Just in Time Weekend

On Friday evening I pressed onward to make a new software release.  I did get it done but didn't leave until 1am instead of my usual midnight.  I still got home in time to re-program the Rainbird system not to water my trees on Saturday at 3am.  Since it waters twice on Thursday, early morning and evening, a re-watering of the trees wouldn't make sense until Sunday at 3am, just over two days later.

On Saturday afternoon I hauled 6 bags of topsoil and one bag of sand from the driveway (where I had hurriedly stashed them on Thursday night, hidden just barely behind the trash cans) to Palmhurst for safe storage.  I also hauled several Xeripave pavers to Palmhurst.  The pavers I had placed temporarily on the driveway were forcing me to leave the trash and recycling cans pushed way out from the garage door, which wouldn't be good for my end-of-the-month party during which one guest likes to park in the driveway.

Then, I pruned the Viburnum near the northwest corner of the back yard because it was looking waterlogged and prone to fungus.  It had several branches on the ground, many rotten leaves on the ground, and there was no good ventilation underneath.  I cut back the branches and leaves so the ground is visible from all sides and no leaves are touching the ground.  I cut off some of the yellowed leaves.  On Monday afternoon it was looking very nice again, so I think I did the right thing.

I also put on my full face respirator and swept the garage, which had gotten very dusty during the installation of the Rainbird controller (much of the dust being nasty sheetrock dust from cutting the hole in the wall) and hadn't been swept in about 6 months anyway.

Looking at the clouds I checked the forecast and decided to close the doors to Lyndhurst.

I had been planning to do more garden work this weekend, but on Friday evening I decided instead to see two plays that a friend had told me about, so after getting up and  ordering tickets online on Saturday afternoon around 3pm, there wasn't much time.  I just barely got to the Jump Start theater to watch the play The Importance of Being Earnest at the 8pm showtime.  Near the end of the play, an intense thunderstorm started.  It was still an intense downpour when the play let out, so I holed up in the nearby brewpub until midnight, when there was a three hour break in the rain.  At 3am the rain started in force again, ulimately dropping more than 1.5 inches.  So it turned out to have been very wise and timely to have done all the things I did, otherwise I'd have had soggy topsoil, wet pavers needing a few more days to dry out, a sticky garage floor, and a rotten viburnum surrounded by mud.

The rain came just in time, too.  During the great tree planting on the previous Thursday, I had been hoping for promised rain that weekend but none had arrived.  So now, mid August, and finally my trees got a good raining.  Now it looks really good that all of them, with only the possible exception of the sickly looking Wild Olive with just a few leaves still functioning, will come through my outlandish summer planting just fine.

There wasn't any time for me to do anything on Sunday before getting to the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at 2:30.  I did get there on time and it was a long play.

But after that I was a bit out-of-sync.  I went to North Star Mall afterwards to have my combined dinner and lunch just after 6pm, only to find that North Star Mall no longer has a Luby's Cafeteria where I had been planning to fill up.  So I ate at Subway and had ice cream at Marble Slab because I was still hungry.  The mall was closing at 7pm as I was leaving, and then I went out to Gabriel's Liquor Superstore on 1604, where I'd been meaning to go for 8 months (!) to get a special kind of tequila (single barrel) that I had been introduced to at the company Holiday Party last year.  I had some difficulty finding the store amidst all the new construction and developments up there and was worried that by the time I got there, well after 7pm, they would be closed.  Well, I needn't have worried, since it turned out they were closed all day Sunday.  That meant it would have been more timely to go to Home Depot to buy new garden gloves instead.  I wasn't sure how late Home Depot would be open.  I got to Home Depot at 8:04 and seeing cars still in the lot was relieved.  But it turned out they had closed at 8pm.  So I got a different type of gloves at Target instead. It was very hard to find any work gloves at Target.  I spent much time thinking about the discontinued solar lights on sale and finally bought one of those too.  Then I did my weekly grocery shopping.  The best part of Sunday was that my lady friend finally called me around 11pm, after a week of worrisome lack of calls and ambiguous texts.  She had been apparently suffering from the milder form of West Nile Fever, and lacked energy all last week.  I myself had just been thinking about mosquitos all last week (see earlier posts).  Coincidentally, her daughter had just named a new cat Kronos.

