To Do list II - revisited, yet again

Last updated
30 Dec 2007 - reprioritized and updated based on new developments and laudable self-directive to finish what you start before starting a new project.
10 Dec 2007 - Called Gene at 1-Stop with MRS number, obtained last week from T. Cross
03 Dec 2007 - Tom Cross of Edison was by last Fri to re-spot new meter location. Called Gene at 1-Stop to update him on progress.
19 Nov 2007 - called for a new bid on electrical panel replacement. Will get bid on 20th.
17 Nov 2007 - demoed low brick planter in back yard.
15 Nov 2007 - newest meter location spotted successfully with Tom Cross of Edison
2 Sep 2007 - completed trellis for front.
14 Aug 2007 - got $30.75 for the scrap metal.
13 Aug 2007 - loaded some of brother's scrap metal and mine for recycling tomorrow
10 Aug 2007 - info on recycling
7 Aug 2007 - more garage cleaning, added some yard items
Updated 6 Aug 2007 - garage cleaning


I've been absorbed in work (upcoming launch, new responsibilities), travel (work, vacation), and family (school, scouts, gf, relatives) and trying to catch up on sleep on weekends since my last major home improvement effort back in May. Those are my excuses. Now it's time to get back to the To Do list with an update and re-emphasis on actually getting things done.

My loyal reader will recall that I've had To Do lists before and even before that. I'm trying not to beat myself up over slow progress and to keep in mind that Home Repair Man is but one aspect of my many and varied super personas and that there's parallel lists of things to do that don't involve hardware stores. Of course the usual rule of cascading home repair / bonus chores applies. If you're too lazy to follow the links for a long definition, bonus chores are the problems that you must fix (because for instance, you've just noticed the alarming fact that your porch is not being supported by its rotted posts) and cascades of home repairs occur when you really want to accomplish C, but need to do A and then B, prior to even thinking about C. Bonus chores and cascades of home repairs can be linked.

House Improvements

• Clean and organize garage for all the wonderful things I'll need it for. (started 6 Aug 07, continued 7 Aug, 30 Dec major garage overhaul for electrical install) Finish what you start.
• Install attic vent in garage gable end (cut stucco, frame, paper, wire, repair stucco). I've now painted the vent white. Need to cut a few framing members for inside the garage. Finish what you start.
• Get newest meter location respotted by Edison. REDONE 30 Nov 2007 when I got Tom Cross of Edison back out to the property
  
• Phone conversations and even a revisit earlier in Nov didn't resolve the issue of where exactly I could put a panel. Turns out the side yard is OK. His only caveat was that the panel might not have enough clearance to the side yard fence (36" required) unless it was mounted in the wall. Since I've wanted that style from the very beginning for aesthetic reasons, no problem. DONE ~8 Nov 2007. Previously: My brother suggested a side of the garage location for the new panel that I like a lot more than where I had placed the meter. Interior access would be facilitated since the interior walls of the garage aren't finished.
  
• Recontact electricians for estimates on service upgrades. Last year's best estimate was $1900 from Gene at One Stop Electric 310-676-4520 for replacement of panel at orig location, but that didn't include trenching the patio for a second ground rod attachment, $2400 over the phone estimate from Direct Electric Inc 310-978-8471 who advised me to get spotted first, at which point they would come by and give me a real estimate. Andrew at Reliable Electric 310-973-1922 / 310-415-8721 gave an estimate of $2400 for a new panel at the garage side of the house, with an additional $75 for a second ground rod.
  
• Service upgrades have to be proven or justified somehow in the approval process with a "green sheet". Remodeling a kitchen and a small garage workshop seemed to pass as appropriate justification to Edison. I verified in telephone conversation with T. Cross of Edison that I am on the list for uprated wire gauge to the pole, based on my previous interactions. DONE Gene from 1-Stop starts in the New Year.
  
• Specified electrical upgrades. DONE 19 Nov 2007
• Install new rear wall / door in garage. Finish what you start.
• Complete electrical install and weather stripping at new French door. All parts at hand. Really, it's embarrassing how long this has gone unfinished. Finish what you start.
• Cut porch concrete for ground rod placement. It's starting to look like I should just demo the porch concrete altogether now, before the electrical upgrade.Don't have to do this so urgently if panel goes in on side of garage.
  
