Tag: backyard

My Own Private New Jersey

June 7, 2009 / Robert

Or something like that.

For some reason, we’ve been enjoying the backyard probably more that we ever really have before. Maybe the weekend weather has been especially conducive to outside activities? We’re not really sure, but whatever it is, it is good.

Spent a good amount of time doing the usual maintenance stuff – I cut the lawn yesterday, and E. planted a few more flowers in the front of the house, before we headed over to her parents’ house for her sister’s husband’s birthday. This morning I headed over to the Home Depot to pick up a cinder block, 60 lb. of concrete, and a 4 lb. sledgehammer, all needed to complete today’s project: install E.’s new umbrella clothesline. A few weeks back when we hosted W.’s first Holy Communion shindig, I had removed a post, to which had been attached E.’s previous clothesline. The post was simply in the way of where the tent needed to be, so out it came. E., God bless her, has been practicing green laundering for many years now, way before it became fashionable; in fact, one of the feature that really sold E. on this house when we bought in was the clothesline. Must have come from watching all of those episodes of Little House On The Prairie as a child. Anyway, I had to promise to replace the clothesline, and I was able to convince E. to replace the old post with a new umbrella model, which I installed today. First I dug a 12″ square hole, 16″ deep, and put a layer of rocks in the bottom. I then took Mr. Shepherd’s cold chisel (Mr. Shepherd was the original owner, c. 1938, of our house; he was a mason, and many of masonry tools are still in my basement. He passed on many years ago, and his widow finally sold the house after 60 years to the Neilsens. Mr. Neilsen was not much of a handyman, and had no use for the former owner’s tools, but he was kind of enough to leave them in the basement workshop when we bought the house in 2002) and separated the cinder block into two halves, inserted the pole sleeve into the half with 4 sides intact and filled up the void with concrete. After letting the concrete set up for a bit, I placed the cinder block and pole sleeve into the hole and filled up the sides with more concrete. I was constantly checking for level and plumb, and I’m pretty sure once the concrete is cured the umbrella pole will be secure and ready for E. to use. We’ll see how it holds up when E. gives it a proper workout next weekend.

I also finally cleaned up the remainder of the branches I had cut down a few weeks back when they were hanging over our fence fro the back neighbor’s yard. I had gathered the branches into a tarp which was set aside until today, when I dumped them into a trash can and brought the can out to the curb for tomorrow’s pickup. Of course afterward I needed to clean up the tarp, along wth the shovel and wheelbarrow from the concrete…

Grilled up some chicken, served with broccoli and rice, for dinner. After dinner I out away the tarp, and finally fertilized the vegetables and flowers with Miracle-Gro.

For all of this work, there is still more to be done that I did not get to yet – need to tie up the rose bush in the front garden, as it has become top heavy and is sprawling into the surrounding flowers, and I still need to put down some new topsoil and grass seed where the tree used to be on the front lawn.

<Yawn>

It will have to wait until another day.

Busy Busy Busy

May 17, 2009 / Robert

I realize it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but time has been tight recently… we hosted W.’s First Holy Communion shindig last weekend, which turned out to be a blast. Much prep work went into the backyard celebration, between cutting the lawn, digging/mulching/planting the flowerbeds, power washing the patio, tent/tables/chairs setup, coordination with the caterer, etc., … The celebration of the Holy Sacrament was held at 10:30 AM, and was very, very nice. I barely recall my own First Holy Communion (I remember the date – May 10, 1970 – but very little else) in Holy Child Church in Philadelphia. I don’t think I internalized the event at all, and just went with the flow and followed the kid in front of me. W.’s First Holy Communion was much more intimate, and hopefully made a more meaningful impression on W than mine did on me. W. actually was picked to read two of the petitions during the mass, and he did a great job. Even while at home today, he was humming one of the songs his class learned for the celebration.

