Wednesday Working — They Got Wheels

This week I took a short break from digging trenches to make a few of this wheel bases for our wine barrels:

Made four. Should have moved them into the sun for the picture.

The wood is salvage from a shed I tore down last year but the wheels are new:

And here’s what they look like with a barrel on them:

Heather is redoing the planting in all of them and this one is ready for new plants.

I also did manage a little trench digging:

All of this for one new sprinkler head.
And here are the pipes. Just need one more connection.

I’m going to be taking a short break from irrigation and will get back to this in a week or so. When I sat down to write this, I found three emails from the big box store requesting that I fill out a survey about my experience shopping with them. Everytime I go to the drug store I get a survey too. My doctor’s office has started doing this as well. Is it just me or are big corporate organizations getting more and more emotionally needy – they seem to want constant validation that they are doing okay.

That’s it for this week. If you need me, I’ll be here filling out surveys and leaving reviews for PVC fittings.

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As The Pizza Cooks — Episode 25

My last “As The Pizza Cooks” episode had very good stats.  107 likes, 158 views and 31 comments. Discounting the fact that half the comments are mine, that’s not bad for one of my posts.  I should add that this is the first time in about five years that I checked the stats on one of my blog posts.  The only reason I really noticed how many likes I have is that I’ve been getting a lot of email about it.  Well, actually, WordPress has been sending me a lot of email about it.  When I started this blog 13 years ago there was a setting that said, “Get email for: Likes, comments, etc” and I just checked everything.  Never changed it.  I’m not even sure where that button is anymore.  It seems like somewhere, the WP folks changed the admin interface and nothing is where it was.  Maybe I’d know more about it if I checked that kind of thing more than once every five years.

Honestly, I don’t blog for stats, but I do get a bit of a thrill when I get that little email that says someone left a comment or clicked the like button.  I know that you’re thinking that’s a lot of email to be looking at, but honestly I just set some filters in gmail and all that stuff goes to a folder I check once in awhile.  Comments are special though, I do read those and reply.  Maybe I don’t say something world shattering in the reply, but I try.

My father always used to say that I was trying.

Anyway, I do have spam filters set on the blog so most of the junk comments never see the light of day and I don’t allow URL links in comments unless I approve them so I have a little control there.  Once in a rare while a spam comment slips through the filters and I have to manually delete it.  It’s actually rare that I end up deleting a comment and even more rare that I have to block a user.  It’s happened, just not very often.

When I started blogging that was one of my fears, that I’d just start getting annoying, rude or hateful comments.  It’s not happened.  Mostly because I think people head towards FaceBook or other social platforms to be disrespectful.

Turns out that I mostly get really nice comments and well, it’s one of the reasons I blog — for the feeling of community.  I’ve followed some blogs for years and regularly comment on them.  Maybe not brilliant comments, and sadly there isn’t enough time for me to comment on all the blogs I follow.  I checked and there are about 600 blogs on my following list.  90 percent don’t post anymore and I haven’t gone back to clean up the list.

Honestly, I’m constantly amazed that people stop by and comment on my posts.  I’m grateful that you do stop by with a comment or two.

I have been wondering why my last pizza post did so well.  Maybe because I was talking about blogging.  Blogging seems to be a hot topic for a blog post.  If I was trying to do blogging “right” I’d learn from this and post more about blogging.

But I only check stats every five years, so even if I did start posting more about blogging, it will be a long time before I figure out if that is getting me more views and comments.

Well, that’s it for this week, likely I’ll post something next week, but you never know what I’ll do.

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Friday Wisdom — Plumbing

Well, you saw the irrigation trench. Pipes go into that trench which means I did a bit of plumbing too. So here’s everything I know about plumbing:

What kind of vegetables do plumber refuse to buy? Leeks.

What happens when a plumber falls asleep? They have pipe dreams.

What do you get when you cross a jeweler with a plumber? A ring around the bathtub.

What is a great give for a plumber? A pipe cleaner.

The police reported that someone stole the toilet from the station. They have nothing to go on.

Did you hear about the depressed plumber? He thought his career was going down the toilet.

What two words make a plumber simile? Overtime pay.

Why are plumbers always tired? Their job is draining.

What one bad habit do plumbers not have? Biting their nails.

What did the plumber say at the poker table? A royal flush is better than a full house.

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Wednesday Working – Irrigation and Trenches

Spring is here and the days are warm enough to get working hard in the yard. This week I started on a project to improve the watering of our lawn and a flower bed. We’ve made a lot of changes in the garden in the almost four years we’ve lived here and the original garden irrigation system has needed a lot of upgrades to keep up with our plans. Our back lawn has always gone brown in the hottest times of summer and as we’ve added drip irrigation we’ve noticed one drip zone seemed to be losing water pressure.

The solution:

New irrigation valve box

Simple – just find the existing one inch main irrigation line, dig, cut and add in a new irrigation valve box with two new watering zones. Then you get your trenching shovel, sod cutter, spade, iron bar, gloves, water bottle, a large bottle of ibuprofen, band-aids, ice packs and you dig eight feet of trench across your lawn:

This trench gets two 3/4 inch water lines, one for a flower bed and one that will water half the lawn. I’m added eight new sprinkler heads to the lawn and likely around six for the flower bed. I haven’t really added it up (because I wouldn’t have started the project if I know this number), but I think there will be around 50 feet of trench to dig.

So far I’ve been at this for three days and hope to finish the whole project next week. Being an old guy, I only work four hours day before my body says stop so it’s not as much as you think. I do find it best to take the ibuprofen before and after working. Yes, I could have hired someone to do this, but then I wouldn’t get the joy of going to the home improvement store to buy parts and going back to get the parts I forgot.

I should mention that having a good supply of band-aids is important. I only have two cuts right now and no real idea how I got them … wait, three cuts … when did I scrape my elbow?

Tomorrow I fill this trench in and put the sod back. That’s it for this week. More pictures next week so until then, if you need me, I’m limping to the kitchen to get an ice pack for my knee.

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