• Pick colors and paint some areas on the house in preparation for a whole house paint job. Use Color Preview 2000 from Benjamin Moore to digitally color my house.
• Put in more soffit vents. Maybe add a fan in the gable end of my house? Would be good to do this not on the hottest day of the year.
  
• Reroute gas supply lines (to kitchen and garage) in preparation for taking my interior wall down.
  
• Install French door in place of rear-facing window in my room.
• Replace / repair computer room window.
• Repipe house in copper, adding hose bibs as needed for grounding of water lines at new electrical panel location. Will need to review appropriate pipe sizing - could be undersized at present. Start by repiping only the easy stuff, saving the part about cutting into the walls for when I demo the kitchen. Use dielectric unions to couple the new copper to the old galvanized. (PRIORITY DROP - City will accept double grounding rods instead of relying upon water pipes for a ground, so this whole action drops in priority.)
  
• Don't forget new hot and cold hose spigots
  
• Install tankless water heater in attic.

Garden / Yard Improvements

• Complete front window grape arbor. Side panels are done. Awaiting the muse to strike for the perfect corbel ends on the cross members. (75% done 1 Aug 2007) DONE 1 September 2007. Juli helped with the last bit.
• Recycle the old copper pipe, galvanized pipe, curtain rods, and lawn chairs that are in a heap in my and my brother's back yards. DONE 14 Aug 2007 at Action Sales & Metal Company, 310-549-5666, 1625 E. PCH, Wilmington. 2 mi. past Harbor Fwy on left side of PCH. Open till 4:30 PM weekdays, 3:00 Sat. I ended up getting $30.75 for my scrap metal. More than half of the dollar value (~$17) was in one large piece of copper pipe. Reimbursement for the scrap ferrous metals was at a rate of $40 per ton - about $9 or $10 in my case. The balance was in aluminum. Still some metal left at my brother's house. Finish what you start.
• Get the back yard border installed - new technique with bender board and bricks instead of concrete will speed job and allow changes. (15% done 8 Nov 2007) Finish what you start.
• Do some planning with respect to the native plants in my front yard. Now that I've lived with them a bit, I have a better feel for them. Updated 17 Nov 2007.
  
• Get morea (fortnight lillies) down to chez frere, but have a succession plan. Replacement ideas: White sage (Salvia apiana), San Clemente Island Bush Mallow (Malacothamnus clementinus), Coffeeberry (Rhamnus californica "Mound San Bruno"), sage (Salvia clevelandii X leucophylla "Pozo blue" or "Alan Chickering" or "munzii"), Buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum), Huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum "Thunderbird")
  
• The buckwheat in the front is large. Prune aggressively, leave, or replace with smaller? DONE - pruned. Seems to be fine.
  
• Move the front yard native scheme onto the parking strip (between sidewalk and street) in a way that continues to allow car access from the curb side? Probably use festuca rubra and pavers in the center, low bushes, taller grasses, or other ground cover at the property line edge of parking strip.
• Demolish back slab behind garage, correct grade
  
• Reinstall approx 8x10 work area
  
• Demolish back patio behind kitchen (demo'ed brick planter 17 Nov 2007)
  
• Install new patio with California native grape arbor.
• Plan for electricity and music in the back yard.
• Plan for hot water in the back yard. Outdoor shower? (see replumb, above)
• Build concrete bench for front arbor area.
• Recycle the concrete in my back yard. There's a local concrete recycling place on Aviation just S of El Segundo Blvd. Yard phone 310-536-9982 which takes clean (rebar & remesh cut at concrete, no bricks, etc) but it's not cheap - $82 for a small pickup load. Ouch. Dump might be cheaper.
  
• Replace driveway with pavers.
  
• Use a better design that allows for: separate entry path, driveway adjacent planting, trellis over garage.
  

Back from vacation, again

I seem to have a lot of time away this summer. I guess it's my way of making up for the last few years when I've felt that I've had no vacations.

I've just returned from Santa Barbara where I spent the better part of two weeks relaxing. My son attended Zoo Camp and took swimming lessons. I did a lot of hiking: Cold Spring trail - east and west forks, Tunnel Trail to Seven Falls, Romero Canyon trail twice. We had fun at the SB Old Spanish Days, and seeing a movie. Mom cooked her usual great food. I planted some oleander bushes on the property (not my choice, but consistent with pre-existing plantings). Juli visited at the end of the two weeks and we went wine tasting (Stolpman and Andrew Murray were highlights). On the way back we drove down Hwy 154 over Old San Marcos Pass and noticed the prominent plume of smoke from the Zaca Lake fire. Returning to SB, we had a rain of ash and smoky skies; the wind had shifted and breathed new life back into the fire. Hwy 154 is now closed and an evacuation order is in effect for that area. Link. The fire is expected to burn for another month.

