Where the time goes ...

Wow, it has been since September since I posted.

Yikes...well, I guess, though, that makes some sense...you see, we've been dragged away from normality by a few things, so it happens. Here are some updates...

First, at the end of September, we got into a serious wreck on the interstate in N.W. Indiana, heading off to the apple orchard. Fortunately, none of us were hurt, but our Altima sure got hurt pretty badly. After wrestling with the other driver's insurance and her own inability to get a statement in, we were found completely fault-free (which we'd figured), and all was paid for. But this took until the week of freakin' Thanksgiving to get sorted out. With that potential budget drain over our heads, we had to hold back on our spending, just in case.

Next, we bid adieu to my roommate and friend of the last 11 years, my dog, Kazak. His hips had started to really go bad on him, and his appetite was also slipping. On Dec. 7 (the day that will live in infamy, which is the only reason I'll remember that was the day that this happened too), he fell down the back stairs and couldn't get up. His liver, it turns out, had also begun to give out on him. The vet believed he had liver cancer as well, and that it was just a matter of time. That day, at the vet, after carrying him to the car and into the vet, I decided to have him put down. R.I.P., my friend. I know you will.

Then, of course, the holidays always get in the way of things. But, we've moved on since the holidays -- not only have we rescued a young pup from Chicago Canine Rescue Foundation (Pillsbury, or Pils, as I call him), but we also had a carpenter come out and finally take care of that stupid, leaky skylight in the bathroom ceiling. It was a dumb idea by some previous owner -- actually, a great idea, just piss-poor execution...or maybe not. So, here are a bunch of before pictures, to give you an idea of what it was... 

And here is an "after" shot of the roof patched up.

What does this mean? Well, more or less, "We're back in business, baby!"

Stay tuned for my next post...which follows up on these developments, of course!

It's a butterfly garden party...

Butterfly garden party 8/31/2011
Originally uploaded by southsideandy

...and apparently, had I not taken the day off and stumbled upon it, I wouldn't have even known that the butterflies were abundant on the butterfly bush today. While assembling my sons' swingset, I'd look over every now and then, and I counted no fewer than 6-7 Monarchs at one time, and there are at least two yellow swallowtails enjoying the flowers of the butterfly bush. It truly is magical.

Then, later, I took a good look at my swamp milkweed plant, wondering if the added Monarch population could be tied to the addition and growth of that plant since last year. Well, I found a Monarch caterpillar, chewing away on one of the seed pods. So damned cool! I love when nature works out well in my urban garden. I've never seen that many butterflies in one place together other than at the zoo's butterfly tent every year.

Now, to get some hummingbirds to come through...ha!

Tomorrow, the roofing company comes to replace the garage roof. It'll be nice to get that done and out of the way. Hopefully it will be simple and straightforward, with no issues. We'll see how it goes. I'll post pictures of the new roof and maybe some of the work-in-progress. We'll see how it goes.

Final corn harvest...

Garden Aug. 21, 2011
Originally uploaded by southsideandy

Here are the last nine ears of corn from my garden...what a great year for the corn. It did so well. I'm thrilled, especially given that I got nothing last year.

I had to cut down my tomato plants because many of the tomatoes had split, and the whole bed was infested with flies. Maybe they'll grow more before the season is over, we'll see. But I'm not hopeful.

I also had to cut back the cucumber plants, because they were trying to grow on the roof of the garage. In the process I found a few really large, really nicely formed cucumbers.

I'm getting some sweet banana peppers, so that's good. But the red and orange bells are still not really producing. Ah well, you win some and lose some, I guess.

Lastly, I've got a boatload of carrots that I'll need to start harvesting -- good thing I like carrots...hopefully Nicky does too, as I'm probably going to process some of them into baby food. :)

And there's more where that came from ...

success with corn!.jpg
Originally uploaded by southsideandy

Having had no success last year with the corn stalks I planted, I wasn't sure when, exactly, I was supposed to pick my corn this year, which is doing really, really well -- many ears, growing nicely, on many stalks.

So Friday, I decided to pick the biggest one and cross my fingers...and this picture is what I got -- AWESOME! A little dry at the top, but I cut that part off and had a nice-sized cob.

So, our block party was Saturday, and I decided to pick more and serve them up...it was delicious and awesome! There are quite a few ears left on the stalks, so I'm really psyched about it. Obviously.

In other garden news, I picked about 16 cucumbers last week too...now the plants, which are growing like mad (trying to bridge the gap between the arbor and the garage, to grow up on the garage roof), are in "rebuilding" mode, growing a few smaller cukes, but it will be awhile before they're ready.

I'm losing my Big Boy tomato plant (it's dying back, drying out, and I'm not sure why), but it's producing nice tomatoes on its way out, so I'm OK with that. The cherry tomato plants are producing as expected, but the problem has been tomatoes splitting while they're orange (rather than red), which just becomes waste. Nonetheless, the two plants are producing really well, and A.J. of course loves going back there and picking the tomatoes.

The onions were a little more of a success this year than last -- got a few decent-sized ones, and a bunch are still in the ground.

Carrots are still growing. I've harvested a few, but am waiting on the rest for now.

And, sadly, the three pepper plants I bought have been tremendously disappointing from a fruit production standpoint. I've gotten ONE pepper off all three, even though they're growing quickly and large. I haven't even had flower production much, to be honest. Maybe it's been the rain or humidity or both, but I thought the heat would really bring out the peppers...so far, no such luck.

