{"id":871,"date":"2009-04-08T19:50:29","date_gmt":"2009-04-09T01:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dmentd.com\/?p=871"},"modified":"2009-04-08T22:33:41","modified_gmt":"2009-04-09T04:33:41","slug":"hammock-away-from-hammock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/hammock-away-from-hammock","title":{"rendered":"Hammock Away From Hammock."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sweets<\/strong><\/a> and I have been very busy these days, primarily on the weekends: working in the yard, making small improvements, doing some of the things on the long list of projects that we’ve wanted to accomplish around the house to make it more comfortable.\u00a0 We’ve had almost two months worth of weekends spent in the yard, enjoying the mild weather while getting dirty and exhausted (unfortunately, not that<\/em> way, you pervs).<\/p>\n

The garden is starting to shape up as we are planting a few more things in it.\u00a0 At this time there’s only about four different veggies in there, but that’s owing to the time of year, and the fact that we’re still learning how to start things from seed without killing them — most notably some of the herbs were left in the starter tray far to long, and they stayed too moist — live and learn.\u00a0 Our garlic is growing like there is no tomorrow, and the peas and beans are just starting to take off and climb their poles.\u00a0 Planted peanuts too, and they are growing fast!\u00a0 In about a month, we’ll be able to transplant our bell pepper and jalape\u00f1o seedlings into their containers and see where that goes.<\/p>\n

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I’ve seeded\/over-seeded the lawn with Argentine Bahia<\/strong><\/a> grass seed, but quizzically enough, it’s been too cold in the evenings for it the start germinating.\u00a0 Let me repeat that:\u00a0 It’s been too cold.\u00a0 In central Texas.\u00a0 During spring.\u00a0 For grass seed to germinate.\u00a0 *blink* *blink*<\/strong> At any rate, once the weather warms up at night, it ought to take off.<\/p>\n

Continued work on the kitchen cabinet doors.\u00a0 With Drew’s help (and his huge cache of tools) I built the new doors and assembled them, puttied all the nail holes and miter joints, sanded the living hell out of them and made them purdy, and stained and sealed them.\u00a0 Currently I need to make the solid panels to install into the lower doors, and soon enough will come the glass for the top ones, then I can install everything and mark that project off the list.<\/p>\n

Lastly, our hammock is finally usable again.\u00a0 At the apartment I had it strung up on the patio, and that worked nicely.\u00a0 Since we have no big trees to fasten our Yucatan-style hammock<\/strong><\/a> to in the back yard we opted to install a pair of 4″x6″ posts 2′ into the ground.\u00a0 Well, that proved to be more challenging than I anticipated.\u00a0 Welcome to Austin, where the ground is 6″ of soil, then limestone as deep as you care to go (as opposed to NOLA, where the ground is 6″ of soil then solid gray clay as deep as you care to go).\u00a0 Digging that out with a standard post-hole-digger took 2 hours, a lot of sweat, left Sweets covered in dirt (as she was scooping the loose soil\/stone out of the hole while laying flat on the ground), and\u00a0 left my hands sore for three days — but it makes for a sturdy post!\u00a0 We set the posts with concrete and let is dry for 24 hours.\u00a0 They seem to be sturdy as can be.\u00a0 Spent an hour the other evening under the shade of the trees, dappled sunlight playing across me, reading and listening to the bird chorus.\u00a0 I was more relaxed than I had been in months.<\/p>\n

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The house is continuing to feel more and more like home, and for that matter, so is Austin.\u00a0 It’s not that is hasn’t been “home”, but it’s finally seeping into my bones slowly but surely.\u00a0 It doesn’t hurt that I have a wonderful girl that is making it her home along with me, and I feel like I’m getting my life back again.<\/p>\n

Now, if we can just get Sweets a job that will be more than happy to get her a work visa, that would make things even better — that way we can stop worrying.\u00a0 At least she has her externship lined up already, so that’s one less thing to lose sleep over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sweets and I have been very busy these days, primarily on the weekends: working in the yard, making small improvements, doing some of the things on the long list of projects that we’ve wanted to accomplish around the house to make it more comfortable.\u00a0 We’ve had almost two months worth of weekends spent in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,7,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-domestica","category-house","category-pictures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":877,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions\/877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}