Our Olde House: October 2024
Who do you know who smiles every time they pass their cats’ litter box, other than me of course. I still love the automatic litter box; the litter is always clean and all I do is add litter and replace the bag twice a week. A side benefit is that less litter is leaving the box from their scratching and digging; probably not enough to offset the cost of the box, but much less litter is being scattered. The cats seem to have figured out how the litter box works; I have seen them hop out of it, sit and watch it while it runs the cleaning cycle, and then hop back in to do their other number. Purrfect.
It finally cooled off enough that I felt safe to order the remaining sod for the backyard. I was about one pallet short last May, so I ordered two more pallets to be sure I had enough. The landscapers were able to fill in all of the remaining areas in the backyard, and I added another sprinkler so I could water the new sod on a timer; I am hoping that next Spring whenever the grass turns green again that I will no longer have to water it so I can remove the hoses and sprinklers.
I had some sod left over that I installed after the landscapers left. I used my big mower and a trailer to move some sod to another location, but I overloaded the trailer and both tires went flat and came off the rims. I did not notice this oops until I arrived and unloaded the sod, so I got one trip in before I decided not to use the trailer anymore. I moved the rest of the sod by hand, and I had enough to fix three small areas in the front yard that needed sod. These areas I water by hand, no big deal.
I found a few small patches of poison ivy in the backyard, some survivors of last year’s spraying over the entire perimeter of the backyard. My spray killed them like before, the leaves shrivel and fall off, the stem withers and basically disappears. Nice, but I do wear latex gloves to avoid touching that stuff. I still need to do another perimeter spray to slow down the wild parts of the backyard that are not accessible to the mowers. We have kudzu and other vines trying to take over, but the spray definitely has a discouraging effect.
I made one more adjustment to my rain gutter systems, the goal of these modifications was to capture all of the rain in the gutters. In the front yard I have double gutters to catch the rain and route it around the house, and in the backyard regular gutters now work too. I have foam triangles weighted with a steel rod on the roof to slow down the rain, allowing it to go into the gutters instead of shooting over them when it rained hard. The last two hard rain storms, including the remnants of a hurricane, had all of the rain, front and back, going into the gutters and out the downspouts. After too-many-to-count Mister SmartyPants awards trying to get the gutters right, this was a very satisfying and appreciated success.
Miss Sherry bought a really nice rain chain in Vicksburg awhile ago, but we did not have a place to hang it until now. The rain chain is used where a downspout is impractical; it attaches to the end of a gutter and allows the water to follow the chain down instead of making a waterfall and hole in the ground. After I rerouted the gutter on the port-a-cache earlier this year, the gutter now ends in a spot where I am unable to attach a downspout, but it is an almost perfect place to attach the rain chain. It is almost perfect because it will require a ladder and another visit near the red wasp nest; neither of these requirements are a surprise.
I had a bit of a time finding a good spot to place the ladder. I could always just climb up onto the roof to install the rain chain, but that would mean attracting the attention of any red wasps still nesting up there, so not my first choice. I tried putting the ladder between the side fence and carport, but the ground was too soft and the ladder was too vertical for me to feel safe standing on it. The option I settled on was to put the ladder in the neighbor’s yard going over a short fence and leaning on the carport. This allowed for a very stable footing and the proper slope of the ladder. Up the ladder I went with my drill and rain chain; no red wasps visible on the roof as I peeked over the edge. Get while the getting is good, so I climbed up a few more steps, drilled two holes in the gutter, attached the rain chain and headed back down the ladder. The actual job took two minutes to complete, but I spent nearly an hour preparing and putting stuff away; no worries, the rain chain looks nice and no humans were harmed in the hanging of the chain.
