8/20/13

How’s that for an uninspired title?  But it’s too much work to make this fit a theme, so “post for today” will have to do.

Having finished for now with the deck (though I’m worried that the treatment may be inadequate and if the level of worry gets high enough will be back at it soon), I’m moving on to house matters.  However, so far that has not extended to unpacking more boxes–I’m still sidling past boxes in kitchen and dining room that need to be dealt with in the relatively near term.

HOWEVER.  I’m arranging for big-ticket items–heat and electricity.  Given the choice of new oil furnace for $3800, or heat pump for $7200, I’m going for the heat pump.  Not only will it eventually pay for the difference in lower operating costs (one-fourth the cost of oil, according to the heat guy, who I really like), but it gets me AC as well as heat, which to my surprise I could actually have used a few times this past week or two.  I can handle heat in the low 80s if there’s a breeze (like now), but there have been some days with no wind at all and very high humidity–positively muggy.  I’ve been in worse–heck, I went to college in Ohio in the summer back in the day, and I was in Ghana for three years–but still, a touch of AC would have been nice here a couple of times.  The heat pump is supposed to be going in on Thursday–it won’t be operative yet because of electrical work, but at least the process will be started.

This morning the electrician showed up–I like him too.  He was recommended by the heat guy–they seem to have a mutual admiration society going, but I can see why, they both seem like really good guys.  He showed up around 8:30 and I wasn’t expecting him until ten (probably my misunderstanding or memory), so I was still in PJs and bathrobe.  I pointed him at things in the basement and ran upstairs to dress.  He looked at things both inside and out, and we talked about what really needed to get done and what could be decided later.  The big ticket item, apparently, is “upgrading the service”, which is what he called the process of putting it all on one box of circuit breakers.  It will also involve moving the line to the house, which is not OK where it is (I can reach out and grab it–not that I have, some of it is not even covered with insulation–from one of the upstairs bedroom windows) and putting in a new meter.  Which will get the power company involved.  The way Casey (the electrician) talked about the power company reminded me of the the way we all used to talk about the phone company back in the day of AT&T’s monopoly.  Apparently they are putting meters ON THE FRONTS OF HOUSES, which outrages me.  They are ugly and totally will detract from aesthetics and therefore property value.  I am hoping to persuade the power company guy that just around the corner will be as good or better, but we’ll see.  In any case it means rest of the electrical work can’t begin until the power company comes and does what they have to do, so the heat pump won’t be operational for a few more weeks.

Anyway, in the hopes of making the preferred place for the meter look attractive to the power guy, I needed to whack back what I had been thinking of as a bush but now think is/was a smallish myrtle tree.  I started whacking away, and ended up basically taking it out–except I’m sure it will grow back from the stump.  Here’s where it was (the heat guy will remove the oil tank in case you’re curious). . .

And here’s where it is.

 

The tools I bought back in Marina–reciprocating saw, loppers–both came in very handy in this process.  I was glad I already had them–it would have delayed me a day or two while I figured out what tools I needed and then got them otherwise, and I prefer instant gratification.

So having gotten started with the whacking, I decided to carry on.  I’d been planning to whack back this hedge

so moved on to it (you can see where I started).  It now looks like this.

 

I may have whacked too much, and it belatedly occurred to me that whacking away that much shade in the middle of August may not have been the brightest thing I’ve ever done, but the thing about whacking in Oregon–it’ll grow back.  It’s also possible I should have whacked even lower.  Only time will tell.  I’m not quite finished, but the sun got too hot for me–I’ll finish that bit on the right in the morning.

Finally–there’s this old Japanese maple tree that I had thought was dead and then saw new growth on toward the end of last summer.  The new growth was still there when I got here this year, so I figured as long as I was whacking I might as well take off the dead wood.  Here is the result.

 

I’m hoping it will flourish now, but we’ll see.  Some of the new growth looks like it’s in the process of dying, but it’s the part near the hedge that I’m whacking back, so if the problem was it needed more sun, it’ll have that now and maybe it’ll be OK.

The issue now is disposing of all the stuff that got whacked off.  I may just haul it out to the gulch and toss it in.  But I also have to take a load of trash and recycling to the dump at some point–it’s all piling up on me from the unpacking process, and I need to get some stuff out of the house so I can see what’s here–so I may look into hauling the yard waste up there too.

Enough for now.  I need to shower so I can go see the settee I ordered and decide whether to take it or switch to a couch.  In a few weeks this place may actually look like a civilized home.  If I can just get all the boxes either unpacked or stowed away in storage.  And finish the whacking, and weeding.