Finally Winter Arrives

Last night we received almost two inches of snow. Today it mostly melted. It was wet snow and weighted down the hellebores and camellias to the ground nearly. No harm was done.

As many of you might already know we have not really had a real winter here.

 First time we had ice in the rain chains!!

 This is the chair I sit in to watch the bees come and go at the hive. It did not take long for the snow to vanish here.

 This Helleborus foetidus  was featured last week on this blog it was 3 foot tall last week.

 These hellebores were featured last week on this blog, see what they looked like last week.

The mid morning the sun was shining and the snow was melting off the roof. The rain chains were lit in the sun asI took this video sideways. Took about an hour as I learned to use Imovie and flipped the movie over and uploaded it to YouTube.

Thanks to all of you that signed (and Tweeted) the petition for the EPA to do the right thing and not allow a pesticide that might be harming the bee populations in the USA. Better science is needed to make sure this stuff is safe for future generations of honey bees.

The Pond is Back!!

Today it rained, currently my 5 gallon bucket rain gauge says over 4 inches! I was home working on a big quote to remodel an entire house and the rain came down in sheets here. Turned on the TV and the weather was on talking about a bad weather system, and for once we were in the middle of it. The rains came at least 3 times, the first rain was an 1 1/2 inches, the rest came later on in the day. Anyway the pond is back, never quite dried up.

 Still the pond could be up much higher, at least all the frogs and toads are safe now.

The rain chains were overflowing, one was nearly useless in this big rain. The video above is the rain chains next to the screened porch, it usually carries water fairly well. The water from this rain chain goes to a 300 gallon rain tote which was filled up last night before today's storm.

 This rain chain does not like a lot of water going down it at all. Pretty unhappy about it. The water basin drains to the pond. I dumped about 10 of those 5 gallon buckets into the drain to the pond. Even the garden path by the big deck was flooding and falling into the pond, I have never seen that happen before.

Here is an update on the rain. My buckets showed a 5 full inches (combined from the rains) after another storm late late night. So we are watered fairly well now and the pond is a little higher. No damage to the garden, I did see a few drowned bees at the hive entrance.

Rain Chain Update

We had the gutter guy out a few weeks ago and hooked up our gutters. Finally it rained on Saturday evening, perhaps a 1/4 inch not near enough to amount to much. Bad news is the gutter guy installed the gutters over the metal drip edge, so it leaked between the gutters in many places, I though he knew better??? I'm not a gutter guy yet common sense say if the water runs down the drip edge it would go between the gutter and drip edge, I'll have to have him back out to fix it.

This short video shows the rain chains in action, it rained this hard for about an hour ( three roofs fill into this gutter). You will notice a bit of splash from above, any debris that gets in the cups can mess them up a little. The other rain chain was a lot more splashier than this one. So an hour south of here got 1.5 inches of rain yesterday and today a big storm passed through and barely nicked us, we had only a few drops of rain. The rain totes filled about 100 gallons on the porch and maybe 50 gallons on the shed, I was hoping the overflow would be tested...

While cleaning out the rain chain this morning I found this female Blue Dasher dragonfly perched in the top cup. Guess this dragonfly is a better weatherman than me I brought in clothes off the line and used the dryer, the clothes would have dried just fine here today.

Rain Chains Installed!

Today I worked on the plumbing to hook up the rain chains to the 300 gallon rain tote and the drain that goes to the pond. It took about 4 hours to cut into the deck and install two simulated (fiberglass) concrete urns into the deck and drain. I used these urns because I could used an 3.5 inch hole saw to cut the hole into the bottom of the urn.

This photo was a test using the garden hose to see what the rain chains look like with water going down them. This is the tear drop cup rain chain, I really like the tear drop chain links on these. FYI all the chain links have been soldered together, these are nice quality rain chains from India.

This is the hammered cup rain chain, it has more cups that the other rain chain, they are closer together.. This side I hooked up to a drain that goes to our pond. The gutter man still has to install the gutters for us, the chains were just hung from a screw to line up the drains. It is cheaper to have the gutter guy make the gutters custom than my buying gutters at the big box store(bronze gutters are no longer available either) and installing them myself. Gutters and downspouts run $3 a foot installed around here. We used to line up 5 gallon buckets here to collect rain water.

Here is an update: The hammered cup rain chain is a complete failure in a heavy rain. I have a video of it during a downpour, the holes in the cups are too small making the water exit the first few cups, I have a video here.

This rain chain goes to the rain tote. A lot of water comes down here, half the screened porch, and one quarter of the living room roof drains here. We have had problems with water splashing on the door and seeping through the 2 piece threshold(never buy exterior doors at Lowes!). This was the first time in 35 years of construction I've seen an exterior door with a crappy threshold like this.  Please excuse the mess in the porch.

Here is a close up of the hammered cup rain chain.

