Friday Progress — Weird Week

Posted on 04/25/2025 by Andrew Reynolds

The work on the deck is in the demo phase. The existing pavers need to be taken out and the irrigation lines moved before the deck foundations can be installed. Here’s as far as I am at the moment:

And I have found the irrigation lines that need to be moved:

Yeah, it’s not the kind of line that should be buried under pavers and there are signs of the line starting to collapse. I’ll have to pull it all up and find where the main PVC line comes in and replace all of this with the right piping before I can start on the main deck build.

Sadly I haven’t had much time this week because I’ve had travel to San Jose to visit my brother who’s in the hospital. Then my kitchen contractor called and has moved up the date of our kitchen remodel by two weeks so we’re now in full “get everything out of the kitchen” mode, so it might be a week or so before I’m back to this project and all the fun I was having ripping out pavers and pipe.

Well that’s it for this week. If you need me, I’ll be looking for more boxes to pack up the kitchen.

Posted in General | 26 Comments

Tuesday Working — The Deck Begins

Posted on 04/15/2025 by Andrew Reynolds

It’s been awhile since I last posted. I finished by poetry seminar and now have 10 poems in my new collection. Just 30 more to go. Maybe. I’m still thinking about what I’m going to do with these poems.

In the meantime, spring has arrived here in the desert so it’s time for all those projects I’ve been thinking about his winter. This year we’ve decided to replace this old pergola with something new:

The new thing is a solid roof gazebo which I ordered a couple of weeks ago. It’s still in kit form on my other patio:

It’s heavy, about 450 pounds and I had to carry it to the backyard piece by piece. It’s going to be awhile before I get it setup because I need to prepare the area where it’s going to go. We get high winds in the area so I have to get some concrete footers installed to mount this too. Then after ordering we decided it would be nice to place this gazebo on a nice raised deck area. It’s only work, I’ll get it done — someday.

The first step was the fun part:

I returned the old pergola to kit form and had it hauled off.

What you don’t see in this picture is that there is an irrigation pipe for those two trees that I need to find before I can do anything. We’re having problems with water in this side of the yard and I’ve already had to remove pavers to fix a leak so I’ve got a bit of plumbing to do before getting to the deck building stage.

That’s it for this week. I’m hoping to start posting a bit more, but if you need me, I’m out back digging up irrigation pipes.

Posted in garden | Tagged , | 27 Comments

Thursday Poem

Posted on 03/20/2025 by Andrew Reynolds

I’m still very busy with a poetry seminar and mostly not doing much blogging at the moment. I thought I’d just pop in to post one of the poems I’ve been working on. I might get back to more regular blogging next week.

January Birthday

My friend had his birthday in August.
He had parties in the park with ice cream,
cake and rolling down the grassy bank.
His presents where toys, airplane models and bubbles.

My birthday came in January.
I had a party once, in the rain.
There was cake, and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.
It was too close to Christmas.
I got a coloring book, a new coat and socks from an aunt.
Posted in Poems | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

Wednesday Working — Cross and Stuff

Posted on 02/26/2025 by Andrew Reynolds

I’m at the halfway point of the poetry seminary I’m taking. It’s consuming more of my time than I expected so I’ve not been very active here.

I have had some time at the scroll saw and here’s where I am on that:

and those are my feet as I didn’t frame this correctly. I think have about 7 hours left of work. I’ve been finding that I can cut about one inch of pattern per hour or about 10 holes.

I’ve started my next poetry collection and have six poems at first draft stage. The plan is to write 20-40 poems. I do have some older poems that I might rewrite for this collection. Here’s a fragment of one I’m working on:

Stand in the meadow,
in an afternoon wind,
on the bridge between,
turn your head to hear the whooshing
hollow air of memory.

Breath in thin clean air,
but close your eyes
so you don’t see the fly fishermen
and remember that grandfather
died before you could learn to cast a line through air.

Well, that’s it for this week. If you need me, the cat is asking for treats and I’ll be in the kitchen.

Posted in garden | Tagged , , , | 34 Comments