We have one last family vacation planned this summer to Lair of the Golden Bear.

Blue butterflies and Califonia buckwheat

The Daily Breeze reported on Tuesday of another finding of El Segundo Blue butterflies in an unexpected area. For those who are following along, the bigger story dates back to 2004 when some Redondo Beach and Torrance beaches were rehabilitated with California native plants (including the essential dune buckwheat which is the only food of the ESB). I'd guess that just getting the money and political go ahead for that initial effort was a 10 year effort. However, fast forward to 2007 and we now discover that the El Segundo Blue has spontaneously re-established populations in the native habitat. Scientists had previously thought that the small ESB was not suited for long flights and would remain confined to the areas it currently inhabits, but it proved them wrong. The LA Times covered this story in early July.

One wonders what other species we could bring back by planting appropriately. The Palos Verdes Blue comes to mind - that species prefers yet another kind of buckwheat and was actually thought extinct until a small population was discovered only years ago in an industrial area of PV.

Citizens are of course complaining that the buckwheat looks dead, unlike the sterile and invasive iceplant that was removed. (Like many native plants buckwheat turns brown in the summer in order to survive the heat and dry climate. Think of California's summer as New England's winter and you'll appreciate how our plants are adapted to survive.) An educational sign or two would do wonders here, I think.

I have buckwheat growing in my front yard, but so far no extraordinary butterflies have visited. However, I have seen an increase in butterflies, solitary bees, and honey bees since going native. At least some varieties of buckwheat seem to be resistant to gophers as well. Some bushes that I planted on my parents' hillside last fall are surrounded by many active gopher holes, but haven't yet shown signs of their roots being nibbled. They look marvelous at this time of year, with abundant white flowers, bees buzzing, and lizards darting. The Cleveland sage planted nearby also seems immune to gophers, but the Mimulus (monkeyflower) looks poorly. I don't know if it's due to gophers or just ill health.


Excerpts from the Breeze article:

El Segundo blue butterfly lands again near LAX
Although it's less surprising than the recent find, scientists are pleased.

By Kristin S. Agostoni
Staff Writer

The endangered El Segundo blue butterfly has been spotted yet again this summer on the South Bay shoreline, this time fluttering amid dune buckwheat flowers at Dockweiler State Beach.

It was only a few weeks ago that scientists were bowled over by the discovery of the tiny insect on a roughly 4-acre swath of coastal bluffs in Redondo Beach and Torrance, where volunteers replaced invasive ice plant with native vegetation.

Now, experts say, the El Segundo blue has reappeared on a small strip of land sandwiched between a parking lot and an access road that runs behind Dockweiler Beach.

A fenced-in butterfly preserve sits on the opposite side of Vista del Mar near Los Angeles International Airport, leading scientists to believe the population migrated across the street to the new habitat, said Travis Longcore, a science director with the Urban Wildlands Group that helped lead the Beach Bluffs Restoration Project in Redondo Beach.

The resurgence of the federally endangered species in Redondo and Torrance is even more remarkable, scientists say, because the nearest population exists roughly 1,000 feet away at Malaga Cove.

"This is much less of a surprise because it's less than 200 feet (from the existing preserve) ... but it's more evidence that the restoration works and we're making progress," Longcore said of the Dockweiler discovery.



Excerpts from the LA Times article:
Rare butterfly makes comeback on L.A.-area beaches
The tiny El Segundo blue has returned to two locations where it has not been seen in decades. Scientists are surprised at the resurgence.
By Deborah Schoch, Times Staff Writer
July 9, 2007

Butterflies fight extinction

Butterflies fight extinction
Amid surfers and skaters, a tiny blue butterfly has scored a telling victory in its fight against extinction.

The rare El Segundo blue has returned to two popular beaches southwest of Los Angeles where it has not been seen in decades.

This is no mere academic sighting of a rare species.

Scientists say they are surprised at the resurgence. Dozens of the rare butterflies are thriving, not in some rarefied fenced-off reserve but in public view at county beaches in Redondo Beach and Torrance.