On Monday afternoon I did some work on the AC drain which wasn't draining very well at the terminus of the new 30 inch splashblock which had replaced the original 12 inch one.  A few years back I dug an artesian drain of sand going out 5 feet, but it has since been covered with clay soil and the new splashblock wasn't connecting well with the subsurface sand...making it a possible breeding pool for mosquitos, I feared (though it wasn't exactly still water, it might be still enough).  I dug up the grass and clay soil at the terminus of the block.  There was still sand underneath the soil, I was pleased to see.  I replaced the soil and grass I dug up with more new sand to restore proper drainage away from the house.

I did NOT use any kind of pesticide on the block, because I have seen dragonflies drinking there, and I had just learned from reading on Sunday night that dragonflies (which I had always thought were just a nuisance) actually eat mosquitoes.  No wonder there were so many dragonflies in my yard last week.  I now realize it wasn't just me with my new sprinklers suffering from mosquitoes.  In fact the whole state of Texas is having an epidemic of West Nile fever from an intense outbreak of mosquitos everywhere, and they're even spraying for mosquitoes in Dallas (which I think is a very bad idea because it also kills the dragonflies and honey bees).

Instead, I ordered some natural bacterial mosquito control which is toxic to mosquito larvae but not to pets or anything else, and I plan to put some on the splash block periodically, and perhaps in other areas around the yard that tend to stay moist too long.  I also ordered some electronic mosquito wands that are claimed to be the best of their kind, and only $6.50 apiece.  You may recall last week I ordered what appeared to be the best indoor mosquito trap.  It hasn't arrived yet but actually there are no mosquitos haunting me inside now, I think the last one finally died or left.  I've been investigating outdoor mosquito traps, more on that later.

Mosquito Traps

Here are two links.  More discussion to follow:

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/mosquito/documents/mosq_traps.PDF

http://www.cheapism.com/indoor-mosquito-traps

Every authoritative source says the first thing to do wrt mosquitos is to eliminate the breeding ground if possible.  I have been unable to find any standing water on my property.  It's interesting and suggestive that the mosquito problem arose when my sprinklers were being installed.  But all the new water drains within an hour of application, leaving no standing water on the ground.  This is not fast draining soil, but water on the surface doesn't stay long, though the ground itself can stay muddy for awhile.  If it's just mud that mosquitoes can breed in, well perhaps I do have that, but there's nothing I can do about it except leave all my grass and plants to die.  Perhaps there is standing water on a nearby lot but it might be hard for me to find.

Though it's not clear where the two or three mosquito bites I've gotten in the past two weeks happened, and it's possible I got them while being outside late at night watering, it also seems quite possible it has been from one or just a few mosquitos that somehow got into my house. I've been hearing one in bed and when brushing my teeth for the last week. They may have gotten in when opening the back door, or perhaps the garage door.  I did make the mistake last weekend of leaving the garage door open from about 7pm to 2am.

Those mosquitoes are quite annoying.  I've sometimes run my Lenco sonic repeller (a device which was forced off the market by lawsuit because of unproven effectiveness) and it often seems it keeps them away from the immediate area.  The batteries ran down a few days ago, so I haven't run it for the last few nights.  I may have gotten my most recent bite then.  Also, on the "dragonfly" setting it makes a noise which makes it impossible to hear mosquitoes, which at least helps in getting to sleep.  I've never been sorry I bought it, other than that it might have prevented me from getting something more or actually effective.  I have always thought it wouldn't protect you from a bunch of mosquitoes but it might protect you from just one or two.

Anyway, with just one or two mosquitoes in the house it makes great sense to me that I should have a mosquito trap inside the house.  It would probably cut down on the bites and almost certainly the in-house distraction.  So I researched indoor traps today.

