In which stuff gets built

Since today was looking like it may well be the final really nice day of the year, and since I'd had the foresight to take the day off, I hitched up my tool belt, threw the extension cords over my shoulder, set up shop in the back yard and got to work on my raised garden beds and compost bin. Which I've been planning for many months, but am only getting around to at the last possible moment.

I've done a bit of container gardening on the porch since moving here, and wanted to take advantage of this nice-sized, level yard to go larger scale. But the soil here is pretty much awful for anything that's not the Lovecraftian Wisteria of Unending Torment and, knowing my energy level and limited capacity for follow-through (not to mention gradually increasing creakiness and general decrepitude), doing the whole roto-tiller thing and planting right in the ground was not an appealing option.

So instead, the plan is to compost over the winter, and to build up lasagna-gardening style beds. By spring, if all goes well, I'll have a lovely layer of humus all ready to nurture little seedlings.

I once had a girlfriend who pronounced hummus as humus, which still confuses me.

And then there was the middle eastern grocery in the Strip, called Labad's, that had a sign in the window that read LABAD KING OF HOMOS. It's okay, we knew what he meant.

Anyway. The main idea was to do all of this on the cheap. Lucky for me, my father left behind buckets full of odd hardware bits, and my Uncle Rich seems to have never thrown out a piece of scrap lumber larger than a playing card. I snagged some decent shipping pallets from the beer distributor (thanks, Ron!), garbage-picked a few things, and got some odd-sized planks at Construction Junction. A few minutes with the tape measure and jigsaw to trim things up, and all the puzzle pieces were ready to fit together.

First up, I repurposed some IKEA IVAR shelves that I've been carting around for 15 years, from two apartments ago. I knew there'd be a use for them someday.

(Upper left is the canoe from under which I had to temporarily evict the friendly family of skunks who've been squatting there for several years.)

I just connected each corner with a couple of heavy-duty cable ties, and used some L-brackets to secure the top and bottom edges. Hey, it's mostly square.

The compost bin idea I found via a web video. Three 36" pallets, on end. Sturdy, well-ventilated, large but manageable capacity.

Again, no drilling or nailing, just those big-ass cable ties. Easy-peasy. Thank you, Verizon installer!

 

Some boards from another pallet and a few odd IVAR pieces make up the gate panel. I added a couple of super-cheap cabinet handles.

 

The sophistimacated latch system.

I am well aware that this is a futile gesture, and that it's not going to keep out any determined raccoon, clever possum, or escaped zoo monkey. If it just keeps out the lazy, unmotivated, and stupid ones, I'll be happy.

Big sheet of plywood someone put out at the curb, which I cut to fit. Mostly.

Another handle. I hope the vandals don't take it.

The hinges were the tricky part. (Aren't they always?) This is where a ratcheting screwdriver really saved my knuckles. Thank you, inventor of ratcheting things!

I definitely wanted a catch so the lid wouldn't go snapping off the first time I flung it open. That's baling twine for now; I'll replace it with picture wire or jack chain.

The finished project. I plan to secure it to the ground with some stakes to keep it from being knocked over by critters or sailing into Westmoreland County in the next windstorm. I don't think the neighbors have anything to complain about.

The big raised bed project. Boards joined with scrap lumber pieces. This was therapeutic. I got to channel my anger into imagining the faces of my enemies on the head of each nail as I pounded and pounded...

Corner brackets are our friends. Angle your pilot holes towards the edge of the board for a secure grip.

And there you have it! 8' x 4', about 22" high. Not too wobbly.

So now everything is ready for heaping helpings of leaves, grass, corks, biodegradable packing peanuts (thanks, MoMA!), coffee grounds, egg shells, fruit and vegetable peels and end-bits that the dog won't eat, pine cones, shredded documents, whatever.

After getting the compost bin started with all the goodies I've been saving in the freezer, I baptized it with a nearly-fossilized can of Old Milwaukee (thanks, Barb!) that a friend left behind at a party many moons ago and has been gathering dust in Barb's basement since. This is the only purpose for which Old Milwaukee is suitable.

In which - Oh sweet Jebus not more roofing!

I am the only person on my block not having a new roof put on in the wake of the July 4 hail storm. This neighborhood is without question the insurance fraud capital of the USA this summer. So far the annoyances have been minor, but today – I happened to be home, taking a sick day – things took a screeching bootlegger turn for the surreal.

7:15 am    A crew of roofers arrives at the house across the street at #95 – the residence of my nemesis, the lawnorexic, NRA For Life teabagger, who had a new roof put on not seven years ago but is having a wonderful time burning through her mother's life insurance money this summer. They park 2 pickups and a beater on the opposite side of the street, where the Lawn Nazi's SUV is also parked.

7:30 am    Dumpster is delivered to the driveway of #95 w/o incident. Lawn Nazi leaves for the day. The roofing crew – six close relatives of Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel – get down to something passing for work. Radio on the roof is tuned to dinosaur rock station, volume at 9.

