removed them left them on the lawn where the sun was shining.  Our house faces the north and in the winter half of the front lawn is in the shade.

I watched a You Tube video showing how to put Christmas lights away.  They used a box, but I chose to use the small tote.  This tote is filled with strings of Christmas lights.  I fed on string in on the bottom of the tote in a circular motions.  I then put a half sheet of newspaper on top of it.  I put in another string the same way.  I continued  with more strings until I had over a dozen light in the tote.

I left two extension cords on the lawn last night.  I gathered them up and hung them with the rest of the cords in house three.

 I got all of the lights in five or six totes.  I put new labels on each tote to help me next December.

I put three totes on the bottom shelf and stacked the other totes on top of each other against the west wall.  They will be good there for awhile.

Yesterday Robert and began work on the raised beds.  I dismantled the rest of the bench.  Most of the parts are the 2x4's at the back left.


Comments and questions are welcome.

New Years Day

The following two paragraph were put on my Face Book.  I wanted to express feelings rather than being specific.  

Today, I reached the big eight O, Those in the seventies are now young. Those In the nineties are the old ones. May you and your family be blessed this year.

My resolution: To be a better husband, father, grandfather and, great grandfather, and follow the example and teachings of Jesus Christ. Be a friend to all regardless of their social position, and be more forgiving.

Robert and Jeanne stopped to wish me happy birthday.  They brought a present which was a short stem ladder.  I have a tall one and with this won't have to stand on a chair on a chair to change lights.  We began re-arranging the in greenhouse two.  We worked for awhile and then went to lunch.

 We had one bench on cement blocks.  Actually it was a large box made out of 2x6's with a plywood bottom and a sheet of plywood, which had nearly rotted on top.  All of the cactus plants were on top of it. There is one barrel cactus that we saved with all of its little pups.  We kept starts of all of them two propagate new ones if needed.  We saved the bottom and moved the frame to the north-east corner of the greenhouse.  This will filled with soil grow something that likes winter coolness.

We made a new raised box which is on the left.  We another bench apart to make room for another raised bed.  We quite before we finished with it.

I gathered all of the large extension card that supplied power to the out door lights. There were nine of them.  I tied them with some twine and hung all but one in greenhouse three.

Robert and Jeanne left and I started the dreaded job of putting away the outdoor lights.  I put the strings of lights in a large tote.  I put to strings on the bottom and put a piece of newspaper onto top of them.  I then put a couple more string down and then the newspaper again.  This I continued.  I changed the procedure a little by rolling the strings in a sort of ball.  I was able to get six strings and then the newspaper again.  The newspaper help keep the stings from getting tangled.

It was getting later and the temperature was dropping.  I turned the water on for the Devil's Ice Tower.  I heard Tiger our cat, Climbing on top of house six.  I went out and got several pictures.  This one is the best of all of them.

Comments and questions are welcome.

Christmas Lights & One Fast Project

We started out the day with a quick trip to Fillmore for a few groceries.  Also, I made a deposit and a payment.  We prepared our Christmas cards.  I updated our label list. Carol mailed them.

We have Christmas presents to wrap.  I built a small rack to hold a roll of wrapping paper.  I used long roll I thought, for the measurements.  It turned out that there were several rolls longer.  The one i built fits our kitchen table.  It can be fastened to the table on the far end and the whole table is available for pulling the paper.  

I use two small clamps.  One on each end.  I made long square piece of wood to hold the roll of paper.  It is easily moved for and other roll of paper.

The ice display continues to grow.  The following pictures are of the same things but from different angles.

 This show the branch from the nearby sycamore tree that is bent over with the weight of the ice.

The pictures I took were so shaky that I got the tripod for the next pictures.  They are still a little shaky.  The first picture was taken from the road.  The flash shows the dried up plants in the native garden.

 The picture below clearly shows the red light on the Christmas wreaths.

Comments and questions are welcome

Prunning, DI, & Christmas Lights.

I am looking for the  Christmas lights.  They were in totes and boxes in several places around the garage.  First I found boxes of magazines and books.   I saved some books that I wanted to keep and re-boxed the rest of them and they are in the trunk of the car. I put some of them in the trunk yesterday afternoon.  Carol and I then drove to Fillmore and left them at the DI.    
This is not much of a picture.  But it is a box of bowels, ceramic mugs, and other things that I didn't dig deep enough to see what they were.  I was going to put a label on this box listing some of the contents inside so I would not have to open the box again.

