Garden Update Part II: The Good the Bad and a Lot of Ugly

...Yes, a leaf blower is the gardening equivalent of vaping but it does make cleaning up faster. Don’t worry, I leave the leaves in place to enrich the soil. The leaf blower just helps me clear the hardscaping. There’s actually a nice brick patio under the weeds and clutter here. Ugh, more junk. Here’s the nice new patio the Haynes landscaping folks built. The adobe oven is under a blue tarp. Blue tarps are the architectural equivalent of a comb ove...

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In the Gutter

...over the damned up gutters. Two simple bits of technology can make gutter cleaning easier. We have inexpensive strainer baskets made out of 1/4 inch hardware cloth in each of the downspouts to keep them from clogging up. Some may wish to consider leaf guards which run along the top of the gutter to keep out leaves and other debris. The problem with leaf guards is that in order to clean out your gutters you must tediously remove the guards along t...

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Closed vs. Open Floor Plans

...en had a room just for preparing flowers and a kitchen devoted entirely to cleaning game shot from a balcony off the second story (the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills!). The “out of sight, out of mind” servant is one of the chief arguments used for the open floor plan: that is, that an open floor plan liberates the cook (often the woman of the house) from the servant role. But I’m not so sure. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to hide the mess and...

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Vertical Skunks

...I’m going to celebrate our labor day weekend by laboring in the wood shop and not in front of a computer. Links and posts will be back soon. In the meantime, please ponder this clip art courtesy of a local chimney cleaning concern....

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