This is the drain system under the deck that goes to the rain tote.

In case your wondering how the urns attached to the drain. I used a male adapter to attach the urn to the PVC pipe and cut the threads off a female adapter to make a threaded nut for the male adapter. I siliconed the male adapter to the urn and then screwed down the home made nut to hold it together securely.

Here is the 300 gallon rain tote under the screened porch. I still need to hook up the over flow pipe out of 2" PVC pipe.

The cost of creating this system FYI:

2 rain chains with shipping $200
2 urns  $75
1 300 gallon rain tote and delivery $95
3 inch PVC piping and fittings  $80
We spent $450 on this. My fees as a handyman installing the rain tote and running the plumbing would have been around $400 so unless your handy this could cost you around $850 to do. That is if you could get the deal we got on the rain tote and had a reasonable handyman.

We still have another 300 gallon rain tote to install under the work shop. This one will be built on a platform to raise it up a bit. The rain tote full of water will weight 2400 pounds so it will be strong and set on concrete pads.


On the recycling front, Meg found a computer desk and really nice barely used sled today curbside in front of some rich folks house while running down a deal from Craigslist.  The sled is like a Flexible Flyer, but not that brand, here in NC we might could use it ever few years, with the snows we get.

Today the brand new hose I purchased 3 weeks ago was left on at the house spigot and shut off with a timer at the other end. The hose burst partially next to the spigot and now needs a replacement female end..... The upper 90s here can mess up a hose pretty quick.

Happy Frogs, sad tomatoes and rescued goat

Tonight it is raining! First good rain in a while here. The frogs are at level 10 calling so happily! I'm sure we had next to no rain to amount to much in June, yet most days it reached 90 degrees.

 Here is one of the groups of tomatoes and peppers we grew from seed in our garden on June 23. Sprinkling them almost daily for some while. We left for 3 days and found deer had been grazing them a little. Right now we have lots of green 2 inch tomatoes, we both agreed these are some of the best organic tomato plants we have ever grown. Meg found some horn worms on a few of the front garden plants today as well. Meg finds caterpillars much better than me.

So to  keep the deer out of the garden I installed some 4 foot tall fencing, no not tall enough yet a deterrent hopefully. When I get time I'll set it up the fencing permanent with a gate and small arbor next to the bee hive.

 Goat rescue number two. This was a different goat than the last one I rescued. It was mid day on Monday and I figured his owners were at work. picked some wild blackberries as a reward. By dinner time another goat was stuck in the fence, they must have freed it, as it did not call long.

One thing about tonight's rain, could have filled the rain tote. I have the 300 gallon rain tote in place. The PVC piping in ready to install. I bought two 16 inch fake concrete decorative pots, that look old. I'm going to cut a hole in the bottom of the pots and run 3 inch PVC pipe through them one to fill the the rain tote, the other to a drain that empties into the pond. The rain chains should be here in the next day or so. Then the gutter guy will install gutters, I'll drop the rain chains into the decorative pots, it look nice on our big deck. And we can watch the rain chains from the windows or sit on the porch and enjoy both the visual and sounds they will make as it rains.

14 days so far over 90 degrees

Folks,
Last year we had over 70 days in the 90s. Here it is June 9 and we have had 14 days in the 90s already, today up to 98 degrees. Hot and dry, a good rain seems to disappear in hours here. We have had a wet spring, now spring is long gone with these 90 degree days at 14 days already.

The soil here has 1/2 inch cracks already, some years they open to a full inch. Today I returned the 100 garden hose I got at Costco, we unrolled it and it had 6- 8 serious kinks in it. So I went to Home Depot and got a kink free hose like my 5 year old ones that work great still. A new sprinkler and a timer so we can run the sprinkler and it'll turn itself off. We use a well and have 3 rain barrels that we use when we have the time to use them.

Finally we are getting gutters on the addition! Meg wants rain chains. I have a customer that I built a deck and screened porch for that has lily cup rain chains these are beautiful, but clog with debris quite quickly. I like these tear drop cups yet Meg has not looked at them yet. We have an oak tree over our deck so a rain chain that does not need cleaning weekly would be great. And we don't want it to splash water everywhere either as the door had leaked due to heavy rains splashing off the roof. The door leaked because we bought a door without a solid one piece threshold. We might just seal the door off and make into a fixed door lite.

Our rain chain install will be quite different as the chains will drop onto the deck into a custom made planter with a PVC drain going to a  rain barrel then over flowing to a drain pipe into the pond. I am looking for one of these 275 gallon square containers to have under the deck for our rain barrels.

Speaking of dry weather, here is a plant that remained in a 2 gallon pot neglected for over 10 years. One hardy day lily don't you think?

Also the Beaver Queen Pageant did raise the money it was hoping for $7028! Yeah for preserving wetlands!!