To me the most obvious idea would be to have a trap emitting small puffs of CO2, just as humans do.  There are many outdoor traps that do this, usually by catalytically reacting a tank of fuel such as propane.  And there are others that use actual tanks of CO2.

But I could find no indoor mosquito traps that emit plausibly effective amounts of CO2.  You wouldn't want to burn (or even just "react") propane inside the house, for a number of reasons, including that it would be illegal.  But with sufficient safety measures, or simply a small cartridge of CO2, it seems to me like there could be indoor traps that emit CO2 from a small CO2 supply.  They could also generate it with some reaction, such as with baking soda and a granulated acid that reacts over time.  But I could not find any that did anything like that.  Typically, they simply attract mosquitos with fluorescent light tubes (often UV) and a fan which sucks nearby mosquitos in.

Instead, there are some traps which claim to emit CO2 not from any chemicals supplied, but simply by having an inner surface coated with TiO2.  Many reviewers on Amazon.com say they can't believe it works.  I thought about it for awhile and decided the TiO2 could be reacting VOC's in the air itself, which come from manmade sources (cars, painted surfaces, etc) and natural sources like trees and flowers, and cracking and oxidizing them on the TiO2 catalyst to make CO2.  That could work, but it's hard to see how you wound generate more than the tiniest amounts of CO2, such as in the parts per billion or even parts per trillion using such a process, and such quantities would be totally masked by the 390PPM of CO2 in ordinary air (which is probably somewhat higher than that inside an occupied house).

Anyway, even if these traps don't generate significant CO2, they still do attract flying insects including mosquitos with light, often UV light, and a fan sucks them in.

I'm referring specifically to the Dynatrap, such as the Indoor/Outdoor model the DT1000, which I read about on many websites.  I saw it even won some design award given to it in Germany.  And it gets more positive reviews than the cheaper traps that only use light and fan.  So however effective the CO2 generation is, perhaps the other parts are designed pretty well.  I finally decided I would get something like that because I couldn't find an indoor trap emitting larger more useful amounts of CO2.

I finally decided to get the Dynatrap 3 sold by Frontgate.  I couldn't find it anywhere else, it looked like a custom more attractive-than-usual version of the DT1000 with a more specially made UV light.  Frontgate has been selling mosquito traps since I first heard about them (in fact, I first read about them in a Frontgate catalog) and it looked like Frontgate may have gotten the lead on the manufacturer's latest generation, or a slightly upgraded model.  I've always enjoyed items I've bought from Frontgate, often they have actually been exceptional values worth the added cost many times over.  It cost about $34 more than the Dynatrap DT1000 from other websites, and that cost did not seem like that much more to me to get something slightly nicer and give Frontgate some of my business again.

Arguments against (and for) mulch rings

The more I read about planting trees, the more different recommendations I see.

Most of my new trees to not actually have mulch rings.  I am planning to add them to some to keep the weeds down.  But here is an argument against mulch rings:

http://landscapeofmeaning.blogspot.com/2011/01/case-against-mulch-rings.html

Here's a step-by-step planting guide from NCSU.  This one recommends having the top of the root ball level with the soil surface (not slightly--0.5 inch or so--higher as I have seen recommended elsewhere).  In fact, it suggests you could cover the root ball in soil, but less than one inch (that seems to be disasterous with my high clay soil).   It recommends a water retention ring around the tree, covered with 3 inches of mulch.  So, yes, mulch ring, but also water retention ring around it.  And they even have a partly above ground planting method, where the root ball is about 1/3 above regular soil level, but surrounded with topsoil to 5 times the width, and once again mulch above that.  That is recommended for poorly draining soil, but said to be a problem during dry spells.

Progress, or is that possible?

