Journal of Progress--July 13-19

Apricot harvesting season

Does anyone know what kind of bird this is?  He does not come to the hanging bird feeder.  He does this kind of scratching, stomping thing on the ground to find seeds.  When he spreads his tail, there is white on either side of his tail.  I think I have figured it out.  Just wonder if others concur.

These were new visitors to the old birdbath.  Haven't seen them since.  With the apricots, they may be female western tanagers.  Barbara has been able to identify the males.  They are fruit eating birds.

Don building a new bird bath.  First he had to level the spot.

Then he built a foundation and walls with bricks.

The finished product.  It doesn't blow away in the wind.  This little rascal ate up the bird seed, nuts, and fruit that were on the board to the right of her head before drinking the water in the bird bath.

This little guy wants in.  He will walk along the window sill and peck at the window.  This is a case of if he could have what he thinks he wants, he wouldn't want it at all.

The right end balcony gate is built and hung. This is the one that will give access to the fire pole. The white, pull-tight casement latch in the upper right is necessary to stiffen the post when the gate is not open. When the gate IS open, no one will be leaning on the post, as the gate is for emergency exit  only.

The same gate from the outside. The hinges are of the "pull pin" variety, so the gate can be removed from the post for easier assembly outside, when all is finished. Don says he is debating whether to paint everything white, stain the wood, or leave it natural and just put preservative on it. Anyone have any ideas?

Don is repairing one of the cabinet drawers that was stored outside and got wet. The edges of the old drawer swelled so much that the drawer will no longer fit in its opening. Since the drawer sides are plastic, but the centers are wood, Don can't simply sand them down to fit. He'll have to replace the whole side. Fortunately, he has some plastic laminated wood left over from making the balcony floor. Here, Don is cutting a dado (a  groove) in the new drawer side on his table saw. Note Don's little finger sliding along the side of the table, to help him keep his hand out of the saw if anything goes wrong.

The finished drawer side, with dadoes along the front and rear edges, and another, near what will be the bottom of the drawer, to support it. Don does not have a wide dado blade for his saw, so he had to saw each dado many times to get the proper width.

Voila! Good as new.

The proof of the pudding. If you look carefully, you can see that the new drawer side is somewhat thicker than the original side, because Don was unable to find plastic-clad material of the same thickness. So he had to adjust all the dimensions while building the new piece, to make it fit. The rebuilt drawer fits perfectly, with no adjustments needed.

Now the cabinet fits perfectly in its spot between the stove and the fridge.

Barbara and I both love This cabinet, because it has a pull-out cutting board. The wooden "counter top" is just temporary, and isn't even attached.

Barbara got tired of delivery people never knowing where our house is, and said she wanted house numbers. But there's no street sign on our street, so Don put the street name on the sign too.  Juab county has never issued us an address.  They don't do that until the house is finished.  This is silly because you have many deliveries come to the house in the process of building.  We've learned since choosing the address of 1650 that that number is incorrect according to the other houses around.  It doesn't really matter though since only delivery people like UPS, FEDEX, or Home Depot will come here since we receive mail at a mail box in town.  We are on Gold Street and the 1650 is close enough that they find us.

We've been dealing with mice lately.  We've seen some and seen some evidence of them.  We put out some poison but were still seeing them.  We covered where we thought they were getting in and then trapped three.  One day we drove into Santiquin and just as we were stopping to get gas, a mouse ran over Don's foot.  How it got into the car, we have no idea.  The door was open a bit.  Perhaps they have a way of climbing in.  Don was able to flick it out with the credit card he paid for the gas with.

 In talking with some neighbors about the recent fire, we found many people had ideas about what could be done both in terms of fire prevention and fire fighting.  We decided it would be wise to unite as a community to approach these issues.  Barbara spent a long time on the telephone talking to the District fire council in Nephi, the fire chief and fire mitigator in Eureka before organizing a meeting.  We will distribute a flyer like the one below to all twenty-four of the occupied residents in Mammoth. Some of these are only part time residents and the mine baron on the hill has several buildings.  Some of them may be occupied by people who work for him. There are a few other houses which do not seem to be occupied.  Barbara has started weed whacking our own property to make it safer.

Mammoth

Community 

 

Fire Defense 

 

Meeting

It took 45 minutes for the volunteer fire department from

 Eureka to respond to the recent fire in Mammoth. At the

 meeting, we will be organizing for a quicker, local initial 

 response, as well as discussing what we can do as individual

 households and as a community for greater fire safety.

Thursday, July 30 6 PM

Under the trees at the South End of Gold Street

(East of Neese’s and Mahoney’s)

Potluck

Bring your own chairs

Social Distancing will be observed.