Lastly, the strawberry plants I put in the planters are growing like mad as well...with a few strawberries here and there for the picking. If they survive the winter in the containers, we should have a bonanza of strawberries next year, I suspect.

Corn capacitor, um....corning...

pollinating beginning.jpg
Originally uploaded by southsideandy

Here's a shot of the corn stalks, with pollination getting underway about a day or two ago. More of the tassels have opened up since, and I'm really, really hoping that we get some corn this year. Last year, I had half as many stalks (really fewer than that, because some didn't even sprout), so I'm hoping that this year, with twice as many stalks I'll have more corn. I have silks on a few plants, but I had a couple silks last year too. So we shall see.

The rest of the garden's doing well, for the most part. Carrots, growing nicely; onions, growing OK...taste great, but still kind of on the small-ish side; Big Boy tomatoes, going well; Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, going nuts as usual; all three pepper plants are growing well, but I only have one pepper to show for it at the moment; both cucumber plants are growing like WEEDS, so I'm going to have an overabundance of cucumbers I think. The only plant that didn't do well was the tiny Yellow Pear tomato plant, which dried out no matter how much I watered it. So I pulled it the other day...I got some Swiss Chard seed from One Seed Chicago (www.oneseedchicago.com) because they wanted to use one of my older chard pictures -- I hadn't planned on growing any chard this year, but maybe I'll drop a few seeds in the spot where the yellow pear tomato plant was and see if I get anything by the winter. We'll see.

Otherwise, I'm hoping to schedule the roofer to come out and replace the garage roof, and also to give us an estimate (and probably schedule time) to replace the damned leaky, incorrectly installed by the P.O., bathroom skylight with solid roof. That should be interesting, as it basically will wipe our "master" bathroom upstairs out of commission for a bit (and will create more work for us, in the end). But, it's gotta be done. The leaks are getting worse, not better.

And, of course, there remains the loads of backyard work that needs to be done, starting with replacing the sidewalks and adding a concrete pad next to the garage by the alley. Still worried about how the hell much concrete work will cost...and kinda scared. :) Any of you Chicagoans who have had concrete work done lately, I'm taking recommendations (and any information on how much the going rate for concrete work is around here nowadays).

"You picked the hottest day of the year..."

IMG00468-20110702-1250.jpg
Originally uploaded by southsideandy

Yes, yes I did. Well, my buddy Luis came over this morning to help me get further with the re-fascia-ing and re-soffit-ing of the garage. My brother Eddie and I did the north face and soffit, and Eddie tore down the rotted fascia and soffit on the east side of the garage last week. I put an additional coat of paint on the north fascia and a single coat on that soffit yesterday, then went to get the lumber for the rest of the garage.
First big score was that standard lumber was on sale at Menards for some ridiculously cheap price...so that was huge.
So, despite feeling like Ted Stryker (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuc8uWMdaDg) for much of the day because of the heat and humidity, we were able to get the entire stretch of fascia up for these two sides.
The soffit on the alley side actually is the first run of soffit on the garage that is NOT rotted and is in pretty good shape, so that was another huge score -- we left it up and intact, with the exception of a piece near the west corner.
Tomorrow, when it's supposed to be a little less hot and humid, I'll head out again and try to paint these two sides and possibly put up the east soffit.
Then, the west face of the garage becomes the issue. I put up a gutter (haphazardly, but it's there) years ago to stop runoff from bombarding my raised garden beds and to collect rainwater for my rainbarrel. At the end of the day, because I'm lazy (even though I love DIY work), I'm hoping against hope that it's in great shape and that I can either leave the soffit up or leave both fascia and soffit. But we'll see...I'm sure I'm not so lucky.
Then, finally, I can get the roofer out here to replace the roof.

New fascia and soffit ... on one side ...

IMG00466-20110625-1646.jpg
Originally uploaded by southsideandy

Well, my bro Eddie came over to help me rip down what was left of the soffit and fascia on this side of the garage...and let me tell you how brittle it was...quite brittle. For the most part the area closest to the camera in this picture was like paper...which I inhaled quite a bit of...oops. I was hacking up something fierce after we bashed out a few of the soffit boards. Yet, too lazy to go inside and get a mask...as Eddie and I joked, the disintegrating soffit wasn't going to give us cancer any more than our Mom's smoking for our entire lives would. We just kept at it.

The other end was a little more solid, but we got it down, no problem. Then, Eddie went around the corner in this picture and pulled the fascia and soffit off the east side of the garage...so now we have a gaping hole on that side of the garage.

A couple things of note...we had a blast tying two 4x8 plywood boards to the top of the Equinox with pathetic twine, since Menards, apparently, will not cut a plywood board in half for you. That's because they can charge twice as much for the 4x4 plywood boards -- assholes. Had I not wanted to get this job done sooner than later, I would have taken my business elsewhere. So we had to strap the 4x8 boards to the top of the Equinox and drive about 25 mph home through Edgebrook, Jeff Park, Forest Glen, Portage Park, etc. It was so much fun, we stopped at Dairy Queen on the way back to grab lunch.

Secondly, thankfully, the dozen or so yellowjacket nests we found were abandoned, except for one, which was only in its infancy, so there was only one yellowjacket hanging around by it. Fortunately Eddie was not stung when he ripped the fascia off it.

So now I have to put up the new boards on the east side and then rip and replace the south (alley) side and west side, which has a gutter on it (protecting my garden). Should be tons o' fun.

But at least this looks nicer (though not spectacular) and gets us one step closer to erasing any signs that there was a broken hot tub and piss-poorly built "carport" over it. Step by step.