Rainfall Warning

That was the weather forecast for Friday night and Saturday.  Not much fun to be standing outside under a canopy trying to sell your wares at the farmers' market.  When Larry left for the market this morning, it was raining, and he went with rain gear and rubber boots.  I was at home to get ready for Sunday's market.

The first order of the day was to take the dogs for their morning run

Come on, can you hurry up and open this gate!

The first stop was Pride.  He was rather ticked that I forgot his apple, and was nosing the plastic bag I had my taken my camera out of.

Luna was making sure he didn't make any wrong moves.

So to make up for the lack of an apple, I let him out in the bush field where we start our walk.

On the way back, we met David bringing a load of manure, to start a new pile for next years garden.

Then it was time for me to pick the dahlias for the market.

There had been some pretty heavy rain overnight, and some of the dahlias were heavily weighed down.

The potatoes I had dug the evening before were washed clean on the top side.

I ended up with 8 buckets of dahlias and sunflowers out of that garden.
Here's the first three

And what's a garden without something to nibble on.  Gotta keep my strength up you know!

I am willing to share though.

And one dog just wanted to play.

Please, please, please throw this for me.

So I threw it over the fence so he had to run down to the end of the field to go through the gate.

He's smart enough to know to do that, but then figures why run all the way back that way.  It's just easier to pass the toy through the fence back to me.

But I had things to do, so Jake and Luna had to make their own fun

Maybe I'll just bury it, then that pesky Luna can't find it.

And back down by the house there were another 4 buckets of dahlias to pick.  Thankfully the rain had stopped, and it was actually quite pleasant.

Let's hope lots of people want flowers for their Thanksgiving tables!

The @#$%& Deck Project

Why is it that do-it-yourself projects seem so simple in theory, but when it comes to actually doing it, 'simple' seems to go out of the window.

Not that we are any stranger to doing it ourselves.  We built a large two story addition to our house, which included a dining room, vaulted family room, and garage, doing 99% of the work ourselves.  One thing we did figure out though was that things always took about three times as long as we thought they would.

We got the brochure for the decking stuff, read the website, watched the video on the website, and then got at it.

The basic idea was that you lay the vinyl out, then flip the first half back, put glue on the wood and the back of the vinyl, and let it dry to the tacky stage.  The last thing I had watched was the video, which showed Mr. "It's just that easy" Shel Busey putting the glue on the wood first, and then the fuzzy vinyl back.  So that is what we did.  Next thing the glue on the plywood is dryer than the tacky stage, okay, almost totally dry, and the glue on the vinyl is still at the wet stage. We leave it a bit longer, but we had neglected to weight the edge down (which is only mentioned in the brochure).  Come back, and the vinyl had started to roll up on itself.  Since the glue on the vinyl wasn't yet tacky enough, there now was glue on parts of the vinyl surface.  We get it rolled back out and weighted down with paint cans.  Now what?  So we get out the hair dryer, and get the stuff to the tacky stage. 

We flip it back over, and realize that there is quite a bit of glue in spots on the top of the vinyl, from it rolling up.  So we are getting the vinyl spread out and glued down, pushing the air bubbles out, and trying to wipe the glue off the top of the vinyl all at the same time.  Of course by now, the glue IS tacky, so won't wipe off, so we spend quite a bit of time trying to peel and roll the glue off.  Get that done as best we can.

Flip the second half of the vinyl back over the first half, get it glued up, this time doing the fabric first, which is what it actually what it said in the brochure, so at least it's tackiness and the glue on the plywood's tackiness were a bit more coordinated.  Get it spread out and glued down, but the edge down the middle of the deck refused to stay down.  We repeatedly pushed it down, and finally resorted to stapling it in a few places along the edge.  We had to tarp the whole deck up again, as the dew was starting to fall.

On Monday we kept watching the weather, and finally decided to have another go.  I pulled out the staples and the edge of the vinyl STILL was refusing to stay down.  I got on the phone to customer service.  When I told her what vinyl we were using, she said we should have been using the cold weather glue.  And in what set of instructions did it ever state that? Well not anywhere that we saw.  Then she said to use the glue that you use to stick the vinyl to the metal drip cap, which we did, and that seemed to do the job. 

