Autumn Coatsville Color
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Gardening
4th of July Show
Back to Utah
Re: Spring. Yes.
Orb-it!
Coatsville Colors
Service Berry 
Wisteria 
Crabapple 
Kwanzan Cherry 
Miss Kim Lilac 
I turned the sprinklers off two weeks ago with our first hard freeze. It has rained twice since; about an inch each week. About 15% of total annual rainfall. 
Coral Bells 
3 new mini-roses from a big-box store fall clearance. 
Our Daffodils are making questionable decisions. Pasque flowers are blooming around the neighborhood as well. (clues to disaster) 
Pond water is mid-40’s and switched over to winter system. The fish will go unfed til Spring when the water temps rise back above 50 degrees. 
A sea of super-tall grasses. 
The “Yucca” Dasylirion Wheeleri (Desert Spoon) is nearly as tall as the “weather vane” tail. One more year and I’ll have to reconfigure the lower plates. 
The Service Berry went in two years ago. So far so good. 
Xander’s winter arborium. 
The deck’s plants moved back in to the sunroom back before the freeze…
More whatevers, now in yellow and red, no pumpkin flavor available.
The backyard Ash Tree is popping gold. 
E’s shot here is swirling as a Van Gogh. 
The fall light at this latitude magically backlights everything all day long. 
The Ash was mostly green when we arrived, then we had a frost and she got things changing. 
A few days later and her green is nearly gone for gold. 
The hillsides are putting on a sunset show under a cloudless sky. 
We head up the hillside to shift more water to the corral/yard, and continue on for a little hike. 
This is the head of the coulee for the house spring. The bear has been living here all fall with a bumper-crop of choke-cherries, old logs to grub, and a springbox full of cold clear water. At the top of the forest there is a shady glade of sweet bright grasses, a sign of the spring water beneath. The bear has decorated the green carpet with a random and thorough design of novelty-large berry-scat. 
Nora takes the lead upon spotting the ranch house down the valley. 
The ladies make long afternoon shadows in the glowing landscape. 
E has to get back to the virtual office. 
It has been July/Aug temps of 75+ for nearly two weeks, with dry winds; and mystery smoke probably from one of the summers nearby fires which are officially out, though still smoldering. 
I got around to cleaning out this center bay of the garage and discovered that the support pillar at left was rotten. 
The wooden framing on the concrete slab has rotted away, and the bottoms of the support pillars are rotten as well. This is why none of the doors have ever worked quite right; it has been on the path to ruin for at least 30 years. 
I’ve gathered all the pressure treated wood remnants, and am pretty sure I can come up with a solution without having to drive the 80 mile trip to town. 
Pretty good. 
The door swings up and is in the way, so I can’t lift straight up. I come up with this wrong answer. The wall lifts and travels toward the jack binding the jack in place when lowered. 
At least it settled part way onto the new wooden support, though it is part way off the concrete and far out of position. 
I rig up the come-a-long and pull the wall back to position. 
Under tension and the jack can come free. 
I remove my bad idea, and realize I’ll have to span a 2×4 on the inside across the wall to hold a ratchet strap that will tie to the truck to pull the wall back out. Then I’ll set the jack under the opening for the rolling door next to the column. This should float everything up and allow me to adjust position before lowering down onto the new support structure. 
Worked. 
The concrete has a scrim of dirt, but the board is set clean to the concrete. 
The third layer of thick old salvage plank was needed to make up for more rot in the uprights. They split, but are toed in place and sturdy. 
After our singular run to town for all things; there are blue-screws for pinning it to the concrete, more rot and part of the split support salvage are replaced with 2×4 at R, the board at L helps hold the old upright together as it was compromised by the spring tension. 
Also, a faceplate of pressure treated 1×6. 
The door opens easily and square, and the big rolling door to L is a breeze to manage now as well. 
All this cleaning and fixing was to make a spot to bring in log sections for future firewood- 
An old wagon axle/wheels are under the tarp, with a welder and odds and ends. Bisecting the two bays of the garage is a stash of old salvage lumber. 
The big bay can fit a full size truck, or hang all of Rodney’s game during hunting season. 
All good from the inside. 
I scraped and painted this a few years back. It could use some redux- but there are 3 other sides… 
A wall length of wild rosebush leads to a bundle of wire anchored by the biggest rosebush of the lot. I have to use the come-a-long to pull the ball of fencing wire til I can cut away the roots of the bush. 
Then the pickaxe clears down to the cement footing. And take note of the scrub tree at the corner. 
The sawzall and I decide the rangy scrub has overgrown the corner for too long. 
Plus, it is one less place for errant cows to hide. 
I have a length of webbing under the stack, and once it is about 3x this big I’ll put a towing chain over the top and fix it to the truck and drag it over the spent woodpile in a near pasture. 
If E and Nora were cows, we could easily push them sans bushes. 
The garage is feeling much better, inside and out. 
Ash leaves burrowing into the long grass. Time to mow. 
A short mow for fall. 
Now all the leaves sit on top. 
E and I set up lawn chairs and keep the tree company. 
I start the short fall mow out front. 
This bit was all scarified with the Sun Joe three weeks ago- it was as far as the extension cord would reach. 
Even cut short, it is looking good! 
Here is three weeks of growth, and the short cut line. 
Out beyond the cord reach, here is the same cut line. Not so good. 
Looking straight down at the unscarified lawn. 
I brought up a 50 foot 10amp cord as a first leg to the 100 foot 12 amp cord, and could finish scarifying the entire yard. I removed hundreds of pounds of bound up mulch. 
Short mowed and scarified. 
The boss makes a close inspection. Good enough to poop on.
Building Better for Bunnies.
This gizmo has been on my radar for awhile. They were unavailable for most of the summer, but finally I could order one from the Big-Box store while in SLC. I had it sent to the Great Falls Big-Box a week before we headed back up, and it picked it up after a week here. 
It is a SunJoe scarifier and dethatcher. I’m using the scarifier blades, which cuts through the thick layer of thatch/moss/detritus all the way to soil. This spring I dethatched with the mower springbar (going through 5 springs), pulling vast amounts of old lawn/leaves- that was good prep for this next step of penetrating the surface. 
Setup is idiot proof. Lucky me. 
The essential factor is the extension cord. For 100 feet of cord, it must be a 12 gauge cord as it runs at 1500 watts. 100 feet the maximum range, but the yard is bigger than that. Legging another cord drops the amperage by 50% and fries the motor/overheats the cord/ruins the plug/throws the breaker. 150 feet of 10 gauge cord might work, but costs nearly double the unit itself. 
The little bag fills up with heavy debris in no time at all, and I dump it into the yard wagon. The wagon fills quickly and E trundles it off for dumping. I scarify the front, back, and can reach half way to the lilacs to the South. Then I overseed with a drought tolerant mix, lay on a fertilizer mix, then head up for a day’s work of improving the springbox up the mountain that feeds the yard water for the waterbirds. 
Cows on the mooooooove. Dave brings up mash from the local brewery, and the cows know it is beer-thirty. 
last night’s Quiddler Poem: Your Covid Quota
It was as DEATH TO LET HER WED / that USER, that TOE ROT / that GAZE into the LOO and never AIR IT / THINE ACE lost to class FEES for CLAY / as one might sip LAWN DRINK by the PINT / using a HAIRY GRATER to strain out the FLIES / your MOOD-CUBE could not MOP up the RUN / the over-run on your COVID QUOTA.
Utah Desert Xeriscape Garden
Coatsville Kaleidoscopic
DangerHart 