Nothing like working the holidays

Jun12
by kevin on June 12, 2012 at 14:33 and modified on June 12, 2012. at 20:52
Posted In: gardening

There is nothing quite like working through your holidays. We took two weeks off, started a daily garden log of getting up at sunrise and working as long as we could, usually five or six hours, before it got too hot, we got too tired and broke for lunch.
In the afternoon it was other chores and projects in the shade or indoors.

It is unbelievable how long it takes to weed and degrass a flower bed. We have ten of various sizes in the front yard and it took all 14 days to finish them off… and actually, one of them is not yet done.
The five yards of cedar mulch we had disappeared. And here we thought it would last through the back yard beds as well.

Before

After


Today at least we have had a good rain.. 16mm so far, with a chance of a thunderstorm later tonight.
Then 5 solid days of sun.. good grass pulling weather!

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Transit of Venus 2012 June 05

Jun07
by kevin on June 7, 2012 at 08:22
Posted In: astronomy

The Transit of Venus 2012 has come and gone.
It was a great astronomical event. We had lots of equipment and things in general went well.
Some preliminary images:
Kim taking images with the Canon Powershot A495 camera.
Kevin taking images with the older Canon Powershot A540 camera.

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The Peppers are in

Jun05
by kim hay on June 5, 2012 at 10:30 and modified on June 5, 2012. at 10:32
Posted In: gardening, garlic

Today finished the planting of all the items started in the greenhouse. The peppers have been planted, the extra tomatoes from the plant sale, and the Batchelor buttons and marigolds are in the ground. Had to scurry to find room for all the peppers. They fought so hard to grow, they were being planted. Everything is full, and I cannot squeeze in another plant.

Some of the peppers where put in where lettuce varities did not come up. Replanted some radishes and lettuce to eat. Also replanted The Student-Parsnip, all the seed I had from FireFox farms (Robert & Carol), the first planting did not come up. Not uncommon for parsnip, as the germination rate is low.

Now, have to get ready for the Transit of Venus and gather up all the equipment. The clouds are moving in but they are cummulus, and moving at a pretty good rate. Weather prospects are good with some cloud, with more cloud overnight, with rain tomorrow.

Feels good to have all the plants in the ground. The Black Mustard plants were cut and turned over in vegie 5. Ordered more black mustard, but Richters did not send it, probably waiting for more themselves, may be too late to plant again this year. This is for bad nemitodes in the ground. This is a organism that effects garlic. We are being proactive, and planting it in the area, the garlic will go next year. Also, will dense plant more garlic next year.

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stupidity run amuck

Jun02
by kevin on June 2, 2012 at 07:31 and modified on June 2, 2012. at 07:35
Posted In: tech


Copyright board to charge for music at weddings, parades
The Canadian Press
Posted: Jun 1, 2012 9:33 AM ET

From
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/06/01/music-tariff-recorded-copyright-board.html

>Money can’t buy love — but if you want some great tunes playing at your >wedding, it’s going to cost you.

>The Copyright Board of Canada has certified new tariffs that apply to >recorded music used at live events including conventions, karaoke bars, ice >shows, fairs and, yes, weddings. The fees will be collected by a >not-for->profit called Re:Sound.
>The new tariffs apply to recorded music used at live events, including >conventions, karaoke bars, weddings and parades with floats playing >music.The new tariffs apply to recorded music used at live events, including >conventions, karaoke bars, weddings and parades with floats playing music. >(Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press)

>While the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada >(otherwise known as SOCAN) already collects money from many of these events >for the songwriters, Re:Sound will represent the record labels and >performers who contributed to the music.

Two words.. Screw you. This is so absolutely ridiculous and insanely stupid and in my humble opinion no better than a mafia shakedown.

Who is on this Copyright Board? Fire their asses.
The basic rationale.. music is bought once. Everyone gets paid. This simply forces you to pay and pay again.
Just say no!

One of the very few lawyers that I actually have respect for has been fighting for openness and fairness to consumer rights…
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

I suspect there will be some comments on this shortly.

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Summer Gardening Day 5

Jun01
by kevin on June 1, 2012 at 09:34
Posted In: gardening

Friday. Light rain. We need this but it is preventing more work in the gardens. We have completed two flower beds but still have another ten or more to go.
But we need the rain. And it will help a lot in the pulling of unwanted plant stuff out of the ground later on.

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Summer Gardening Day 4

Jun01
by kevin on June 1, 2012 at 09:31 and modified on June 12, 2012. at 20:48
Posted In: gardening

Thursday. Errands to run later in the day so all we had were about 3 hours to finish weeding the driveway north flower bed and cover it in a dozen or more wheelbarrel loads of mulch. Looks *much* better now.

Later on, more potato bug picking and squishing and another weeding pass through the garlic beds.

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Summer Gardening Day 3

Jun01
by kevin on June 1, 2012 at 09:30
Posted In: gardening

Another 5 hours working on pulling grass and weeds from the Driveway north flower bed. We did not complete that as the day was warm again.
In the vegetable patches we were pulling potato bugs, adults and eggs, and some minor weeding.

The 2nd adirondack chair was assembled and the new oasis garden sitting area was completed.