The shindig at home lasted into late Saturday night. The next morning, W. and his class helped to celebrate the crowning of the Blessed Mother in the May procession at Sunday mass. To make the day even busier, of course, we celebrated Mother’s Day with gifts from W., K. and Dad for Mom, and visited E.’s mom/grandmother in the evening, bringing some of W.’s left-over cannoli filled cake.

Friday and Saturday night, W.’s school staged The Wizard of Oz. W. played a munchkin in the first act, and a flying monkey in the second. The kids certainly practiced enough over the past few weeks, and gave a pretty good performance. I was kind of surprosed, because I know that some days at rehearsal W. enjoyed running around chasing his friends more than practicing his song and dance routine, but evidently he really was paying attention. On Friday afternoon, he was genuinely bouncing off the walls excited – it was fun watching him perform, remembering my own grade school shows back in 3rd and 4th grade, and then years later in high school. Fun stuff, for sure.

Yesterday was catch-up day on the lawn. The weather forecast for yesterday was iffy – cloudy in the morning, with rain showers in the afternoon likely, so I jammed in the iPod ear-buds and fired up the mower early. The grass had grown quite a bit in the 10 days since I had cut it last, but that was nothing compared to the neighbors’ grass. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen much of them around the house for the past couple of weeks. I heard the husband on his back porch last week or so when I was outside in the flowerbeds, and I had seen the missus a little before that, but pretty much every day their cars are both gone, all day, and I haven’t seen them in the mornings when we’re all getting out the door to work. It made me kind of wonder if something wasn’t quite right, and sure enough, it wasn’t. Turns out E. was in the local Target on Saturday afternoon when she ran into the soon to be former wife-next-door: the happy couple who bought the house next door a year after we moved to the neighborhood is filing for divorce and pretty much leaving the house to the bank. They bought when the market was high, re-mortgaged again when the market went even higher, and now that the housing market has tanked they are well under water withan asset worth nearly 100K less then they owe on it. Obviously, I am concerned as to the maintenance of the house right next door to mine and its impact on my own house’s value. We’ll see how this story progresses…

This afternoon W. and I flashed some leather and had a catch in the backyard; his throwing has improved a lot in the last year, and he’s doing a better job of getting his glove on the ball. He doesn’t always make the catch, but he’s reaching for it better, getting in front of it, and following the ball into the glove. It’s good to have the 6 foot fence behind him though, or he’d be chasing down a lot of balls that got behind him.

On the weekend of May 30th, Scouts is planning an overnight camping trip to Worthington State Forest out in Sussex County. I haven’t been out there in many a year; I think the last time I was there was to hike along the Appalachian Trail when I got caught in a downpour coming down from Sunfish Pond and had to strip down and drive home in some very wet underwear. This time, we’ll be prepared for rain, just in case.

Getting Ready for the Big Day

May 7, 2009 / Robert

We’re hosting a backyard shindig this weekend to celebrate W.’s first Holy Communion, and we’ve got our fingers crossed that the weather cooperates. It’s been raining all week, except for a few hours yesterday when I was able to take a couple hours off from work and leave early and get the lawn cut. It rained last night, but was somewhat clear this morning when the tent guys came and set up in the backyard. However, as I type this, it is raining again.

Pray for sunshine!

Skating!

January 31, 2009 / Robert

Finally, the backyard is frozen enough to skate upon! We had made tentative plans last night to skate early today, assuming that the overnight temperatures would be sufficient to freeze the ice to support real skating. This morning before the day got too warm I went outside to reconnoiter and found the the rink was frozen solid – there was absolutely no water sloshing up around the edges of the ice when I walked on it. I quickly went back inside, grabbed my skates and went back out to tie up the laces and take a spin on the ice. I must say, after being so disappointed last year, when we did not get to use the rink at all, and then feeling bad for putting up the rink so late this year and thinking I’d missed the opportunity for enough cold days to freeze up the ice, being able to finally step out on the ice and glide over the entire surface was such an exhilarating feeling. Finally!

