Cedar and spruce seedlings are thirsty their first few months, so keeping track of local rainfall is a requirement this time of year. When Nature doesn’t provide the only alternative is the “water wagon”, a 30 gal. tank and dispensing hose strapped to the bed of our Gator. The Gator is the Bluecircle’s all-purpose “go-fer cart” (my wive wanted a golf cart & I misunderstood ), tool carrier and coffee holder.
Perhaps carrying this weather-watching to extreme, the Bluecircle now has its own weather station “East Paw Paw Lake” posting to the Wunderground family of web sites. Since just graphing the rainfall and wind speed wasn’t quite enough we added a webcam view of Paw Paw Lake. An updated link to the cam brings up a 24-hr recording of its images. The camera location looks west above Fairview Beach and shows parts of Bowe’s Landing and the south shore of the main body of the lake. The changing wind conditions from day to day are reflected by the waves, or lack thereof when there’s no wind to watch.
Monthly Archives: May 2015
Spruce flowers above, garden labyrinth below
Norway Spruce flowers, early May
Last week construction of a small garden labyrinth topped the active list of Bluecircle projects. The old Norway spruce over the site was in full bloom and every breeze carried a smoke-like puff of pine pollen to bless the work.
First a compass was used to place the labyrinth entry due east of the center point. A tape measure and spray marking paint were used to lay out 6 concentric circles (radius = 50, 74, 98, 122, 146, 170 in.) and then a 24-inch string attached to the spray can was used to mark the turns connecting the circles. The sod along both sides of the marked circles and turns was cut with a gas-powered edging tool. The grass strip this created was discarded and replaced with half-round 4-inch plastic drainage tile. Landscape staples were used to anchor the tile and keep it in place. Finally about a ton of 2-inch river rock was placed in the tile to complete the project. The total cost for tool rental, two 100 ft. rolls of drain tile (cut with a saber saw at 12:00 and 6:00 to make the half-round tile) and the stone was approximately $130.
30-foot garden labyrinth laid with river rock
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