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More yard/house care

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So, last week before leaving for Portland, I fertilized the blueberries again. They’re looking quite nice, though I’m still confused why only two are flowering. My hope is that with some judicious pruning this winter, we can get them all flowering (from reading, flowers are borne on 2 year old wood, so it could be that there’s just too much young wood on them. *shrugs*). Then yesterday, we went and picked up a yard of doug-fir sawdust. Turns out, this was way too much. So, we now have sawdust about 3-4″ thick under the berries, as well as all the way to the fence. =P Oh well, it should really keep the weeds down, and will certainly make the blueberries happy.

Now I’m reading up on lawn care. The front yard at our place looks the best it has, well, ever. It’s extremely healthy, very few weeds, and all and all very nice (bit of crab grass, but I hope to take care of that soon). The back, on the other hand, not as nice. TON of weeds on the north side, I’m guessing due to the lower light levels. So, I’ve been trying to weed-n-feed there. Hopefully that too will work.

We also finally got around to removing the very sick/dying rhododendron that had been planted next to the front door (in a built-in planter). It doesn’t get any rain in that location, and because of the make-up of the planter (mortar, bricks, etc), it was probably WAY too alkali for it anyway. I put it in a 25gal nursery container with a rough 70/30 mix of peat/perlite, some acid loving osmicote, and a good drench of Superthrive. Hopefully it’ll perk up. The one that was sick and dying elsewhere on the lot I did the same thing to last year, and it’s extremely healthy now.

Tonight I’m going to double the RAM in the web server/file server/energy monitor, etc. Hopefully everything will work. I tried turning on mod_deflate on the system yesterday, and was dismayed by the performance. I hope to just enable it on some of the stuff I’m working on that will be a lot of data (further using google visualizations for power use, which 3 days of data would amount to 700KB uncompressed).

Mac OS 10.5.7 came out yesterday while I was getting sawdust, and I’ve installed it at work. So far, so good. They said they fixed some error with Dvorak keyboards, but I never noticed anything. My hope against hope is that it will fix the longterm issue we’ve had with AFP crashing on the server. Somehow, I doubt it.

This month will be the first time I can check my utility bill against the TED. I’m hoping it’ll be close… I really don’t want to have to call the local utility company to check my meter, though a newer digital one would be sweet. PGE up in Portland has been going around replacing analog ones with digital ones. I’m somewhat jealous.

At work we’re writing up a proposal for what amounts to “grant” money to offset probably budget cuts this coming year. I’m really really hoping to get 1-2 servers out of the deal. 2 servers would let me switch all critical systems over to Intel Xserves, and jettison 5 original Xserve’s. 1 server would let me upgrade the mail server and implement CalDAV. I would still need to dual purpose a machine to take up the slack from not getting the 2nd server… so, I’m hoping for 2. Mind you, this should also lower our power usage.

That’s all for now, since I can’t think of anything else.

Links for future reference:
http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/19232/ec1521.pdf
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/details.php?sortnum=0616&name=Lawns

Blueberries

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Back when we had gotten our bid accepted on the house, but before we had moved in, the previous owner had let Tara and I come plant some blueberries in the yard. We planted 6 of them, 2 3y old bushes, and 4 2y old bushes. That year, we didn’t do what we were supposed to, and remove the blossoms, so they produced the first year. Last year, the didn’t really produce at all (they were exhausted), and this year, only 2 of the bushes are really producing flowers.

But, this year, I’ve started fertilizing with Ammonium Sulfate to see if I can re-awaken them. They look extremely healthy, and are growing quite well, but just don’t seem to produce flowers (except the two). =/

At this point, I think we’ll just have to deal with the fact that we’ll only get two bushes worth. But, since this is the 3rd year, this winter I will need to prune. And, low and behold, the only reason I like Oregon State (=P) is their Botany/Horticulture programs.

