Jamcleat

Saturday, my son and I were cutting up the accumulated brush and fallen limbs from 3 years of dry weather. I try to keep the pile small so it is not unsightly. But with the drought that we have had, I did not feel it was safe to burn. I had started on it a year or so ago when my old McCulloch chainsaw went bust.

Bad news: New Homelite chainsaw in hand, we were cutting off small lengths and burning to make a pile of coals to grill some hot dogs.  We had got about 20% of the pile done, and actually about all that we could do in that afternoon, the exhaust note changed from a motor sound to a sharper, harder sound.  I thought at the moment that it sounded like a large model airplane.  My son pointed to an object on the ground where I was cutting.  I quickly stopped the saw.  It seems the screws had come out of the muffler and the muffler had fallen off.  No wonder it sounded like a model airplane.  It was just like a 2-stroke model airplane engine with no muffler.  As in a model airplane engine the combustion chamber is open to the world when the piston clears exhaust port.  Big noise.  And the screws were nowhere to be found in the rubble and stubble under the brush pile.

That was on Saturday.  I was busy Sunday and Monday but had Tuesday off.  I called the Homelite toll-free help number.  The menu options had changed to better serve the customers.  The number one option on the first menu was “…to get the correct fuel-to-oil ratio for your power tool”. Option 2 was anything else.  The second menu was “Order parts or supplies press 1″ and “Talk to a representative press 2″.

There was a hold as all representatives were “serving another customer”.  But that hold was less than a minute.  Shana was very helpful.  I gave the model and serial number.  She responded that “If it has been less than 30 days, you can take it back to Home Depot.  If more than that, you will need to take to an authorized service location”.  Now that is some information system.  That indicates that that lot of tools was sold through Home Depot.  She further suggested that she get my zip code and gave a choice of two locations for Authorized Service, both about 10 miles away.

Next to find the receipt.  My wife went through a pile of recent receipts.  Not Found.  Then she remembered that that receipt was on a magnet on the side of the refrigerator.  It turns out that I had bought the saw 32 days before.  Receipt and map to 5 Points Mower Repair, I headed out.

Home Depot is about 2 1/2 miles away.  I took the saw in to the returns desk, setting off the loss prevention alarm on the way.  A young woman named Meg listened to my story and asked what I wanted to do.  I suggested exchanging just the saw since I had used the oil and written in the book.  She suggested that I just get a similar saw off the shelf and exchange the whole thing.  So that is what I did.  She typed in the return reason in the register and gave me back the old receipt. About 3 minutes elapsed time. Homelite customer service and Home Depot return experience are pretty Good News!

I had planned to do an article about the successful resuscitation of my 14 year old McCulloch chainsaw.  The bad news is that the operation was not successful and the patient is mostly dead.  I asked my friend and former neighbor Doug if he had any ideas.  Doug restores antique small engines and knows a lot about these things.  His advice was throw away the McCulloch and get a Homelite.

So that is what I did.  Hurricane Ida blew through here with a bit of wind and a lot of rain.

Dead Pine Down

A dead pine tree blew over.

Austree Toppled by Huricane Ida Rain

And an Austree that had previously been laid low by ice apparently became waterlogged at the top because it fell down after the rain had stopped.  They needed to be cleaned up.  And with a clear direction on the chainsaw front, I went looking for a Homelite.

Lowe’s did not have them.  They had Paulen (budget) and Husqvarna (pricey).  I had used a neighbor’s Paulen while my saw was waiting repair and with the Homelite recommended, decided to keep looking.  WalMart does not appear to carry chainsaws.  Home Depot had Homelite and Echo.  The price to replace the 14″ saw was $99.  The 18″ saw was on sale at $130. A $20 savings.  Since the saws now have a nose guard that must be removed if you are cutting through wood longer than the blade, and I had sometimes been frustrated by the 14″ blade, I went with the 18″.

Homelite 18"

The end result was I was able to clean up the mess and spend two days carrying stuff to the brush pile.

Cut pine tree after chain saw purchase.

Typical Log Planter

My wife likes to garden and in the hard clay soil, some things do better in a planter. Her idea was to arrange the logs in a circle, hold them together and fill it planter with potting mix. My son and I have made a number of them.
Cut a number of logs roughly stove length. If you like uniformity, use a gauge stick or a knotted rope as a measure. How many? About 3 1/2 times the planter diameter divided by the log diameter. For example say 3 feet across. Time 3 1/2 is 10 1/2 divided by 6 inches = 1/2 foot = 21 logs. Or in metric say 1 meter, times 3 1/2 = 3 divide by .15 = 23 logs. Cut the ends square so they will stand on end on the ground.
On previous planters, I used 16 guage galvanized wire. For this one, I used the soft iron wire used to tie reinforcing bars together for concrete. Find it near re-bar and concrete at Lowe’s or Home Depot. Galvanized doesn’t rust, in fact it stays shiny for years. I do not know yet how this darker wire will look or hold up but I suspect the darker color will be more aesthetic than shiny wire in a rustic planter.
If you choose the re-bar wire, you will need to draw it straight before you use it. Twist the end around something substantial, spool out enough to go around twice plus a bit more. In our example above about 15 feet (4 meters). Give a tug to take the kinks out. Do not cut the wire yet.
Arrange the logs in a circle where you want them to be. Put them as close together as they will stay.

Arrange logs on end in a circle

Wrapping with Wire

Wrap the wire around the logs two times keeping the wire close together and 1/2 to 2/3 up the sides of the logs.
Pull the wire hand tight cross and twist it a couple of turns to tie the ends together. Have enough outside the twist to grab. Now cut the wire at the spool.  Do any final arranging of the logs. Pull tension on the twist and begin to twist up the excess to pull and hold the planter together.

