Rolled Roofing

I had never heard that term before, but I was talking to a pal and he suggested I use that to help seal my chicken coop roof. So, this past weekend, my wife was out and about and went to Lowe's. Since she was going, I asked her to check and see if they had this wonderful rolled roofing stuff. She came home with my rolled roofing and forgot to get the stuff she went for. Now that's a sign of a keeper! (My wife, not the rolled roofing...)

After I mowed my lawn (and having the muffler fall off, that had just got replaced..) I finished putting the roof on the coop. Rolled roofing is basically one gigantic shingle rolled up into a roll. You unroll and let the material expand and relax a bit, then cut it to the size you need. I cut 4 pieces of about 4 1/2 feet long, and nailed it down on the roof. As I was laying the roof down, the skies darkened, and decided to rain before I was finished. Luckily it stopped after 5 minutes and let me finish before it really started pouring down.

Now, when I return from my vacation next week, I will finish the fence, and buy some chickens! And, I PROMISE I'll try and get some more pictures up here. Just in case any of you are still interested in seeing the progress from the last pictures I posted.

See-Eye-Ay-Oh for now.

Gorgeous Growing Garden

The past few days have been cloudy and rainy. Not all day rain, but enough to make you wonder where the sun is this summer. I don't like it, but our garden does!

The pumpkin plants are growing fast and flowering. The squash plants are huge, but even with all the flowers, no fruit as of yet. I guess squash plants have both male and female flowers, so I'm hoping the flowers are mostly male and this is why the squash hasn't started to grow yet. I haven't looked close enough at the flowers to try and see if I can remember plant biology. (Pistils, stamens, etc. - Hey - guess I remember something!) Tomato plants are great. Lots of fruit growing. Plenty of green grape tomatoes and a few large 'big boy' tomatoes. Can't wait until they are ripe and ready. If our jalopenos, onion and cilantro are ready at the same time, PICO de GALLO is going to be great! Cilantro is actually flowering and huge, so we may have coriander from the seeds instead.

The sunflowers are growing taller, and so are the zinnias. Marigolds are bright and bushy. Wildflower mix of red white and blue are bigger as well - just no flowers on any but the marigolds.

It's pretty amazing to see everything literally grow right before your eyes. So, when the cloudy days and rain make me grumpy - I just have to remember all the good food that it is helping bring to my table!

Cool Spiderweb

This was taken a few days ago. The picture doesn't really do it justice. This is a spiderweb by a telephone pole. It was huge! The morning dew showed it just right - as long as the trees were in the background. As soon as I tried to get closer, and the sky was behind the web, you could no longer see the silky strands. You can click on the picture to see a larger version.

4th of July

Nothing much to report for yesterday's 4th. I hope every American had a wonderful and Patriotic day. It started off sunny here, but then slowly became grayer and darker. By fireworks time it was pouring. So, no fancy flashes of lights and sparks last night. I did more work on my chicken coop though while it was still nice outside! I'll post more pics later.

Garden Pictures

Since I was talking about our garden earlier, I thought I'd share a few pictures. I have plenty, but garden pictures aren't all that interesting to a lot of people. If you want to see more, just leave a comment!

See my lovely fence?? That was the quickie I put up to stop the varmint! Oh, and guess what the varmint was? A SQUIRREL!! We were upstairs looking out the window and we saw a squirrel in the garden noshing on the sunflower plants again. This was after I put the fence up. Oops! we knocked on the window and managed to get the squirrel to run away. As it turned to flee (ok, more like slowly saunter away), I saw why my wife thought it might have been something bigger. It had a HUGE bushy tail.

More pictures of the garden:




Here's my cheesy scarecrow and our corn rows, (No - it's not my hair style,) sunflowers and pumpkin mounds:




Hey - we got some squash growing too! Here's a big 'ol squash plant. My wife told me the flowers were a delicacy if you fry them up just right. (She's from the South - anything becomes a delicacy if it's fried just right!)





Don't have any picture of the banana peppers, but they sure are tasty!

Chicken Coop Part 2

I worked more on my chicken coop yesterday. I ran out of scrap pieces of plywood that I could use for the walls. But here are a few pictures for you to see what a piece of scrap coop looks like. HA!

In the beginning...




It all starts to come together:




The grand chicken entrance:




Grand entrance part 2:



The beginnings of a nesting box:




How do you get the eggs?




Ah ha! It opens!






All I need to do is make sure the roof is patched up good for leaks, finish the walls, and the nesting box. After that I just need CHICKENS!

MMMmmMmmMm! Fresh eggs!!

Chicken Coop Part 1

Yesterday was a beautiful day here in New Hampshire. The sun was out and the sky was a beautiful deep sky blue. The voluminous white clouds floated on by obscuring the bright light of the sun every once in awhile. Temperature's were in the 70's. It was a great day to start on my chicken coop!

I started by building a base for the chicken coop floor. Then I put the 4 'legs' on so the floor would be two feet above the ground. I took another base structure to put near the top for my roof. I did all this with a bunch of scrap wood I had gathered from various people looking to get rid of scrap lumber. After I got my main support structure up I started in on the walls and roof. I'll post pictures of my progress so you can see it getting put together. Today I hope to finish! I need to put some nesting boxes, a perch, and finish the walls and roof.

Next thing you know we'll be eating fresh eggs for breakfast and watching chickens run around. Our dog will go crazy! Maybe this will keep her from going across the stream to chase the neighbors chickens and goats!

HTML

Hyper-text Markup Language. What a weird name for a language. I prefer English better. In fact, I believe English should be the official language of the United States.

HTTP. Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol. With these two names, and knowing that they refer to accessing files that will show you things like this entry here before you, makes me wonder why the Internet isn't called Hyper-Text Fun Land, or HTFL.

And why does everything network related have so many initials? TCP/IP, FTP, IRC, DHCP, LAN, WAN, IT, MAP, DSL, etc. Couldn't things have been so much easier if they just made up 3 letter words to name all of these things? Like yav and igs, or jir, maybe kow? Than when someone asks what it means, you can say "Hey man, yav means yav. That's what it is." Just like you were some technology hippie guru.

I guess that's what's neat about language. Different for everyone.