Before long, W. came out of the house, and I helped him put on his skates. I got him a folding chair to use as a kind of walker on the ice to help him get used to keeping his balance. A little while later, out came K. and Mom; we had bought a pair of strap-on double bladed skates (imported from the Great White North, so you know they’ve got to be good, eh?) for K. to use, that go right over her sneakers. She was a little wobbly, and tended to walk, taking steps, rather than pushing off, but she’ll get the hang of it eventually. Mom, unfortunately, only took pictures and did not get to skate at all 🙁

We were outside for about 40 minutes, when I decided to dig through the garage and break out my hockey sticks (c. 1975, complete with the Bobby Clarke signature, and a 1979 Koho stick.) Although I am right-handed, I actually am a left-handed stick handler, so W. can’t use my sticks, but he has two small play sticks and a puck that Santa had brought him a couple of years ago, so we took turns skating around the ice and taking shots at each other’s imaginary goal. This was exactly the kind of fun that I had imagined we’d be able to have on a backyard rink when I first got the idea to build one a few years back. It is really great to finally enjoy our rink.

Eventually, the sun started to warm up the rink a bit, and the surface got a bit chopped up, so I had to bring out my rink rake to resurface the ice. The only problem was that last week, while resurfacing the ice, I had made an amateur mistake in forgetting to turn off the shutoff valve to the outside spigot, and open the spigot to drain off any water remaining in the line. The water instead froze up and I could not turn the spigot on for the rink rake. So, I grabbed Mom’s hair dryer and heated up the outside spigot just enough to melt the ice and get the water flowing again. Once again the rink rake worked perfectly and things should be pretty smooth for maybe some more skating this evening.

Backyard Ice Rink 2009

January 18, 2009 / Robert

So after coming home from yesterday morning’s Pinewood Derby, I spent most of the afternoon assembling the backyard ice rink. I picked a new location from last year, since the yard is so unlevel in that spot; this year’s location so far seems much better. So, it was pretty cold yesterday afternoon (it was -6 F yesterday morning) and since the boards had been sitting outside for the past year they were pretty well frozen, which made them a bit heavier and harder to drill the decking screws to attach them together, but by around 5:00PM the rink was assembled. At that point I did not want to put in the tarp and start filling it up, since I wasn’t really sure how long filling would take, and since I was essentially frozen myself at that point I did not want to hang outside anymore. I put in the tarp and called it a day.

I knew that there was a chance of snow last night, and sure enough when I took a blurry look sans glasses out the window this morning at the backyard on my way downstairs there was about 2 inches of snow in the rink. I finally got around to setting up the hose and filling the rink today. I put much less water in this year, as I think last year’s rink never froze solid enough for us to use because it never really got cold enough to freeze so much water. I really wish that I had setup the rink earlier, since it has really been such a cold winter thusfar, but we’ll see what happens this year. Also, using a white tarp would reflect much more sunlight than the blue one that I use, but that will need to be an improvement for next year. I did finally try out my homemade rink rake just to make sure water flows through it as expected (it does) to use as a little handheld zamboni for surface repairs.

My work is now done – 10 minutes until the NFC Championship game… go Eagles!

23 Degrees is too warm?

January 27, 2008 / Robert

My backyard skating rink simply will not freeze solid. I had built it a few weeks ago, following a design I found online, and have been waiting somewhat impatiently for the weather to turn cold enough for the water in the rink to freeze. W. is so looking forward to lacing up his skates, and to playing hockey in his backyard, but even though the top layer of water has frozen over, the bottom layers will not drop below 34 degrees (during the middle of the night.) Once the sunlight hits the rink, the water warms up to the mid-40s. I realize it’s nearly the end of January, and we’ve gotten hardly any snowfall, and the ground is nowhere near frozen, and I can hope that next Saturday Phil sees his shadow and February brings prolonged freezing temperatures, but if this rink turns out to be a bust I’m going to have a pretty unhappy family.