"You could open the car door, and they could hit you in the face," said conservation expert Travis Longcore this weekend, gesturing at creatures no bigger than a thumbnail flitting a few feet away from parked SUVs.

In a month that has marked the delisting of the American bald eagle as an endangered species, news of the tiny butterfly's reappearance is stirring hope that other species will rebound as unexpectedly and publicly as this one.

The El Segundo blue, one of the region's best-known endangered species, is found nowhere in the world but the southeastern shores of Santa Monica Bay.

Scientists staved off its extinction for years by nursing or monitoring it at three sites off-limits to the public at Los Angeles International Airport, the Chevron El Segundo refinery and on private land in Torrance. They estimate the current population remains low — only in the tens of thousands — with the largest group at LAX...

They used a simple scientific formula: Pull out the ice plant, put in the buckwheat.

Starting in 2004, they stripped thick green carpets of nonnative ice plant from small areas on beach bluffs in Redondo Beach and Torrance. Month after month, they restored the scrub plants that flourished here centuries ago: California sunflower, deer weed, lupines, prickly pear cactus, ambrosia and, of course, buckwheat.

In the old days the butterfly thrived in what was then the region's largest sand dune system, the El Segundo dunes that formed a half-mile-wide band from Westchester south to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The Los Angeles River created the dunes centuries ago, scientists say, when it entered the ocean at Playa del Rey.

Builders carved the dunes into pieces with construction of waterfront homes, the Chevron oil refinery in El Segundo, the Hyperion sewage plant and LAX....

Let's green the freeway

I've been idly pondering on local stream re-naturalization, but that requires an absurd amount of planning because there's no accepted process or guidelines for making those sorts of changes. Why not set aside the hard task for a moment and think about re-naturalizing an area for which there is an existing process, guideline, and procedure?

I've been wondering why the triangles of land that are bounded by the freeway, the on ramps, and the off ramps aren't more thoughtfully landscaped. Put some native plants in there and you have an instant green and native fauna oasis in the midst of our drought. (Planted this fall, it would be at most two years and you could probably discontinue all supplemental watering with the right selection of native plants.)

Of course Caltrans is in charge of those areas. But wouldn't it be an easy way to green up the environment? I know that the ones I frequently use are at best covered in ice plant and at worst are parched deserts with nothing growing.

Caltrans has wildflower and tree and shrub guidelines for their Adopt-a-Highway program that call out drought tolerant and native species. There are minimum requirements to receive an Adopt-A-Highway sign, but they are relaxed if you don't want a sign.

In other news, Long Beach City gets it: take out your lawn to save water.


...a three-pronged drought—the lowest rainfall since Southern California started measuring it in 1877, eight years of below-normal precipitation in Northern California and Colorado, and environmental regulations that reduce the Southland’s take of other imported water.

The solution is to replace front lawns—as well as the landscaping around government buildings and the center dividers of roads—with California native plants. They use much less water, replace habitat, reduce pollution, and remind everybody about what Southern California really looks like.

“We can’t tell people they can’t have a grass lawn—at least, we don’t want to be in that position,” says Lyons. “Instead, we want to encourage people to have what we call a Beautiful Long Beach Landscape....”

German vacation - Frankonia

I had seven nights in Germany following a business trip and used them to visit a few of the more touristy locations. I had a delightful time with two days each in Rothenberg (medieval walled city, Crime and Punishment museum, Night Watchman's tour, atmosphere galore), Nurmberg (I visited the Nazi Documentation Zentrum, which specializes in the conditions that led up to WWII. It had only a brief clip of a gas chamber but it was enough to upset me, so I'm glad I didn't go to one of the camps), Wurzberg (home of Germany's Residenz - sort of a Versailles equivalent, except that they allow winefests and the like it its gardens, which I was happy to participate in), and the final day in Frankfurt (where I attended a Penck retrospective. Penck seems to have used the stick figure to great effect over his 40+ year career.).

The food was nice, particularly the rotkraut (red cabbage) that I had the first night in Thuringia. I didn't see it on the menus later on my trip, though I had thought it widespread across Germany. Maybe plain old sauerkraut sells better. Fanciest meal was in the small City of Jena, hosted by my business contacts. That meal was something else, with French wine, braised and roasted meats smothered in typical sauces, etc. I didn't treat myself so well.