9:00 am    All of the Cleti are singing along lustily to The Who's “Behind Blue Eyes”, which I find ridiculously charming. Their apprentice peon is wandering around on the roof aimlessly.

9:45 am    An argument over the number of sodas in the cooler has broken out. Peon is made to walk to the store for provisions.

12 noon    Radio volume goes to 16. Luckily, I'm in the mood for vintage U2 and Tom Petty.

1:00 pm    The non-Cletus crew who played an awful 80s-90s radio station while they put a new roof on #96 next door in one day returns to clean up the yard. They park a pickup in the driveway, and a box truck and another pickup on this side of the street.

2:00 pm    The real fun begins. A big flatbed with 2 pallets of shingles arrives and parks on the street behind the non-Cletus pickup, blocking my driveway. Between the flatbed and the Cletus pickup on the opposite side, there is barely one car width for a car to squeeze diagonally. 6 – 8 cars back up on the street trying to get through.

2:05 pm    Flatbed realizes he's on the wrong side of the street.

2:06 om    The most slack-jawed of the Cleti gets in the Cletus pickup to move it backwards up the street. He spends two full minutes searching for the parking brake release. He finds it, hits the gas. He has the truck in drive instead of reverse, jams on the brakes and stops about a foot short of flattening another Cletus. He backs up, parks in front of #93 – the mystery house where an unknown number of people live and are constantly moving four vehicles in and out of the driveway and on and off of the street like one of those sliding tile puzzles where you try to get the map of the USA all in place, at all hours of the day and night.

2:08 pm    Flatbed backs up and cuts his wheels, and knocks over the last 3 feet of my retaining wall. He parks on the opposite side, blocking the driveway of #93. Now cars can still only squeeze through diagonally but in the other direction. 6 – 8 cars are backed up.

2:10 pm    Flatbed driver stands in the street scratching his head, then his butt, then his head and his butt at the same time. The garbage truck comes up the street, blocking everything.

2:15 pm    UPS truck squeaks through between the flatbed and my redbud tree. Every single dog on the block – 9 total – is barking.

2:17 pm    Flatbed driver puts cones around his truck, blocking ¾ of the street. Now cars have to drive up on the grass of my yard and #92 next door. The non-Cletus crew at #96 have finished cleaning up, and are now sitting and watching the Cleti.

2:20 pm    Flatbed driver unfolds the spiffy crane on the truck. It's RC, operated by a neat little box slung over his shoulder, but this seems to be the first time he's ever operated it. The robot arm swings back in jerky fits and starts, picks up the first pallet, jerks around perpendicular to the front bumper. In the amount of time that has elapsed since he started up the crane arm, the non-Cletus crew had off-loaded two pallets of shingles from the back of a pickup truck by hand. All 9 dogs are still barking/baying/yipping/howling.

2:25 pm    Flatbed guy is still jerking the crane arm around, despite the fact that the pallet is a foot in front of him, two feet off the ground, and six idle Cleti are sitting on the roof watching. Also, every few minutes for some reason the truck's horn gets set off for 8 – 10 honks. More dog cacophony, joined by the parrot at #93.

2:35 pm    While flatbed guy continues to wiggle the robot arm back and forth for no apparent reason, all four vehicles belonging to the approximately 19 people living at #93 arrive, as well as a FedEx truck and the 50-year-old virgin next door to me. One of the knocked-over stones from my driveway wall topples further into the street. 13 vehicles are now blocked, about half of which are driving up into our yards to get through. 50-year-old-virgin – who can barely back out of her driveway on a good day – appears catatonic behind the wheel, not moving. Horns are honking.

2:40 pm    The stack of shingles on the pallet dangling from the robot arm is now spinning – just like somewhere Ellen Ripley is spinning in her space grave. All of the dogs have gotten tired of barking. The parrot is still squawking.

2:42 pm    Deciding that getting 65-80% of the shingles onto the property is good enough, not-Ripley at last drops the stack, with one corner sticking about a foot and a half out into the street.

2:43 pm    And then – dear gods – he swivels the arm back around to pick up the second stack, and it starts all over again, with less parrot, a few dogs, more horns, the flatbed truck horn, and the screeching of the branches of my redbud against the 50-year-old virgin's Buick. The second pallet eventually also lands with the corner sticking out into the street.

2:50 pm    When flatbed guy finally gets his super cool but truly unnecessary machine all tucked back away, he gets in the cab (forgetting all about the cones), starts it up, and drives right into the protruding corners of the stacks of shingles. He doesn't stop, just skids down the hill to the stop sign and drives away.

3:30 pm    The Cleti call it a day. My wall is still knocked over. The vehicles of #93 are parked willy-nilly all over their yard. The 50-year-old virgin is trying to scrape grass back into the tire tracks in her yard, and Colleen Clark is up in a tree trying to get down a SpongeBob SquarePants beach ball with a hockey stick.

Okay, maybe not that last one.

8:40 pm    As the sun sinks behind the spruce trees, I take my dog Desmond out for his postprandial walk. He's on the long leash. We get to the end of my sidewalk and he trots across the street, and pees on the shingles.

He's getting bacon tonight.