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Summer Gardening Day 2

May29
by kevin on May 29, 2012 at 19:41
Posted In: gardening

Another four hours outside early this morning.. not early enough as it got hot early and only went down to 23 deg overnight.

this is the before and after images of one of the flower beds.
2 hours to clear, another 1/2 hour to move the mulch to cover it, and some stones moved around and added to.

Most of the thunderstorms went around us today. We got maybe 5 minutes of heavy rain and thunder and it was over.

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Suummer gardening day 1

May29
by kevin on May 29, 2012 at 06:08 and modified on May 29, 2012. at 19:42
Posted In: gardening

This time of year is always a busy one in the garden. We are only able to work outside for the few cooler hours in the morning. By solar noon, it is just too hot and too high UV to work anymore.
So Monday May 28th, 2012 we started in on garden maintenace.

  • five yards of natural cedar mulch was delivered for the flower beds
  • Veg bed#5 unplanted sections were cultivate with the tiller and some leftover tomatos and marigolds from the plant sale were planted.
  • Veg bed #4east had overgrown with grass. That was all pulled out.
  • Veg Bed #4A,B,C were weeded. Potatos bugs are out, even though the potatos are just poking through the ground. Potatos Bugs are on the tomatos and laying eggs on grass blades.
  • The grape vine beds were weeded and watered. Only 5 survived the winter, 1 on the west bed, 4 n the east bed.
  • Various evergreen trees had the bottom limbs trimmed off, to allow for more air circulation, mower and trimmer access, and because in many cases had grown too far out and were blocking walkways.
  • The Lee Valley downspout diverters we have to take rainwater out of the downspout and into a hose for water barrels and stuff, actually brought along shingle particles as well. It will need a decanting bucket system to stop this.
  • Several tree mulch beds were weeded out front.
  • The earth berm protecting the veg bed #5 was added to, to stop water when the creek overflows.
  • The mailbox barrel was overgrown with grass, so that was all cut out and flowers were replanted yet again. They never seem to do too well what with the total sun and a tendency to dry out quickly.
  • The neighbourhood fox came wandering around in early evening right up against the back fence.
  • No raccoon visits for a couple of days, now that we take in the bird and hummingbird feeders in the late evening.
  • The only items left to plant in the ground are the 2nd set of pepper seedlings… The first set were eaten by a mouse that got into the greenhouse. Hoepfully they can go in this weekend.

    Tuesday we start in on the driveway flower beds, pulling out the grass and putting in a thick layer of mulch.

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    L&AHortSoc Plant Sale

    May27
    by kevin on May 27, 2012 at 09:43
    Posted In: gardening


    The Lennox and Addington Horticultural Society held it Annual Plant Sale on Saturday May 26th,2012. It is their biggest fundraiser of the year and for the first time it was held in downtown Napanee at the Farmers Market just in behind the Town Hall. L&A Hort is a volunteer not-for-profit garden club based out of Napanee.
    At least 15 members showed up with plants from their gardens or grown from seed and although it was a little confusing at time, it was a rousing success. Around lunch the prices were dropped in two for one deals and it was pretty busy throughtout the day. There were 20 other vendors set up at the Market and it kept pretty busy throughout the 9am to 2pm time.

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    L&AHortSoc meeting May 16th, 2012

    May22
    by kevin on May 22, 2012 at 11:12 and modified on May 23, 2012. at 13:33
    Posted In: gardening

    This being the summer and all, the May meeting of the Lennox and Addington Horticultural Society went on a garden field trip to Bloomfield Ontario, about 40 minutes out of Napanee in Prince Edward County, just west of Picton.

    It was nice to get out and see a flower garden and get ideas from it as well.
    We will have a few pictures here later on.

    Too bad we arrived around 6pm for a 6:30 tour start, all of the tourist stores had closed 🙁

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    Victoria Day weekend

    May22
    by kevin on May 22, 2012 at 11:10 and modified on May 23, 2012. at 13:37
    Posted In: astronomy, gardening

    It was a great Victoria Day long weekend. In some ways too short.. in other ways.. good that it did not last longer. If it did you would have more time to work on projects around the house.
    In any event, we finished off many projects waiting for this time off combined with nice weather, including more plantings in the garden, staining the exposed portion of decks, the creek footbridge, placing 150′ of deer fence around the gardens and much much more.

    It is now time to concentrate on the astronomy side of things, what with the Transit of Venus coming up in 14 days.

    We tested out a borrowed Meade Electronic Eyepiece and after figuring
    out that it needed a 9vdc battery, we got it connected to a composite
    video to USB converter (which installed its drivers for Windows 7 without any problem) and ran the video into handyavi software to attempt to capture some.
    It is a monochrome camera with a dial switch with brightness control.
    After trying to use it on both a Coronado solarmax and a thousand oaks
    filtered scope, we gave up without any usable images. Research after
    showed that it is the equivalent of a 4mm eyepiece. Very high
    magnification, much more difficult to focus, and on a non tracking
    scope, we could never get the sun centred in time before it moved out of
    alingment.

    The B&L SchmidtCass that we tried it on had a focal length of
    1200mm/4=x300!

    I think we will try again with the tracking Meade DS90 with a smaller FL
    of 800mm = x200!

    The endpoint of all of this is to get a complete video through a
    filtered scope of the Transit of Venus that is mostly standalone and can
    be viewed in realtime.

    These images are of a new self storing baader solar film filter design.

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