Hello Everyone!
Starting the day early, The janky tub-house, Hiking the meadow & Being over the dusty hardware!
The day is getting off to a slow start here and for some reason it took me nearly thirty minutes after waking to get my espresso brewed. Somehow I managed to get up at three fifty-six this morning and have been enjoying the silence aside from the dogs barking at something when I first let them out. Whatever it was they must have either scared it off or they were only barking at other dogs in the distance saying their routine greetings. It was probably the latter of the two because if it was something nearby either one or both of the roosters would be making a racket as well.
The weather wound up getting pretty cold last night and although it got close to freezing it thankfully did not freeze. Once again I did not bother to use the heater until this morning when I let the dogs out. The cabin was a little cooler than usual though because I had the window unit air-conditioner's fan on high instead of on low which is where I usually keep it during the night. With the warmer weather yesterday the cabin was too toasty by the time the sun was setting and I had turned the fan up to compensate for it but had then fallen asleep before I could change it back to its lowest setting.
Whatever left me feeling out-of-sorts and napping away the afternoon yesterday seems to have passed. It was pretty odd because after I awoke from that nap I had a runny nose all evening but this morning it is totally gone. Maybe it was some minor flu bug or something. These days if I get even minorly ill feeling a small part of my brain goes into panic mode and I start thinking over what the heck that I could have been exposed to and perhaps more importantly 'how' I was exposed given how isolated from others my life is.
In my previous entry I mentioned getting that greenhouse setup with the tub inside of it but I did not go into much detail about it. The frame for the structure is total trash and several of the plastic corner pieces broke during the setup process even though I was rather gentle with it. Somehow they are still holding the poles but many of the receiving holes have split up the side and will probably require being taped before there are any heavy winds and/or rain again.
The greenhouse cover is at the opposite end of the spectrum and is surprisingly strong and even well made... for what it is. Since the poles and plastic connectors are so poorly made I have been thinking about taking some measurements of the existing frame and building a new one for it. The greenhouse itself is also not nearly as tall as I thought that it would be so I am unsure about putting a shower-head over the tub like I was considering doing.
The tub also barely fits inside the greenhouse and emptying the water from it (by flipping it over) is no longer a viable option if I want to keep it in there. At this point I am heavily leaning towards the idea of using my submersible pump to empty the tub out but even doing that will leave a small amount of water in it that I will need to somehow remove. In other words I would still be faced with the same problem of not having enough room to flip it over to get the water out of it.
The more that I mull that problem over the more I am beginning to think that I should get a real tub and set it up instead of continuing to use the one that I have been using. For now I am just stoked that I can get a hot bath out of the wind and will have to just work with the setup that I have which will probably entail pumping the water out, bailing the remaining water by hand and then pulling the tub outside of the greenhouse so that I can rinse (and/or wash) it out.
Admittedly the current tub setup is far from a perfect system but it will have to do for now until I figure out something better. I also need to figure out if I want to try to put the water supply lines in there or not. Since the greenhouse came with none of the interior shelving that I thought would come with it there is a good bit of room left even with the tub inside of it. That free space is another aspect that I am mulling over and the more I think about it the more I like the idea of putting a sink in it and perhaps some storage for things that will not be harmed by the humidity and steam.
Since it was not going to freeze last night I hiked around and got the water system back online but did not turn the water heater back on because I first wanted to purge all the air from the system. I was planning on turning it on later but like I said (near the beginning of this entry) I wound up not feeling well and napping instead and by the time that I woke up it was getting close to dark and I did not want to mess with it. Today should be sunny and the wind will hopefully have died down more so I can hopefully get a pleasant bath and not have to run to the cabin afterwards to stay warm.
Now that I think of it perhaps I should use that extra space in the 'tub-house' as a drying off area instead of for a sink, storage or the supply lines. Perhaps a small wooden deck or even a few pavers would do the job and since the ground is mostly level there it would not be all that big of a hassle to make it a flat place to stand. As long as it is not slippery or too close to the ground to stay out of the muck it would be perfect and could also double as a place to fill jugs and buckets at so that their bottom's do not get dirty.