I ran sprinkler programs on Saturday night, or actually 1:00 am Sunday morning.  This was a lot of fun to watch, truly amazing.  5 operating zones.  I took note of a few things that didn't seem quite right, so was able to report them to sprinkler guy on Monday morning, who at that time made some adjustments and promised a new head for one sprinkler.  He programmed everything and explained generally how to work the system and answered some of my questions.  Interesting that I am only legally allowed to operate system from 3am to 8am and from 8pm to 10pm on my allotted day, which is Thursday.  I would have had him start the watering at 1am, at which time I am usually home from work, but not have to wait too long for it to start.  I have one zone that waters just the trees.  I had him not water the back grass as much as he wanted as it is mostly weeds anyway, but everything else is at his recommended levels.

He believes the system will be able to adequately water all my new trees.  I was skeptical of that before seeing the system operate, and testing moisture levels on Sunday.  Now I think, especially after he upped all the zone times, it may actually water too much and I'll have to cut it back.  But I can easily do that now.  He's OK with me adjusting timer panel and even sprinklers (though he said to give him a call first before adjusting sprinklers) without voiding my 5 year warranty.  He was relieved to learn I am a computer programmer.  He says he has the most trouble with lawyers, who can never figure the system out, and next with doctors.  I told him that did not surprise me at all.

Actually, on Sunday night, I went around checking trees and watering as necessary, and now just as I have installed full automation, I have figured out the best hand method.  That is go around the yard and soil test and water each tree as needed.  To water properly, I adjusted spigot so that on "shower" the nozzle delivered one gallon in about 40 seconds (using a new one gallon plastic water can to test), making for about 1.5 gallons per minute.  Then, each tree gets between 3-8 gallons depending on how big a tree and how much moisture it needs.  That means 2-5 minutes per plant, directed at the root area.  Easy.  Biggest problem was carrying around chair, flashlight, soil tester, and hose all at the same time.

Using a soaker hose curled around tree--as I had been doing for a month--turns out to be a pain in the neck because you don't know how much water is being delivered.  And then if you have two soaker hoses, it gets worse because it's hard to get both adjusted properly at the same time.  And then after all that, with a single manifold like I have, you have to turn both adjustments back to off so you can use other hoses.  So that means you have to do the adjustment every time you water, and the adjustment alone takes about 15 minutes, and then there's re-checking and re-adjusting at 30 minute intervals.  It's an easy way to kill an hour and a half and likely way overwater...since you have now way of knowing how much water or even if it's the same as last time.  It actually took me less time to top-up all 13 plants in back with a hose nozzle than to just water two plants with a soaker hose.  And it's more rewarding as you get to sit and visit with each plant, and not keep running back and forth trying to get the flow rate right.  I had purchased a couple additional flow adjusters but never got around to installing them.  Even if I had, theres an issue that the water pressure isn't always the same.  The sprinkler system has its own internal pressure regulator.

Even Tree-IV doesn't work quite right.  As you are filling each 5 gallon Tree-IV bucket, the water is simultaneously flowing out through the ground spike nearly as fast as you are filling it.  So it's not really 5 gallons, more like 20, if you can even ever get the bucket filled.  Finally I found I could slow this down by putting a cap over the ground spike inside the bucket.  Even that doesn't stop the water from running out, because the cap doesn't fit tightly when you use it that way (it was intended to cover spike when bucket is not on it) but it only slows it down enough so you can actually fill the bucket.  I think Tree-IV sells a separate bucket cap separately, but that is for filling up the bucket elsewhere, and then moving to a tree.

****

On Saturday afternoon I picked up 10 more Xeripave permeable pavers to start on the pathways and patios I plan to build.  Remember that on Thursday I borrowed two of these from the side near the power box so the planting guys could install over my gate threshold, an area that needs to stay moist to keep gate poles from shifting.  So I was able to replace those two back by the power box, which is another corner of the house that badly needs to stay moist.  I put two at the edge of my existing patio, and then two in front of the gate opening.

As I was installing, however, I found a problem with these that means I will probably not use them 100% (besides the high cost).  They can get slippery especially if covered with mud.  After that, I decided to mix paver types, keeping the existing concrete pavers on both sides of the gate, and adding more of the concrete paver extras I had.  I had been thinking that the Xeri pavers had less traction when wet than concrete pebbled pavers.  However, on Monday morning, this proved to be untrue--I slipped on a concrete paver that had some mud on it too.  So right now, I can't say which has the more reliable traction.  The Xeripave may be ever so slightly smoother, but the water flows right through so the mud likely isn't as moist.  So it is, as they say, a wash.

