Projects I did when under Covid lockdown

For me it’s clean up time, grafting, planting, etc. today I dug out 65 American persimmons from the ground that should have been potted up back in the winter. I’ve planted my jujube seed and started grafting my jujubes. I’ve managed to move most of my pots around to clean off the landscape underneath (still working on that). I’m still working but not as many days so it’s nice to have a couple of extra days here and there.

And I’ve turned a Jin Chang jujube into a semi Frankentree.

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Wow, looks very organized and ambitious

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Oh…I don’t post pictures randomly…:flushed::joy::joy:!!!
Only after I’ve spent a couple of weeks on hard labor!!

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I’m teleworking from home, so all my projects are still limited to the weekends. However I was busy this week. The first project was a non-gardening task - replacing an old toilet! That wasn’t a lot of fun, but i did learn a lot. The toilet itself wasn’t too bad, but the toilet flange was broken and had to be replaced, that took the majority of the time spent on the project.

Today I dug a hole to build a single post support for a dragon fruit plant. I used a new post-hole digger purchased with some Xmas money and that made digging the hole sooo much easier! I saw someplace where a guy was just using gravel and not concrete. I’m giving that a shot and we’ll see how the post holds after a week. I may have to pull it out and try again if it doesn’t work.

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Cooking mostly…both kids are around again which is nice, but we have been holed up tight cooking and eating. I admit the backyard wildlife is looking more and more freezer-worthy

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I’ve been out and about every day for two weeks except this past Saturday and Sunday.
Have seen a total of 3 people with respirators now, the last one being yesterday at one of the 40 or 50
DOLLAR GENERAL STORES in a 3-county area that I’ve been in regularly. Saw one at Save-A-Lot, and one at Lowe’s.

Traffic is surely down in places like Lowe’s and Walmart…these big name places may survive this ‘lockdown’, but some mom and pop places surely will not.

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markalbob I was sure tempted to shoot some mourning doves yesterday, but then realized I was in the city limits and might get in trouble if anyone noticed a firearm going off.

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We are at the marsh-edge of a subdivision. It is pretty quiet, AND lousy with ducks, geese, and squirrels.

Today i bake bread instead

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Geese unfortunately have a hard time hopping back up out of a goose sized hole filled with corn :slight_smile:

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Some more masks. Even though I was making them for at-risk neighbors and others in my world, my friends who are medical assistants and a doctor have asked for some, so I’m making more.

My doctor friend wants to wear them when not doing medical procedures, but in the ward at large. They can’t wear official masks there but apparently that hospital is allowing other alternatives. Shortages and risk and everything else in the mix. The medical assistants are allowed to bring their own, but not to use the clinic equipment. So it’s a stop-gap measure until they have better gear. So far I’ve made and given away about 30.

We had a lot of rain the past few days, so not able to do much in the garden. Otherwise, I’m instructed to shelter at home.

I did some grafting today. I grafted pear onto aronia, serviceberry, and black hawthorne, which I had ordered back in October from Burnt Ridge. They arrived last week. I let the package sit for several days before opening. I don’t know if these will take, grow, or do well. It’s an experiment.

Several of the seed houses are out or swamped, apparently due to COVID - 19 related issues. I ordered some field corn to supplement the chicken diet, if we are still around in the late summer for that. There is also a shortage here of baby chickens, so I ordered a little incubater from Amazon to see if we can hatch some eggs. If so, the hens are mostly Americauna with one white Leghorn. The rooster is a golden Sex-link. Who knows what the chickens will be like, if they hatch at all. So, hatching eggs will be another project done while under COVID-19 lockdown.

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We moved into our House a little over 4 years ago and lived in the dark leaky basement for nearly a years as we slowly sanded and stained the floors. Once we stopped being basement dwellers we neglected it till last year when we had new French drains installed to dry it out.

When we moved we had a relatively new Yamaha A-820 stereo receiver and I am proud say I finaly setup the basement sound system.

The other big problem with the basement was the lack of lighting. I have a little more then half of the new recessed lights installed

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Usually I just talk plants here but I’ve been making masks for our local Kaiser ED here in the San Francisco bay area these past 2 weeks and this has been the main topic in that time for me. Here in CA, most Bay Area counties and Los Angeles county have recommended that everyone wear a mask in public as of yesterday. Much of my family are doctors in California and all of them have been told that they have limited n95 masks and that if they have a homemade mask, they should bring one from home. It’s a scary situation.

But to answer your question - what hospitals are accepting home-sewn masks? UC Berkeley’s Public School of Health has put out a list of hospitals that are accepting masks from the public and you can look up your local hospital. Some have put out specific patterns to follow as well. Here is that list - https://docs.google.com/document/d/12a5YO0Z9RpHZk9Zkzl4NOj9CbjzhFfoKjPLFFC-21LU/preview#

I made these last week for our local ED

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Nice work!

And many thanks to everyone doing it.

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This is not much of a project, but because of sheltering in place, plus seed houses have a shortage and shipping delays, I went through my stash of seed packets and planted a lot of old seeds this usually I say, “not this year, I’ll plant new ones”, and the old ones just pile up year after year.

So far, the 6 year old radish seeds are germinating nicely, and the 8 year old Taiwan Sugar snow peas swelled and put out a root, but no plant yet on planting them. The Better Boy tomato seeds were six years old and all growing fine. The Supersweet 100 tomato seeds were 12 years old. Only one of the remaining six germinated, but that’s enough for me. The Sungold tomato seeds were 6 years old, and are doing fine too. The petunia seeds were 3 years old. So far, only one of those packets has germinated. Also pepper seeds a few years old too soon to know. Mesclun seeds from 2012 are growing just fine too. Spinach seed from 2012 has not come up yet.

Yesterday I did the last grafting project. Aronia, Black Hawthorn, and Serviceberry bare root plants came from Burnt Ridge. I let them sit a week before opening. Take that, Coronavirus! They look fairly OK, considering how long they sat. Then I grafted pear scion onto them. We’ll see if they take and, if they do, will the trees be highly dwarfed, which is what I want. The Serviceberry was multi trunk, so I them apart and planted the extras.

I planted all of the sprouted potatoes. Those usually don’t do as well for me as new sets, but I figured, they may be welcomed fresh food by mid summer, especially if there are shortages or increased need. I originally planned to decommission that garden bed, which is on an easement, but now I will at least grow out this potato crop.

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@bonitapplebump, Im awed by your effort! That’s a lot of masks! Good for you :mask:

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So, what are you going to do in 2021 when there are no seeds to buy, and no vendors still in business selling them?

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Since we are still allowed to walk for exercise. I created at activity for my daughter(5) and shared it with her school. Its called flower spotting. its a power point with pictures of everything in bloom, there leaves, bark and a little note about them. flower spoting3.pdf (4.1 MB)

Suggestions welcome I did this rather late last night. If anyone wants the Powerpoint to modify there selves let me know.

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What I’d like to know is who is the mastermind behind flower spotting, bear spotting, etc.?

Has to be somebody with a heck of a lot of influence.

This looks like an easy and effective addition to a mask.bb

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