It is now getting closer to sunrise and I am not feeling motivated to do much beyond spending my time writing and thinking about what all that I need to accomplish today. Aside from tethering down the tub-house better and generally fiddling with the setup I really need to get some hiking in and perhaps work on that new compost. There are way too many odd ball projects rolling around in my head this morning and there really is no telling what I will get into once I get in motion outdoors so I am not committing myself to any one thing at the moment.
One thing is for certain and that is that I have to maximize my time over the coming weeks and that might well involve getting outside earlier in the day than when I have been lately. After all it is not like I am dealing with that much extreme weather aside from the occasional high winds which yeah are totally dodgy given all the standing dead pines around the property.
I keep thinking about firing up the lawnmower and heading over to the meadow with it to make straw. Later in the week it is supposed to rain so if I am going to do it I should do it over the next few days and try to have it all raked up and stored away before the rain gets here. The last time that I checked the area it was almost ready for mowing (meaning all the muck had nearly dried up) so I will only have this one tiny window of time before things get mucky again and I have to wait again. The muck is also what held me up when I was considering swing-blading the area because I would inadvertently rake a bunch of it up along with the straw.
Alright, it is rapidly approaching sundown and my day did not turn out to be all that productive. Once I got up and moving around this morning my stomach began feeling upset again so I wound up taking a nap for most of what remained of the day. When I woke up later I was feeling a bit better so I went hiking and also visited the meadow to look at the water there.
That big watering-hole finally dried up most of the way and I did not see any sign of spring-heads so it looks like I will not need to drain it after all. I did notice two spots in a sunnier portion of the meadow that were holding water so at least the wildlife still have some water there. I am thinking that once I do some mowing in the meadow I might create a few new watering-holes in those areas and see how they fair but for now the vegetation is pretty thick in those spots and it would be a hassle to work in them.
Later in the day I finally took my computer outside and gave it a good cleaning with the vacuum cleaner. Like I have said before lacking any grass in the dog yard I get a lot of dust in the little cabin and there just is not much that I can do about it. The loud sounds of the fans in the computer housing were starting to get annoying and yeah I would like to avoid needlessly burning up hardware if I can avoid it! So, I spent a bunch of time cleaning the fans and even sucking as much dust out of the power supply as possible. I guess on my next supply run I should pick up some more compressed air and get back in the habit of routinely blowing everything out.
Well, I better wrap this up and get on with the editing and posting. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
https://peakd.com/c/hive-114308/created
Imagine if you could get hold of one of those old iron bathtubs. Then you could pipe the water off through the plug hole. It's funny how we don't realise what a luxury some simple things are.
Hope you get the hay cutting done in time. That would be a boon.
I was picturing a claw foot tub but one of those old iron ones would be sweet too!
Yeah, folks take so much for granted!
I keep saying that I am going to cut that hay/straw but nailing the timing is tricky if I want it to be dry and store well.
Edit: Ha I had that edit comment in the wrong thread. That bucket mushroom project is super neat!
My grandmother had an old free standing bath with the feet. She ended up removing it and making it into a pond, which was actually a shame. It was so much nicer than the modern baths.
Yeah, they are hard to find these days but so worth it.
It froze here, we were colder than Anchorage Alaska. I hope that you get your tub figured out. I was going to buy a can of compressed air, I was shocked at the price of it and put it back on the shelf. 5 dollars and change is crazy. Aynsley's dog that we are caring for found an opossum, she thought that was the biggest squirrel that she had ever seen. lol
🤠
It is totally worth the five bucks to keep the hardware from overheating. I keep mulling over getting an oil and moisture filter for my air-compressor but I like how easy the canned air makes it.
Yes, I need to look at it that way.