Another mark against Xeripave--I broke one somehow.  I suspect these are no where near as strong as concrete.  Of course, even concrete pavers can be broken, as I have done.

Part of the reason I slipped on Saturday when installing the pavers was because the little circular pavers leading up to the gate from the inside were just sitting on top of ground after being disturbed by the sprinkler installation digging..very high and very unstable.  I fixed that on Sunday afternoon, digging the first paver into the ground so it is fairly stable.  It is also lower now, and sits just slightly above the Xeripavers at the gate threshold (instead of way above it, as it was when I slipped).

But because of my fear of Xeripave slipperiness, I decided not to put one immediately on the outside of the gate as I had planned.  Instead I used two 6x18" cement pavers staggered slightly to match the desired path.  That spot doesn't need xeripave so much because it is shielded by the house (immediately to the south) from excess sunlight.

Anyway, right now i can walk from the west side of the patio to the front of the house and only on pavers (however some of the old ones near the A/C are almost covered by grass and ground and need to be replaced with bigger ones anyway).  So this should help keeping my shoes from getting 1" of mud buildup...now that I'm turning my yard into a swamp.

*****

Speaking of which, I discovered a pencil-thin dark nearly black colored snake in my hallway on Sunday afternoon.  I almost killed it, but was too paranoid to get close because I didn't have any clothes on.  Fortunately I didn't touch it at all, but at least scared it away from going into master bedroom.  After some later reading, I believe it is nothing to worry about.  It can't really live inside the house.  It's not interesting in biting me--even if it was the biting kind.  It's interested in avoiding me, and finding the way back outside (which I hope by now it already has).  It probably slipped in when I was testing the sprinklers and left the garage door open.  Actually, I left the garage door open most of Saturday after I got home around 7pm.  So I should remember not to do that.

A reptile expert at works says it is likely a Rat Snake, and possibly a Corn Snake.  These are not venemous, they kill rodents by constriction.  They are essential to the ecosystem or we would be overrun by rats.  The Corn Snake in particular is the most popular snake species for pets, also most recommended for snake newbies, though it is recommended to buy young snakes from stores.

Pictures of new trees on Saturday (Day 3)

I've been pushed to the edge of my time and wits on this tree planting thing, so that's why I didn't get around to taking pictures on Days 1 or 2.  The trees looked perfect on Day 1, the day they were planted, but not quite as perfect now as the stress of planting and probable overwatering at that time are setting in.  Not to mention the extreme heat, I believe Friday reached 102 but fortunately storm clouds began dimming the the light around 4:30 pm.  No actual rain arrived in San Antonio, apparently the intense line of storms dissipated when faced with the urban heat island of Bexar County.

Watch that over watering, Oliver

Growing up, I loved watching Green Acres (sometimes right after Beverly Hillbillies) during the original broadcast era on CBS.  I felt sorry for Oliver Wendell Holmes, who could never seem to get the farming going well, despite his best and never ending attentions and fairly unlimited funds.  If there wasn't one problem, there was another.  Meanwhile, nobody else seemed to have any trouble, despite lack of funds and hardly paying any attention at all.  Have I mentioned there is a farmhouse near where I live that looks exactly like the one that showed during the credits?  I was singing the theme song to my mother when we bought this house in 1991.

Well here I am now in that role.  The dense clay soil around here is extremely difficult to work with in every way.  Mostly, it doesn't drain anywhere, so water you pour in just sits there forever until it dries out.  But if you don't water during the intense summer heat, you have hard cracking clay that might as well be broken pottery.

Despite the 102 degree heat on Friday, the day after planting, I was shocked to find my moisture meter peaking at several of the new plants Friday night.  It looked to me like the Pomegranate, the tree I love the most, had suffered from that, it appeared to have much more wrinkled leaves than when it was planted, and it's soil seemed to dampest of all.  Poor plant was drowning.  The base was also very loose, and the tree leaning forward slightly, built-in support and all.