There was of course lots of beer (my favorite was on the first night - some dark wheat beer(dunkle weissebier, I think, made by Radelberger? I made sure to make frequents comparisons.), some sekts in Wurzberg, some still wein, and apfelwein. My worst meal was in Frankfurt where I ended up with basic sauerkraut (tasted like it was straight from jar) and a boiled pig's knuckle with apfelwien, which didn't quite toot my horn.

A strike on 7/3 resulted in inexplicably (at the time) late trains, but I eventually overcame the problem. Strikes in Germany seem to be polite affairs, contrary to what the news carries of French strikes.

Google Analytics - results for June 4 to present

I've been using Google Analytics to track the traffic on this site since June 4. If I had a penny for every page view since then, I'd have all of $3.31 jingle jangling in my pocket. That $3.31 worth of visits came from 154 different network locations, all in North America. Of those visits, 273 are identified as "unique" visitors, but only 71 returning visitors. Since I will occasionally look in from work and from home, I'll have to take two away from those figures to account for my double dipping typo-searches.

June 5 was my highest number of page hits, with 39. My most interesting post appears to be Notes on How to Stucco.

Conclusion 1: There's somewhere around 50 of you out there regularly reading my blog, at least on occasion. Hi, Mom!

Conclusion 2: Assuming this blog is typical, the national rate for comments must be around 1-2%.

Back in town; evil lawns in the LA Times

I'm back from 10 days in Germany. I'll try to post some impressions later.

I do notice that one of my favorite topics is in the Home and Garden section of the LA Times: lawns as Public Enemy No. 1.

Edit 11 July 07: I don't hate all lawns, just the sterile, unused, chemical, over watered ones. In the interests of keeping an open mind, I've stumbled upon a turf grass called UC Verde, developed by the University of California for arid climates. I've not seen this mentioned elsewhere, despite its availability since 2003. Obviously, not a native, but perhaps worth investigating.

Meadow rising redux

The California native plant front yard meadow was looking a bit bad. Its recent haircut by string trimmer left the brown stubs of the wildflowers behind. Despite my public assurances, the yarrow hadn't had enough light to grow in fully, and consequently the whole thing had an overall raw and bruised look to it that was a bit disagreeable. I saw the potential, I thought, but I was really being a bit optimistic when I said it was OK. It was only OK considering its recent shearing. That's all fading into history now.

The dead flower stalks, once punji stick-like eyesores, have now rotted and dried to the point that they are easy to pull up or break off at the base with a footstep. With watering, the yarrow has greened and grown considerably, covering the remaining flower stalks. There has been a resurgence of scattered flowers: poppies, white yarrow, blue (gilia capitata?) and a few others that has softened it up quite a bit. The festuca rubra (red fescue) native grass has seen some growth among the yarrow and the juncus mexicanus (Mexican rush) is recovering from being shaded out by wildflowers. At this point the only MIA plant from the original seed inventory is Nasella pulchra.

One unwanted plant I have in abundance is spurge, and I pull it up when I can. The St. Augustine grass is trying to make a come back as well. That too gets pulled. I'm having a much worse time controlling those weeds than in the adjacent large plant area, which had grass originally as well. There are several factors at work 1: The meadow area had more spurge to begin with. I know this because I used to pull it from the grass in that area. 2. The meadow area absorbs the brunt of the wind-blown seeds, since it's on the windward side of the yard. 3. The meadow area didn't get a wood chip mulch to shade out the bad actors. This was by choice - who's heard of a meadow with wood mulch?

Behind the meadow, the buckwheat is in full bloom and the mimulus seems to throw up another cascade of blossoms just when you think it's done for the year. Coyote mint has bloomed and faded, but (non-native) Mexican sage is settling in for a long blooming season.

Sand Shark recovery program

When we last heard from our team of model builders, the feckless father had just melted the Sand Shark model to the top of the toaster oven, destroying two children's and one father's work of decades in an instant. (For those that are keeping track, it's myself as a child, my son, and me as an adult working together on a the same damn project for over 30 years. No wonder I have so many open items on my to do list.)

My apology was accepted after some pleading and a flurry of excuses and we went to Toy-R-Us for another model. They were useless - all of two models. At Michaels we seemed to hit pay dirt with a '34 Ford model, but once we got home it turned out to be WAAAY too complicated.

