My Espalier Nectarine Tree

Espalier is a French word which refers to a growing technique for trees.  It comes from the Italian "spalliera" meaning to rest the shoulder against.  It's a good technique for growing fruit trees when space is limited.  When we went to George Washington's place at Mt. Vernon, he had a walled off garden area with several of these trees.  I started my nectarine tree two years ago.  Each year a new row is tied to the trestle.  As you can see I have two rows and I'm waiting for this spring to tie down the third row.

I know it's a bit ghetto, but it's my first.  One day it'll look like this:

Cityscape

Mamma said I haven't posted in awhile.  Yes, I've been lazy, but here's the first one of 2015.

Wifey and I went to New York a few years ago and she loved the place, especially all the lights and high rises.  So I brought New York to her, sort of.

We have a long cinder block wall that worked as a good back drop.  I took 1/8 inch rod, from a welding supply store, and bent it in the shape of buildings.  Then, with much patience, I hot glued a strand of LED cool white Christmas lights to the rods.  Lastly, I used anchors to attach the rods to the wall.

Hmmm, I lost my iPhone two weeks ago and all the pictures I took of the process.  Oh well.  Here's the  finished product (about 1/4 of what's going up).

Fig Update

It's been two months since I attempted to sprout the fig twigs. The two with roots in the last picture both died. I think because I planted them it soil that was too dense. I planted the others in a mixture of sand and peat moss to make it easier for the roots to expand. Here they are in their various stages. 

Mini Bathroom Remodel

We completed a semi-remodel of the kid's bathroom after they complained of shards of grout jabbing them in the feet from the old floor.  I had to rip up the old flooring, replace some of the subfloor and, while I was at it, ripped out the original sink/vanity and metal medicine cabinet.

I built the new sink/vanity from an abandoned piece of lumber and pallet I found on the side of the road.  The flooring is faux wood ceramic tile.  I built a wood shelf  into the wall to cover up the hole created after removing the medicine cabinet.

                       

The glow is from the angel's approval of the finished job.

We're Back

Henry's been under the weather so he hasn't been able to post for awhile, but he's back now.

                                 

My Baby Fig Trees

One month ago I cut 8 twigs off our fig tree in an attempt to have them sprout roots.  After a month in moist peat moss I discovered two of the twigs did sprout roots.  The other 6 are getting there, but probably have another week or two to go.  I'm going to plant these two in containers and see how they do.

Halloween 2014

So here we are at our yearly pirate ship for Halloween.  We spent two days setting up for the event.  We had a few props set up around the ship.  Here's one of the pirate treasure.  As you can see no skallywag has been able to make off with the booty.

Here's the drunk pirate lady drinking her grog.  We made her using a pond pump with tubing running up her arm.  We put clear tubing running from the mouth to her belly so you could see the grog flowing.  I took 3 yellow highlighters and squeezed all the juice out of them and mixed it with water.  That made the water fluorescent and much brighter than plain old water.

Here we have the captain steering the ship.  He's an original and has been with us since the second year (this being our tenth anniversary).  In addition, we have other pirates, one standing swinging his sword and one hanging off the plank trying to steal some jewels.  The hungry crocodile waiting for a tasty snack.

Here's another pirate in the cargo net sitting on boxes of TNT (yes we are aware TNT hadn't been invented during the time of real pirates) and holding a sword and grenade.

Another drunk pirate passed out neglecting his duty of manning the cannon.

A sign warning pirates, with a pirate hanging by a noose.  This pirate had some cool clothes, but while I was trying to distress his clothes with a butane torch, the clothes caught fire and burned his pants and most of his shirt off, also melting his rib cage.  Next time I'll take his clothes off first before I distress them.

Here's the completed scene.  We are waiting for it to get dark and have the trick-or-treaters show up.

The ship is 32 ft long, with a 25 ft tall mast.  The little dinghy in the foreground is "the bearded clam".  You can't see it in the picture, but my daughter drew a little clam with a pearl in its mouth....with a beard.

Lastly, here's a picture at night.  The cul-de-sac had people hanging around all night long.  Our neighbor told us we made it on the internet as one of the top ten places to trick or treat in Los Angeles. (Redtri.com), as well as google earth, pinned with a pumpkin.  We estimated we had 800-1000 kids come through this year.