So Wednesday night, around 3am, scooped excess loose muddy almost dripping soil off of the root base (the soil had apparently flowed over it at some point) and brought out the black pedestal fan from Lyndhurst, set as low and downward as possible to blow air over the root ball all night and dry it out.

By morning, around 9:30 AM, the soil was looking and measuring better, midway on the meter.  The tree still seems loose but I'm not going to try to fix that.  I removed the fan around 10:15.  Then, taking a picture of all the plants, I decided the Wild Olive was suffering similarly, so I put the an on it.

The problem I believe stemmed from the very uncontrolled watering during planting.  We just let the hose run on each plant until whenever.  I think some plants got barely enough, whereas others got more than an hour of medium hose flow, possibly as much as 60 gallons.  That would be fine with a draining soil, but not with hard clay.  With hard clay, you need to count the gallons.






I brought the

August 9: Twelve Trees Planted

On Thursday morning around 11 am, two very nice workers unloaded nine new trees off of the back of their truck, straight from the wholesale nursery.  They proceeded to plant them in locations I designated, along with planting three trees I had previously purchased.  That makes twelve trees newly in the ground.  Wow!!!

Each and every one of the new trees was very beautiful.  That is probably the benefit of dealing with professionals who obtain their trees from a wholesale nursery which actually grows trees on their various local farms, as compared with a retailer who gets new trees from the same nursery, or one like it, and then has them sitting around in their side lot Garden Store for a few months and watered, or not, by store staff.  Ironically on Thursday night when I dropped into Home Depot to get more topsoil, I saw a dead looking tree that must have been beautiful once at 12 feet high.  The recent hundred degree heat is surely no help in keeping such trees alive, especially when they are parked in an asphalt lot.

I hope that irony doesn't come back to bite me.  Ever since I agreed to have trees planted and irrigation installed simultaneously for lowest cost and practicality and promised planting despite my wire loaded yard, about a month ago, I've been very worried about how this was going to turn out.  The need to get irrigation done NOW (really should have been done 15 years ago) itself was mainly driven by concern about my home foundation, which is now facing intense summer heat and dryness now that we're no longer getting tropical storm rainfall several times a week as we were (very unusually) in early summer.  I hope I am not sacrificing poor little living trees for vanity and concern about my mostly inert foundation.  I would feel bad about that, but then just get more trees to replace them come October.  I believe the main thing here is that after many years of procrastination, I am finally doing something about my back yard.  My lady friend is very happy about this.

Most of the new trees were in 15 gallon pots, but the two Vitex were in 5 gallon pots.  I had specifically chosen the smaller size to make them easier to plant in my backyard full of telecom wires.  I would have chosen to get many if not most of the other trees in a smaller size also, had it been available from the nursery.

As it turned out, wires were not a problem except for the four trees planted along the south side of my back yard where all telecom and electrical service wires run to my house panels.  That area of the yard is riddled with cable TV cables, probably many of which are no longer in use, but who knows which is which, and they all got marked.  And it wasn't just the markings.  A snarl of wires was quickly exposed at the southwest corner of my lot, and the planters balked at planting the 15 gallon Viburnum.  Leaving that spot open for awhile, they just barely managed to get my existing Crepe Myrtle into the ground nearby, and then the Wild Olive, by pushing wires far enough apart to squeeze them in.  Then they found that at the spot closest to the house, they could simply pull the wires from the ground and lay to one side...making for the largest ground opening on the south side.  So then I had to make a hard decision quickly, and I agreed that they would put the Viburnum there rather than where originally intended, and the little 5 gallon Vitex I had chosen for that spot should go back near the southwest corner.  I am very ambivalent about that decision.  The Viburnum is rather big for a shrub nearest the house (I paced exactly 5 feet from the SW corner of my house).  I have half a mind to pull the Viburnum come October and plant something smaller there.  But then what would I do with the Viburnum?