Category Archives: Home

A low spot near the edge of the steepest part of the driveway has steadily gotten worse in the three years I have owned my home. Although I don’t drive over it, chunks of concrete from a previous patch keep breaking off. Runoff from rain now flows freely under the patch leading to further erosion and settling. Today my neighbor and I filled the low spot with a dozen 60-pound bags of ready-mix QuikRete (see photo).

Our big pour took place right after one of nature’s big pours—last night it rained heavily. When my neighbor called this morning, the sky was overcast with more rain forecast. We decided to ignore the weatherman. After a quick trip to Lowe’s for materials, we got right to it. A couple of hours of sweaty work later (I mixed while he poured and troweled the concrete), the patch was in place. By late afternoon it was ready for the next rainy day.

It’s been a while since I last cleaned the mildew, algae, and bird droppings off the deck. I thought about trying one of the deck-wash products available at the home improvement stores. According to their directions you just spray on the cleaning solution, wait 10 minutes, and rinse with a hose. In the end out of concern for the environment and a suspicion that no job could be that easy unless the cleaner is mostly bleach, I decided to clean the deck the old-fashioned way—with a scrub brush (see photo).
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My neighbor to the north, whose large lot fronts on Mud Bay, has long been concerned about identifying the exact location of the line that divides her property from mine and the house just to the east of mine. I used the word “finding” rather than “surveying” in the title because she isn’t a licensed surveyor. But she sails, understands navigation and the use of a GPS, and owns a laser light. She put those skills to work and seems to have done an accurate job. Part of the evidence is that she uncovered a long-buried surveyor’s mark in an area that is underwater during the highest tides (see photo).
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The previous owner of my house erected a 30-foot flagpole at the end of the driveway right on Mud Bay. There’s a benefit from having your own flagpole—the opportunity to proudly fly our flag. But there’s responsibility too—the flag needs to be displayed properly and replaced when it gets tattered, fades, or wears out. That happens more often than you might think.
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“Never buy a cabinet on the Internet.” The advice was supplied by my neighbor, who doesn’t know a lot about purchasing things online but does know about cabinets. Judging by the quality of the materials and hardware in the corner TV cabinet I ordered recently (see photo), I now agree with him. Fortunately, the remedy offered by the vendor, Home Improvements, turned a depressing experience into one I can live with.
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Today when I was in the nursery at McClendon’s Hardware in Belfair buying trellis plants, I was reminded of the old joke about the guy who wasn’t sure of the plural form of mongoose but needed two of them. Mongooses didn’t sound right and neither did mongeese. So he asked the pet-store owner to sell him one mongoose and while doing so to sell him another. Since I wasn’t sure if the plural of clematis is clematises, clemati, or possibly clematum, I played it safe and asked for two clematis plants (see photo). K will like them. The pink one is called Clematis montana (her mom is from the Treasure State), while the one with purple flowers goes by Clematis alpina.

Last summer I built a trellis at Treasure Island. The structure was supposed to add color to the front yard. A secondary purpose was to provide a bit of privacy. K bought three ornamental climbing plants for it: wisteria, honeysuckle, and jasmine. But we planted them during the hottest part of the summer, and despite abundant watering, so far they have acted like they need crampons and a rope team to reach the top of the trellis. So this spring they are getting a bit of help in the form of these two new recruits. That makes 5 plants in all for a 21-foot-long trellis. Overkill probably, but still cheaper than building a solid fence.