Fortunately, my son remembered that I had yet another model or two that I'd schlepped down from my parents' place. We dug it out and found that I'd started that one too. We didn't see models like this one in either store we looked at - It's simpler. You don't have to paint if you don't want to since the parts come in a few basic colors and the parts count is maybe 100, rather than 200-300. To top it off, the "new" old model was also a '34 Ford. I actually remember starting and then stalling out the model because I put the front axle on backwards and gave up hope of ever making it right after much hand wringing. Well, we fixed that axle and a bunch of other stuff and got it ready for show time at the "county fair" in just a few days time.

Unfortunately, it was not given a prize ribbon when, according to my son, "all the other crafts got prize ribbons." Indeed, he came home with two blue ribbons for his other projects in categories like "Most Best Leaves" for the bean plant and "Best Hand Work" for the wooden toolbox. I told him to ask his teacher for another prize ribbon and tell her he had to work extra hard because his Dad melted the first model.

I wonder if anyone else has second thoughts about our penchant for rewarding all the kids equally? When everyone gets first place ribbons, then what's the point?

Temperament for risk

Consider this quote from the official USAF policy letter on risk:

Accept risk when benefits outweigh the costs. All potential benefits should be compared to all potential costs. The process of weighing risks against opportunities and benefits helps to maximize unit capability. Even high risk endeavors may be undertaken when there is a well founded basis to believe that the sum of the benefits exceeds the sum of the costs.

An excellent article at investment house leggmason.com discusses the temperament required for rational risk taking. Oftentimes, meta-investing or philosophy-of-investing articles tend to be meaningless fluff. This one is not, as it offers broadly applicable business and life lessons, if you can deconstruct the core of the article from its investment roots.

Like daily prayers to Mecca, there's the obligatory synecdochic references to Omaha, but they do have a context: Warren Buffet, the most successful investor of our current era, will retire and he's seeking his replacement. He's set forth his criteria and considers "independent thinking, emotional stability, and a keen understanding of both human and institutional behavior" highly important in the successful applicant. In a word, temperament. This launches an interesting discussion of how temperament affects risk taking strategies.

Read in the context of my background in the space business, it's insightful in the way it brings forward the human element of risk, or perceived risk, and its role in our decision making.

Mulch for California native plant success

I'm a believer in what Southern California landscapers (even the ones that like agapanthus) have known for many years - mulch applied over the top of the soil keeps all the plants happier. This may be even more important for California native plants than for exotics.

For many years I cleaned up my leaf litter like most of my neighbors and threw it away - all that potential, gone. Us urbanites had somehow got the notion that flower beds and the like had to be completely clear of leaves to be orderly. I got a bit smarter later on: I composted the leaf litter. That was better, but I mostly ended up digging it into my heavy soil - as a top dressing, fully composted greens (and browns) don't really stand up to the rigors of sun, wind, and rain. I use it mostly on my vegetable garden now. There's some that claim that partially rotted leaves are a great top dressing, but I have yet to generate enough partially rotted leaves to make a difference. They're either overflowing my compost bin and there's no signs of rot or more often I've turned a summer's worth of lawn trimmings from my neighbor, the leaves from his tree and mine, and my own lawn trimmings into about 10 gallons of compost - there's a lot of fluff in vegetable matter.

On top of the soil I now apply various different kinds of wood mulch, which is not dug in. This is important - digging in your mulch causes it to decompose, which consumes nitrogen from the soil. The nitrogen is ultimately released, of course - mass balance has to be true in the end. But while the mulch is decomposing that nitrogen isn't available to your plants. People that dig uncomposted leaves or sawdust into their garden must supplement with nitrogen. Of course, already mulched greens don't have this problem.

Wood mulches placed on top of the soil decompose slowly so nitrogen depletion isn't an issue. What the mulch does do is prevent weeds by shading them out, keep the soil moist and cool, and provide safe harbor for beneficial bugs. It also makes it easy to pull weeds, since they are usually not deeply rooted. In my vegetable garden I started with shredded cedar compost - it seemed to make a more tightly bound mat, but I'm now using redwood bark.

My native plants all get the bark too. And the leaves? I don't worry about them so much any more.

Today I found a local bulk supplier of bark mulch - B.D. White Top Soil, Inc at 192 S. Prairie Ave in Torrance (weekdays, 7:30 to 4:00). They scooped me up a cubic yard of top quality bark mulch for $56.29 with tax. A cubic yard is what fits in one scoop of the smaller of their two skip loaders and fills the back of my Ford Ranger. This price is a bit better than the home improvement centers charge, and the product seems superior.

