Tuesday, June 9, 2009

More beginner mistakes


When I bought the house, the woodshed was half full of wood. I had no idea how much wood that was, or if it would last through the winter. At the end of December, I decided to be safe and bought 2 cords of wood, which was dropped in the front yard and slowly got buried in snow around Christmas time. I thought I had to get the wood out of the snow, and seeing wood pieces in the basement assumed that that was where I was supposed to put the wood.


Some new neighbors stopped by to introduce themselves and together we spent 3 hours getting that 2 cords of wood into my basement.

It turns out that I didn't need that wood after all (glad to have it though!). It stayed in the basement and started to gather mold. Now it's June and the wood has all sorts of interesting layers of fuzzy things growing on it.

I was talking to someone last week and came to the understanding that I. have. to. get. the. wood. out. of. the. basement. (I don't know why I waited so long - I think I was hoping it would magically take care of itself, the wood would magically levitate or somehow it would turn out that the basement was the right place.) I designed and built a simple plywood ramp that I can use to pull the wood out with the winch on my ATV. You can see some wood inside the tarp on the ramp. I pull the wood from the tarp onto the lawn (where it started in December!), then carry and stack it in the woodshed.

This is extremely laborious work that I wouldn't need to do if I hadn't put the wood in the basement in the first place. I've been working on this now for 3 days and have gotten about half of it out, thanking someone for lessons learned all the way!
You can see in the top picture another mistake: Because the "driveway" was so icy from frozen puddles, I started to pull off to the side and park in the yard. When spring came and I had a truck-sized dead patch of grass in the yard, it took me a while to realize that the salt dripping from the truck killed the grass. Note to self - spend the extra time to fix the driveway instead of just avoiding it - if the grass ever comes back.

3 comments:

  1. Hey Jordan,
    What a fabulous idea!! I'm really looking forward to seeing your posts. You're an inspiration, sister.

    Iris are pretty hardy, you could probably divide the rhizomes and get a bunch of them next year.

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  2. I remember last summer when you suggested the idea of a blog and I said, "pshaw, no. I have nothing to say." Now I'm getting how nice it can be to have an outlet!

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  3. I love how willing you are to admit your mistakes! It's refreshing, and I could stand to learn something from it! :)

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