I got lucky this weekend. We had a “polar vortex” sweep through the midwest, and lows well below freezing were predicted for my region overnight on Friday. Unfortunately, I don’t have any frost blankets, and my plants have almost all started leafing out, so I was extremely nervous. Luckily, Saturday morning, I woke up to a light frost on my neighbor’s roof and happy plants. The reminder is already in my todo list, I’ll be ordering frost blankets before the weather turns again this fall.
I saw the cleared out back yard for the first time Saturday as well. We hired our landscaper to do one big and several little jobs in the yard for us. First, we hired him to replace our wood fence. Secondly, We’d accumulated a large pile of debris in the back yard over the past 10 years and he agreed to haul it away. Lastly, he’s going to handle a bulk mulching of our new food hedge bed. This was an expensive project at 4k. I wish I could have DIY’d the work. Logistically we couldn’t. We have no truck and pandemic closures complicate things even more.
Once the rubbish was removed, the yard felt much larger and more open. Unfortunately clearing the pile revealed a new problem. The rubber tile floor of the patio undulates like a drunken turtles shell. It’s pretty wonky and we’ll need to fix it somehow, but it might be a project for down the road. It’s wishful thinking to plan on using it casually this summer, but I’ll put the table on it and see what happens. Between a recent toilet replacement and the yard repairs currently in progress, the coffers look pretty bare for home improvements.
Aquaponics Update
I’m officially out of the trout business for 2020. I had a sudden unexpected die off in the trout tank. I moved the surviving fingerlings to the 55-gallon tank with the Koi as an emergency measure, and they seemed to do well. They ate and seemed to do well for several days, but I went downstairs on Wednesday and they’d all vanished.
I started assembling the first phase of the stock tank pond only to discover two significant issues. First, we didn’t have any Teflon tape on the drain plug, so that needs repairing. I also didn’t have any filter media for the large canister filter I’ll be putting on the tank. We picked up lava rock as a filter media from Home Depot, and I have the Teflon tape arriving by EOW, so I hope to fill the tank this week.
Parts started arriving for the bedroom shrimp tank. I’ll begin documenting that project this week.