Dan's Ramblings

Dan here ~

Been nice and at least partly sunny the last couple days. I like it much better than all the rain we had in the recent past. The heavy rains reminded me of a project that has been on the back burner for quite a while. 

When it rains, the water from the roof gutter on one side of the house leaves a track from the rip-rap down to the pond. I have not liked this since it began about three years after the project of the retaining wall etc. was done. 

I proceeded to remove the rocks and try and find the end as left by the landscaper. I finally found it way back at the edge of the dirt before the rip-rap even started.

I could easily see what had happened. Over time the water had made a channel because it was located along the bottom of the stone on top of the filter fabric. The water now just washed along the bottom and on into the pond. I extended the pipe with perforated pipe to a tee and made up this circle. I added many additional holes to the pipe. 

As you can see the pipe and the circle are suspended in the rock, I laid the piping as level as I could so hopefully water will disperse somewhat equally. 

I rocked it all back in and replaced my soon to be planted planter on top. 

 

With a little luck I will have to wait for rain, but I kinda doubt it. Saturday and Sunday I think. Time will tell if it works as planned.

The, what I believe, tree frogs have been making all kinds of noise, around the clock. I happened to notice a hawk circling around then land in a tree on the other end of the beach. I also noticed as I stopped focusing on the hawk, the frog noise had stopped. It took ten to fifteen minutes and they started back up. I told Carol about it and a few minutes later she asks “what kind of bird is that?” I did not see the bird but as she was describing it we again notice the frogs have again gone silent. I Googled and saw that hawks will eat about anything and frogs were included in that list. I guess that qualifies as my seeing something because I had my eyes open.

In the studio I have been plugging along with #16 for 2025. It is coming along slowly as a great many of the pieces need to be created from scratch. I figured that there would be two columns of 4” finished blocks. Actually 3” blocks framed so they can identify as 4”. The 1” V-blocks for many of these were already in my bin and made more than the 36 blocks I needed. Here are some examples of the 4” blocks. 

Well one of my voices said just keep making them, they are getting rid of lots of scraps. So I made more and came up with this method of growing them from 4” to 6” so I could frame them to identify as 8” finished blocks. 

I also decided that the same type of block as the 3” ones were being made of would be copied with 2” finished units to make 6” finished blocks then you guessed it, I framed them to be 8” blocks. Here are a few of them. 

My original plan was for four columns of 9” blocks, two columns of 8” blocks and two columns of 4” blocks. That may change a little, I don’t know yet. That decision will be made after my first few 9” blocks are made. I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

Hopefully the weekend is not a total washout but if it is I’ll find out if all my work today was worth it. Over a yard of stone was moved, loaded one stone at a time onto the tractor and removed the same way. I didn’t count them but there was a crap load of them. 

I digress, stay safe and enjoy your weekend.

After I wrote this I went out and had a fire to burn some wood. Here is the sunset

and my ever favorite ~ the after sunset time lapse shot.