Siding progress

It has been a while since my last posting as there has not been much to report.  I have been slowly installing the cedar shakes one by one.  Three sides of the house are complete now with just a gable end remaining.  The trim is painted with two coats of paint before it is installed, then one more after it is up and the nail holes are filled and joints caulked. 

The seed we planted for the yard did not do very well with the drought conditions.  Hopefully it will come back in the spring.  I have mowed a 10 – 15’ wide area around the house to keep the weeds down so that they don’t compete with what grass seed is growing.  In February I will plant some white clover in the frost.  The clover will fill in the blank spots in the grass where crabgrass likes to grow, is a nice forage crop for deer, and is attractive to bees.  

 

 

The warm weather gave us a chance to try out the radiant cooling system, and we were very pleased with the effect, though not with the electric bill.  With all of the sunshine we have had this summer, the solar panels would have been nice to have.  We are still waiting for the revised pricing to arrive for the solar panels since UniSolar went out of business.

 

The critters seem to have made peace with us.  There is a small herd of four does that occasionally browse their way through the yard, and this nice little 8 point buck that has been spurned by the herd.   

We have a number of hummingbirds that chase each other around the house with the buzzing of their wings making a Doppler effect as they zip by. You feel certain to be impaled by an errant bird shaped missile.

The garden just took over.  The tomatoes if stretched to full height would be about 8’ tall.  They have toppled their cages over, and have made passage through the garden impossible.  We harvested the largest zucchini I have ever seen at about 16” long.   

The pumpkin vine is over 30’ long with two pumpkins.  One is about 18” long and beginning to turn orange, and the other is hanging through the fence at nibbling height for the deer and is about the size of a cantaloupe.  The deer graze the pumpkin foliage down flush with the fence nearly every morning.