Caring for Blueberries in a home garden: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/ec/ec1304/

Hopefully with the fertilizer, and the fact I think I’ll add some doug-fir mulch this year, I can get them nice and happy(er). Hopefully the mulch will also help with the weeds, but we’ll have to see. Now if I could only find a good source of Doug-Fir sawdust…

UPDATE: http://laneforest.com/bedding-ground-cover/bedding-sawdust/ or if we want something less “sawdusty” in color: http://laneforest.com/bedding-ground-cover/bark-dust/ (should have a similar PH).

Projects ahead…

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This weekend, Tara’s family are all coming back to town for Spamalot. Should be a lot of fun, but there will once again be about 9 people in the house (including Tara and I). So, that’s a lot. In preparation for that, I installed a new shower head in the guest bathroom that’s only 1.5GPM (a handheld Waterpik EcoFlow: here). It’s not a bad shower head, though I’m not sure about the usefulness of the “mist” setting. Either way, it’s better than the 5GPM of the old head. The funny thing is, the old head was marked as low flow… obviously that was before 1992 (when the Feds said showerheads had to be a max of 2.5GPM at 80PSI). Funny thing is, my current main shower head that we use daily seems to flow at about 4GPM instead of the stated 2.5GPM… Which comes to my next item…

We have high water pressure at the house. About 96psi static (no flow), which is the same pressure in the mains in my area (due to gravity because of the water tower/tank on the top of Kelly Butte above my house). The UPC (Uniform Plumbing Code) says the max is 80psi (minimum of 25psi). I thought we didn’t have a pressure regulator valve (PRV), but in fact we do, it’s just seemingly bad (it was installed with the house, and was buried under sod, and a few inches of dirt when I found it). So, I’m looking to replace that here soon. The pressure has been at it’s current level for at least the time we’ve been in the house, but I really worry about the wear and tear on our appliances and fixtures because of the high pressure. Currently, we get about 7.5-8GPM at the hose bibs, so I’m hoping that won’t be impacted too much by the drop in pressure. Some things I’ve seen indicate the flow might not change that much due to flow restriction caused by the “friction” of the water pressure and pipe walls. We’ll see. I’m hoping it’ll be an easy change out… I just need to finish unearthing the valve, and get it out. Biggest PITA is going to be “draining” the house (when I shut off the water at the street, and remove the valve, all the water in the house pipes is going to come running out). Here’s hoping a shopvac will take care of that.

On the water side, I’m also going to put a water expansion tank on the water heater after the PRV goes in. The valve will allow for pressure relief back to the city water mains if it climbs enough, but I’d rather not get those spikes (I believe it’ll keep the pressure from climbing above 10PSI greater than the supply pressure, so basically, it’ll keep it at or below 106PSI). A thermal expansion tank should prevent that completely. While I’m putting that in, I think I’m also going to wrap the water heater. It’s currently about R-16 (2″ foam), but adding a blanket would make that about R-26, which is about as good as you can do. Biggest pain is going to be moving the water heater, but, it shouldn’t be too bad once it’s drained. I also need to replace the front sillcock, but that’ll come later in the summer if I can’t figure out how to rebuild the stem (it’s a frost-free, so it’s got a long stem instead of a “normal” valve).

My other project I’m really looking forward to working on is more of my power graphing/monitoring. A site called energycircle.com (http://www.energycircle.com/) built their own “Google Powermeter” using the Visualizations API. I’m hoping to get ahold of their code to do the same. At the least, I think I’m going to switch my data collection to a mysql backend, as that will really allow for better report generation. We’ll see. I’d really also love to build one of these so that I can have a computer monitor my TED, and put the actual receiving unit I got with the TED in another room, more easily viewable. Bitch is, I don’t know a whole lot about building circuitry from diagrams, or programming MCs. Maybe I’ll pick up that Make microcontroller set at some point… =/

Also, I found this just now off that site above, which looks awesome. Wireless, web configurable, and will look at RSS feeds. I’d love to pick one of these up… I have a couple places it’d work great. Maybe in the hall where there is a giant hole at this point, or in the living room, or bedroom, etc. They have an 8″ version too, but it’s only like $20 cheaper… it’s certainly worth that for 2″ more! I’ll post some about work crap later, but at this point, there’s not a lot to discuss.

More in a couple days!