Meadow design guidelines

It seems I violated some design guidelines when I seeded my California native wildflower meadow. Experienced meadow builders don't scatter seed willy nilly and let whatever wants to grow poke its head up. No, they actually plan areas in their meadow dedicated to specific flowers.

Of course I had seen and read the Yerba Buena and Rancho Santa Ana web sites before starting my own meadow, but there's nothing like actual experience to drive a point home. Yerba Buena has a nice photo essay about their spectacular 2005 wildflower season. In the essay, it's abundantly clear that they have not been random about their seeding. See, for example, the picture in week 2 of the corner of the meadow covered in baby blue eyes.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden has a shorter series of slides, but they reveal more about their process, including slides and text about periodic solarizing of the soil (to reduce weed populations), and their planning and seeding (looks like chalk outlines divide up different seed areas).

One of the things that I feel I did correctly, was to plant a perennial cover of yarrow that established itself in the shade of the taller flowers. I won't impose months of dead flower stalks on my neighbors, despite their wildlife value. When I cut the dead flowers back the yarrow was there to fill in and soften the ends of dead flower stalks. With a little water, it's done just fine at that job. It might get to be a pest next year, but for now it's ok.

The Great Sand Shark debacle

My son's class is having a "county fair" in conjunction with the class reading project, Charlotte's Web. He's supposed to make some crafts or projects to bring in for the county fair showcase. All the kids have bean plants. We've also made a rustic looking toolbox from scrap wood in the garage, and completed a plastic model of a hot rod car. The model is "Sand Shark" and I actually started it when I was his age, but didn't get very far along on it. My parents kept it tucked away all those years and tonight we put the final decal on. It looked good, and it was a valuable father-son bonding experience.

I put it safely out of the way in the kitchen (our project zone) for the decals to dry and we finished dinner, homework, bath, etc, and he's off to bed.

Later in the evening, I got a little hungry and made a toasted bagel with cream cheese. It was great - just what I needed. I'm polishing off the last bite and I realize that the Sand Shark is melting into the top of the toaster oven! Oh shit! I reach over to pull it off, hoping that it's just a little out of round on the wheels, but no such luck. It pulls like taffy and all of a sudden I have bits of the freshly made model in my hand - half an engine with floppy exhaust headers and a suspension that looks like a pretzel made from Silly Putty. The rest of it is stuck to the top of the toaster oven and slowly melting into oblivion.

Looks like the "safe place" wasn't.

I ended up scraping the remainder of the wheels off the oven with a razor blade and then polishing with a scouring pad to get the remnants off. There's no way to fix the Sand Shark or even to pass it off as a modern art interpretation. It's ruined and in multiple, warped, pieces.

The hard part will be apologizing in the morning. I think a trip to the store to purchase a replacement will help matters along. I suppose if I felt truly remorseful I could replace the model off E-bay for $29.99 plus $8.99 shipping and handling.

Memorial Day weekend wrapup

Friday was the Raingutter Regatta - think balsawood sail boats, powered by huffing and puffing Cub Scouts, furiously racing a 12' length of rain gutter. We lost miserably. Even a scout that didn't show up had a faster boat. It turns out our sail was too wide and dragged on the edges of the gutter. Bad parent that I am, I had taken charge of the absent kid's boat and had some of the smaller Scouts race it. We were beaten handily each time. Chalk it up as learning experience.

Scouts then met at the National Cemetery in Westwood on Saturday at the painful hour of 7:30 AM in order to place flags on the graves of the veterans buried there. Our group was responsible for a couple hundred, but ended up doing a few more areas as well. Some of the history was interesting: We saw grave sites from the Spanish American war as well as non-citizen veterans from the world over: Mexico, Phillipines, Italy and Germany. With our renewed focus on Memorial Day as a nation, this was a fitting activity.

We visited the Wilson Park Farmers' Market later and got our first haul of delicious summer fruit. Cherries were even better than last week, if possible. Some early peaches were delicious, as were the plums.

Sunday we BBQ'd with family and GF Juli. My famous pork ribs were the featured entree, and guests brought delicious side dishes and fantastic desserts. Construction of the tee pee continued, and we got it all lashed up and draped (not so well) with a canvas drop cloth.

Monday was a visit to the Fiesta Hermosa where I purchased a pair of sculptures to watch over the back yard from Jeanne and Dana of paperandstone.com. They are similar in concept to this, but friendlier looking.