Keep the turns close

Cutting the wire

When the twist is about 2-3 inches (5 cm) from logs, stop twisting. This will be tight enough. And if you go to far, you risk breaking the wire.

Twisting with locking plier

I twist by the hand-over-hand method or by grabbing the twist with a locking plier and twisting. Either way keep tension on the twist as you twist it to keep the ends leading smoothly into the twist.
When it is tight enough, cut the twist.

Cut the twist

Then turn the end of the twist back on itself and close the hook.  Press the loop flat so it will not snag on anything.  The cut end is SHARP!.

Bend the end of the twist back on itself

Last summer when everything was green and the leaves were out, I went through the woods with a marking tape and tagged a number of trees that were dead. Now that winter is here and the leaves are gone, it is time to take them out.
My son sharpened the chain-saw. His first time. It’s been used casually a couple of times and needed it. The first tree had already fallen since I marked it. The ants and rot had gotten into the lower part. The trunk had given way and the tree was leaning into a nearby tree. This is a particularly bad situation for cutting since it is difficult to tell which way the trunk is stressed and will move when cut. We set up some cargo straps as tensioners to try and persuade the trunk to move away from the current lean. This was supposed to let the trunk come off the stump after it was cut. He cut a wedge to give the tree a place to lean and the cut from the tension side to get it to break. It did not go as planned and fell into another tree. We dragged the butt away from the stump until it came down.
We cut down and cut up 3 trees that day. A few weeks later we cut down 3 more and cut up 4, including one that had fallen in a wind storm.
Subsequently, we gave a chain-saw lesson to the my daughter, her friend and my son’s friend.

I got up early this morning so that I could take pictures in Fountain Inn of the Fall weather. I have posted a few of them at the Weather Underground picture site. I will select a few more perhaps and put them up to Flickr. When I got back Elvis was sleeping.

I started raking after the pictures were up, took a break for lunch. After lunch, I brought Elvis outside to help me. He wandered about while I raked. If he got too far I would bring him back, hold him a bit, give him some pats, set him down, rake some more, repeat for about an hour.

I still have the back yard to do. I had better get back to it to finish before dark.

I spent the weekend with my wife cleaning up the gardens for the fall. She likes to cut back all of the perennials. She usually does this with a sharp kitchen knife. She did this year too. But when it cam to the liriope, I was able to help by running the lawnmower over it. I just set it up to the high setting (actually the setting I usually use for the grass), check for rocks and stuff in the garden and make a slow pass over the liriope.

She wanted to cut back a large rose-of-Sharon. My son fired up the chain saw and we cut away about two-thirds of that. It tripled the size of the burn pile.

Some of the late blooming and perpetually blooming flowers she saves. While there are not many bees still active, they find and utilize available blossoms. Pineapple sage, blue daze (evolvulus), Mexican heather.

Gone are the lantana, grape, wisteria, morning glory, cleome (beeweed), most of the petunias and numerous other varieties that I do not know the names.

The clean-up process is made more enjoyable by the mints in the gardens. There is fresh mint, spearmint, peppermint, and lemon balm. Also there is lots of rosemary. And of course there is cat mint (catnip).
When she cleaned up the catnip, all of the cats that were around got hunkered down in it.

Always enjoyable when outside are the songs of the birds, seen (chickadee, cardinal, and jay) and unseen (starling, woodpecker).

When you are turning over and cutting back you find lots of things that hide most of the time. A large leopard frog, a very large brown toad, and a centipede were seen. Also numerous squirrels, spiders, and insects.

The fire ants have not been killed yet in the front yard. With the rains, they must be being flooded out. I have put down Amdro 3 times but it has rained afterward and it does not seem to be effective yet. Usually, it works after just a couple of days. This is going on two weeks.

I took down the skyride as the traveller had become cracked. My wife will try to get a replacement. In the meantime, I took down the cable. I will turn it end-for-end in hopes of avoiding cracking the new traveller. It also will give the trees a break. When I had originally set up the cable, I had put it around two trees. To keep the cable out of the bark (and killing the tree), I put spacers under the cable in 3 spots. While they were growing into the bark a bit, they were relatively narrow and did not seem to cause any harm.

My son and I went to Lowes and got 24 bags of pine bark mini-nuggets noting that he had just vacuumed my station wagon yesterday.

Transporting all that was cut down to the back of the lot caused a lot of wear and tear on my tender new grass so at the end of the day, I ran the sprinkler on all of the warn portions in hopes of reviving it. It seems to look better.

The front yard was planted several days ago. Here is a progress report.

The front yard was watered morning and evening for 20 minutes for 7 days. No sign of sprouting. There was a rain shower and sprouted blades appeared the next day. The backyard was planted the day after the shower and watered the same way. It rained (not a lot) on day 3 and again on day 4 (all day). Sprouts appeared on day 5. I think that rain is better than tap water for growing grass. It is growing up fine now. And we also seem to be getting rain nearly every day. At lunch time it was steamy.

I had begun in September getting ready to re-seed. I aerate with a had tool as the yard is too small , too hilly, and too broken up to support a garden tractor. That takes about 3 weekend days.

Then comes the reseeding. I cut the grass short, disturb the soil with a hard rake, put down starter fertilizer (20-27-5), put down seed, and walk on it to get it into the soil.  I have been watering it twice a day to keep it moist.  And for the first time in years, it has not dried out.  However, it has not yet sprouted after 6 days.  Maybe it is too cool and it will take longer.  Or sometimes, real rain produces results.  I have had that happen several times, after watering with treated water for days, a light rain will produce sprouting the very next day.  This is the part of yardwork that I do not like,  the waiting.