I have a box of unshelled beans.  It took me about a half hour to end up with a couple of pounds of dry beans.

There is a box of in-threshed seeds of the Salvia Pachyphylla.  Threshing would empty a box and the seeds could be put in a small coin envelop. I could go into detail of the threshing procedure, but ill keep it simple.  I rubbed the in-threshed seed between my leather gloves.  I brought the fan from my bedroom and winnowed.  the chaff blew out and the seeds fell back into the bucket.  I used a sieve to let the seeds  fall through and I discarded the chaff.  I used a fine sieve and the small chaff fell out.  With a straw in my mouth I could blow out the lighter chaff particles.

The wind a couple of days ago had messed up the two wreaths.  I added a few more stems and wired them in.  I have a large needle use for closing burlap bags.  I attached the wire to the needle and pushing it up down through the wreath as was able to make the stems more secure.  I added two stems each with red berries to give a little more color.

It took me a couple of hours to prune the yew bushes.  It looks a lot better.  The picture is of one on the left and the other one on the right.

The nights are a little colder.  I am building an ice display. The photos below show it.

We drove to the Fillmore DI and left there boxes of books and magazines, and a few other things.

I spent the rest of the afternoon putting up the Christmas lights.  I did the Maple tree,  part of the Linden tree, and covered the two yew bushes.  I am about half was finished.  The maple tree is quite tall.  I used an oak stick from last year and made it longer by inserting into a PVC pile.  I had to carve the oak so it would fit into the PVC pipe.  The top of the oak is forked some.

 Below is the connection between the oak and the PVC pipe.  It is cold and my hands were a little shaky.  Hence, fuzzy photos.

Comments and questions are welcome.

Starting the Outdoor Christmas Lights

There is a Costco store in Delta.  It opened it doors Wednesday.  We received an advertisement in the mail Wednesday morning.  There are a lot of items mentioned in the ad that we might need.  We drove over this morning.  It is quite a large store with clothing, food, electronics, Christmas decorations, and others.   We wanted to buy a Christmas tree, but they didn't have what we wanted. We bought some LED Christmas lights. 

As soon as we got home I started with the decorations.  It took some time to find the right boxes in the garage.  It was much easier to get the boxes out because of the extra room in the garage.  Last year I took the boxes into the house which left some of the rooms in a clutter.  I put the lights on the front porch.  There are two rope lights.  One white and the other red.  It took a while to get it done and it looks pretty nice. 

I wrapped four trees with LED lights.  I draped the icicle lights around the lilac bush and the forsythia bush.  It is dark now and the lights are on and they look pretty good.

Mowed the Lawn for the Last Time, I Think

Today is eighth day of December.  It is probably redundant to put the date at the beginning of this posting.  We were at the Manti Temple today is which we are every Tuesday Morning.  We leave home around 4:15 this morning, instead of eating at the cafeteria and getting an ice cream cone on the way home, we came straight home arriving around 1:30 this after noon. 

I had a little snack and then mowed the lawn for the last time.  There was no grass to mow, but a lot of leaves.  The mower needed air in one of the front tires.  I usually don't leave the compressor plugged in all the time.  The front left tire was a little soft.  The compressor was turned on and in a few minutes the pressure was high enough to shut off.  After pumping up the tire, I mowed up all the leaves. I had to dump twice.

Being quite a warm day for December I began to put out more outdoor lights.  Yesterday I bought two stings of colored lights and two multicolored net lights.  It was a big job to get the lights out of the box and pull them apart to look more like a net.  I plugged the in two nets and the lights all worked.  I stretched them apart to make them as large as I could.  There are two yew shrubs.  One on each side of the porch where I put them.

I am making a line of icicle light along the north side of the front lawns.  I put the pipes in a couple of days ago.  The ground was frozen and it was hard to drive the three foot conduit pipe into the frozen ground.  It has been so warm the last couple of days the ground has thawed out.  The conduit which was once tight are now loose.  There it took ten pieces of pipe about four feet apart to cross grass west of the side walk.

Above is photo how the conduit holds the icicle light above the ground.


I took them all out, stretched a wire from one side to the next to make them all straight.  I then pounded them in the ground again.

To keep the wire lined up on top of the pipes I cut short pieces of wood and made a notch in them somewhat like a notch on the end of an arrow.  Last year I cut some forked tree branches and made a crotch.  I stuck the handle in the pipe.  The notch made this year works a lot better.

I hooked the icicle lights on.  It looks pretty good.  It is starting to get dark.  I will do more tomorrow.