Fall garden cleanup

Cutting down weeds in the unused part of the garden. We didn't have time to plant the corn that was supposed to go here. 

This stuff will be raked up and burned. The, if there's time, we will till and plant a cover crop. 

Siding almost done

Paint storage and disposal

Who knew you could store paint in a cottage cheese carton?

Turns out you can't. 

We are slowly disposing of a decade long collection of old paint. Latex can be dried out and thrown in the trash. Alkyd and other oil based paint has to be taken to hazardous waste disposal. 

Note: don't touch the paint while trying to blog with your phone. Lesson learned. 

At last, siding is going up

Turning compost

When you use a maddock to chop through the compost pile it might shoot an apple right out at you. 

More on siding and the ledger board

Back to the ledger board ... we had to get it up and flashed before the siding crew could progress on the north side of the house (which of course they didn't need to do until they had done all they could on the rest of the house). In the picture below you can't really see much but know that the strip of black with white letters on it is the rubberized membrane flashing over the 2x8 ledger board. We are ready to go.

Flashed ledger board

Make your own Apple Pole Picker

Found this with Google (of course). Almost all of our remaining apples are above what I can reach on a ladder. Plus having to get up and down a ladder all the time is a pain. So, I need about a 20' long pole and a liter or half-gallon bottle and I'll be in business.

Click this  video link.

Prepping for new ledger board

This looks nasty, but it's just a little rot that I'm filling with epoxy wood filler. It takes time, though, since you have to put it on in small amounts. 

It's right under the back door. I think we didn't put the old deck in right and that is what caused this rot. We won't make that mistake again. 

Back porch is gone

We took a break from preparing for the siding to do some applesauce. Remember the apple trees with loads of apples? I picked about a bushel, and together we made about 11 quarts of sauce. We only used about 2/3 of the apples I picked (ran out of time), but some of the other apples have gone for eating and for some apple bread that Jo made.

I washed the apples ...

Jo cut them up (she got to be outside) ...

And then we cooked, strained and canned them.

The resulting sauce is delicious, but it seemed like a lot of work for 11 qts. It has been a long time since the last time we made sauce and I think we could do a better (that is more efficient) job of it if we do it again. There are LOTS more apples on the trees - if I only had time to pick them.

One or two dominoes fall

After clearing out and painting the front entry 'hall' (it is really a very small room), we got the mirror hung. The primary purpose of this addition is to provide the coat hooks. Thanks to Jo for the paint job, for the finish on the mirror frame, and for help hanging the mirror even with a sprained foot!

It's hard to take a picture of a mirror in a small space without being in the picture!