We got the first half of the second sheet glued up and stuck down, and were about to start the second half when a few raindrops started to fall.

Whipped the tarps back over everything, and left it until Tuesday.

On Tuesday things seemed to go better.  The sun was shining, things seemed to stick down like they should, and we got the vinyl all glued down, the over lap seam glued together, and the vinyl glued up the wall.  Of course there is lots of finishing work to be done.  The vinyl has to be glued with a special glue to the drip cap, which is different to the glue that you use on the seam, which is different to the general glue for the main part of the deck.  Actually, on the video, they were gluing the overhang to the drip cap with the regular glue, but that didn't work for us. We got some of the edge glued down, and then Wednesday Larry got the rest of the edge done, other than the tricky bit at the end where it butts into the edge of the garage roof.

 

This is to remind us that, well.... there are no stairs.

So if the two border collies are barking at the back door to desperately get out, because they think there's something out there, well don't let them out that door.  Luna at least, would probably launch herself into space in the excitement of trying to beat Jake down the now non-existent stairs

And my sister got the honour of being the first one to sit out there and enjoy the sunshine.  She had wanted to do that the first morning she was here, but at least she got to sit out there right before I took her back to the airport Wednesday morning.

Suzanne, this is for you.  Another creature out sunbathing

And I'm trying to figure out why I got all the grey hair:(  She's not that much younger than me.

Today Larry got just about all the fiddly bits done, and he did a mighty fine job in the corner behind Luna, two photos back, where the deck and roof intersect.  We'll connect the old stairs back to the deck, and then probably spend most of the winter trying to decide on what kind of railing we like/want to spend all that money on.

And I'm thinking of sending a memo to the decking company, to ask them to get all their application instructions to jive with one another.

Wordless Wednesday

Fat and Crabby

On the way home from the farmers market yesterday, we stopped at the off-leash at Campbell Valley Park.  This is the seasonal off-leash, only open from October 1 to April 1, as the rest of the year it is leased out and is cut for hay or silage.

The main reason I stopped was to pick some crab apples

This year though the crab apple crop was rather thin, and a lot of the apples were scabby.

I figured I'd better take the dogs for a walk first though. 

I found a couple more old trees and picked a bag of regular sized apples.  The park was originally farmland, so there are quite a few old fruit trees scattered around.  I love walking in areas like this, it's like discovering little hidden treasures.

Some dogs went a little crazy, and found something disgusting to roll in.  That's exactly what happened the last time we were at the park.  She had to ride home in the back of the truck, and got hosed off when we got here.

Meredith dropped Larry off after visiting Grandma.

The dogs were laying nicely in the grass while I picked.  It's always fun to get them riled up by saying 'Where's Larry'.  Then they spotted him, and off they went.

It wasn't much of a haul compared to last year, when the tree was loaded.   We could see it glowing red from the road, and we walked away with four large pails full.  This year I'll only get a few batches of jelly. 

As we were heading back to our truck, a fellow showed up with two dogs.  A chunky lab, and the most overweight dog I've ever seen.  A rottweiler, or maybe a cross, it was so rotund it was hard to tell.  I don't think I would have been able to put my arms around it's body.   I said to Larry about it needed to lose 40 lbs, and he said 'only 40?', and he was right. 

When we got out to the road, we saw that they had arrived in a pickup truck.  But it looked like they didn't ride in the truck.  There was a metal utility trailer on the back, low to the ground, and the little ramp was down.  It appeared the dogs were tied in there.  Not surprising.  There was no way that dog could have jumped in the truck, and it would have been impossible to lift.  Well at least it was getting exercise, and I'm hoping it was on a weight loss program.

Diamonds in the Sun

These lovely Fall days usually start with some fog, but Thursday morning it burnt off fairly quickly.

Literally everthing is covered in water droplets....

...and spider webs

And the spider webs are covered in water too

It's a magical sparkling wonderland.

And we're not complaining!