Memorial Day

The flags are out. 

Memorial Day means different things to different people To many, it's the first holiday of "summer", although that's pushing it here in the north. Being that, it's traditionally the time to open pools, parks, and to get the boats out. It's a time for family gatherings, grilling, and just enjoying the outdoors. The freedom and ability to do such things is what makes this country great. Of course, like most things good, it has come with a price. Millions gave everything to allow us to enjoy our freedoms, whether that be as simple as grilling a burger in your backyard, or as important as speaking your mind at a political rally.

Part of the way Cindy and I honor their memory is to put about 40 flags on our property for the weekend. A simple task, and appropriate too since this holiday used to be called Decoration Day. Decoration Day was originally established after the Civil War as a day to decorate the graves of soldiers with flowers. As time went on, flowers changed to small flags, and people began to call the holiday Memorial Day. Hopefully, as people walk or drive by the house, the flags will help them remember why we have the holiday, and remember those that allow us the freedom to honor it as we wish.

Molding finally done. I like the contrast between the
wall color and ceiling. 

On the home improvement front. the molding has been completed. The new compound miter saw worked beautifully and the angles came out nice. There are some minor gaps of course, mainly because the house is not square, and the walls have rolling waves in them, So, I have nearly completed caulking the gaps and nail holes in the molding, and it actually looks pretty good. Soon the paper I taped to the floor in November, will finally be removed.

It looks better in real life. Honest.

With the arrival of warm weather, work has moved outdoors, mostly of the general maintenance and upkeep variety. Last fall, after stacking all the firewood in the garage that would fit, we had about a half face cord left outside. It took me two tractor cart loads to bring that wood in the garage. My raked and re-seeded lawn is coming along nicely, mainly thanks to our persistent rain. It got it's first cut last week.

Despite my brown thumb, and questionable purchase decision, our little spruce tree is doing great. It's loaded with new growth and looks very healthy. I never let it go more than 24 hours without water as it tends to droop a bit in dry and warm conditions.

Healthy little tree. 

I came across an interesting blog that was very complimentary of our small city. The writer praised the architecture here in Binghamton that survived the urban renewal wave of the 1970s. He also liked our collection of interesting and eclectic bars and restaurants, many of which I have yet to visit. It really is amazing how this small city, with a struggling economy, has really had the downtown area blossom with so many interesting places to eat and drink. A lot has to do with the growth of Binghamton University, but I think the abundance of classic old buildings at a relatively cheap price, has certainly helped. I need to check more of these places out, and you should too. Several small business owners deserve to be rewarded for the effort and innovation, and the more new customers they get, the better.

Crown molding failure, and lawn failure

First piece installed. Note the nicely painted ceiling, wall
and trim work. Very proud of that. 

It was not a good weekend in the home improvement and maintenance front here at the Morford estate. To start with, I had the weekend off and decided to wrap up the ongoing hallway improvement by installing the crown molding, with Cindy's help. It's fairly straightforward work, but the 6 foot long pieces of molding take two people to install, and Cindy is not only a good sport, she wants this hallway done! So, we forged ahead. The tricky part of any molding installation is the mitering of the corners. In the living room, I got expert help, because there were some non standard angles, and it was a very wide molding. For the hallway, it was all 90 degree cuts, with a much narrower molding. No problem. Ha ha. First of all, in my defense, you really can't buy a decent manual miter box anymore. Pretty much all you see is this plastic thing with slots for common angles. It will work with standard molding, like quarter round, but even narrow crown molding is installed at an angle, which makes the cuts tricky. Essentially, the molding is inverted, and held at the angle that it will be installed, then you make your 45 degree cut. Problem is the crappy plastic miter box allows the molding to slip no matter how careful you are in holding it. This then throws off the cut, and when you go to install the molding, the cuts don't line up correctly and frankly, it looks like crap. Damn.

So, the solution is to get a better miter box. Well, at least locally, you have two choices: Buy the cheap plastic thing like I already own, or spend $150+ and buy an electric miter saw with all the bells and whistles. Considering I needed to redo the hallway, and I still have the den and the sun room/bar in the future, I ended up jumping into a $179 Porter Cable compound miter saw. After taking it out of the box and reading the instructions, I have a whole new appreciation for anyone that can use it. I think the engine room of a battleship may have fewer levers, dials, and readouts. It took me almost an hour just to figure out how to unfold it and set it up on my work bench. Good news is I think it will give me plenty of blog fodder for the future.

The dead zone. In this picture, I'm about half way
through putting down the grass seed and mulch cover.  

Then there is this lawn thing I have going on. Faithful readers of this blog will know that I may be a marginal carpenter, but I am an abject failure when it comes to growing green things. This include our "lawn". By "lawn", I mean the loose collection of dandelions, weeds, and pitiful tufts of grass. The weeds do provide at least some ground cover, even lasting through summer dry spells when whatever grass we have dies or goes dormant. This spring, I decided to buy a lawn fertilizer, weed killer combo to encourage a bit more grass to grow.  As I prepared to spread it. I decided to look more closely at a large area of bare dirt that had developed over the winter. Leave it to me to be such a brown thumb that even the weeds died. I have no idea what happened, but decided I needed to start from scratch and plant new grass in that area, after tilling the ground. Of course, I miscalculated the amount I needed and had to run back to to store for another bag.  Elsewhere I spread the fertilizer and weed killer hoping for lawn improvement.

This little tree makes me happy. Note the
bare ground behind it. 

There is a bright spot in my gardening world. Our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree made it through the harsh winter and looks terrific. It's loaded with new growth and looks happy. It is right on the edge of the dead zone and apparently whatever killed everything else had no effect on the little tree. Have I found something green I cannot kill? Lets hope so.

Other good news is that we have finally broken the back of winter. Just in time too, considering that the days start getting shorter again in a little over the month.We jumped right into the 80s, some places even touching 90, which has caused an explosion of colorful flowers and budding trees. It's mother nature's version of seeing a gap in the traffic and stepping on the gas. Better hurry up and get going before it's too late!

Lastly, the owner of the Adam's Family house behind us has hired a local father/son team to clean up the lot. A large tree blew down over the winter so they took care of that while cleaning up other branches, and picking up plain old garbage that has sat there since we moved in. All in all I'm impressed. Any work over there is good news.