Trimming the Giant Live Oak Tree

 When you are good at growing plants there is a problem that arises.  Suppose one of those plants is a giant tree species?  Then it gets really big, bigger than the yard big...  OMG...  My pruning shears can't do that...  I have tree tools also, and they also can't do that...

This is the Live Oak in the back is after I called Daniel at Twin Oak Solutions.  This Live Oak is approximately 40 feet tall and is beyond my capabilities to trim correctly.  Twin Oak Solutions has all the correct tools to do a job like this.  Here is the way it looked before the trim...

We also had them Bob the Crepe Myrtles, and now we have the Lollipop Trees by the patio.  These Crepe Myrtles make a huge mess every year with both the leaves, and white flowers, our Summer Snow.

The part of their service that I really like is the cleanup.  They bring a Chipper along with them, and mulch all the trimmings.  This machine is a Turbo Diesel Chipper, very loud.  But it reduces a massive stack of branches into a pile of mulch in very little time.

They are happy to leave a pile of mulch for you as well.  I'm still using the mulch from the Maple Tree they took out last year.  Here the Stump Grinder is reducing the Maple Tree Stump into a pile of mulch that got used all over the yard.  Mulch is an important part of keeping your white dog white...

They have trimmed every tree in our yard now.  Here is a before and after comparison of the Bradford Pear tree in front.  Periodically trees need to be pruned like this.  I have an example, the Pistache Tree, in front is doing a lot better since we pruned it last year.  This year it produced more growth, and looks healthier than it ever has.

Luminance Hot Sauce

 The Autumn is the right time for making Hot Sauce.  I have been doing this annually for some time, maybe about five years.  I've been growing Chiles for about 26 years, but didn't start making Hot Sauce until more recently.  Before I was pickling, drying, and smoke drying the Chiles.

So, what I have learned about Hot Sauce is that the best Hot Sauce is Fermented.  The flavor can not be mimicked by any other process.  And there are many other processes.  Hot Sauce is all about flavor, and not just heat.  Now don't get me wrong, I want the heat, but I don't want all heat, and no flavor.  There are specific components to the flavor that are critical to a good Hot Sauce.  Acidity, Salinity, Smokiness, Hotness, Sweetness, Savoriness, and Viscosity are all important attributes in a good Hot Sauce.

So, back to fermented Chiles for a moment.  I'm using a 9 oz. bottle of Carolina Reaper Mash from Pepper Joe's for this batch of Hot Sauce.  Then I'll dilute the Chiles with Tomatoes with a 3:1 ratio.  This does reduce the heat a bit, but adds volume, and flavor.  The Tomatoes are the San Marzano variety, that already have Basil, and (a little) Garlic adding to the flavor.  Right after saying that I am going to add a whole head of Garlic.

Starting off here we almost have a Italian Pasta Sauce.  Maybe its a little Garlicky.  We'll throw this in a pan, and cook it a little to cook the sharpness out of the Garlic.  When you cook Garlic it gets sweet.  Wut?  Sweetness in the Hot Sauce?  Yeah, more flavor.

At this point, before adding the Chile Mash, taste it for salinity.  I add extra salt to this.  Remember were making Hot Sauce, not Marinara.  The Hot Sauce will only be used a drop at a time, or maybe a couple drops, so the Salt needs to stand out.  I'll cook this until the Garlic is soft, and then everybody into the Choppa.

That is a 64 oz. pitcher, and we have about 30 oz. of Tomato Sauce in it.  Then I'll add the Chile Mash, and 8 oz. of Vinegar to start.  As the mixture is blending I am looking for viscosity.  The Hot Sauce is distributed in Woozy Bottles that have a Dripper Top, so you want the Hot Sauce viscosity to be light enough that it can flow through the Dripper Top.  The finish on the sauce has to be right so it can flow through the Dripper Top.  I use the Vinegar to "thin" the sauce to produce the correct viscosity for the Dripper Top.  The Hot Sauce is tuned to the delivery device.

The Hot Sauce has to be completely liquefied also.  Chunks of Tomato, or Garlic are not compatible with the Dripper Top.  There is a lot to this process simply concerning the delivery of the Hot Sauce.  The flavor is the most important attribute, but getting the Hot Sauce to the food is almost equally important.  I run the blender on high for an extended period until the Hot Sauce has a silky smoothness.

Then, finally we are bottling the Hot Sauce.  This batch yielded around 44 oz., or 8.66, 5 oz. bottles.  The yield per batch is fluid depending on the taste, and viscosity factors.  So, I get a varying number of bottles from each batch.  The bottles are washed, and sterilizer immediately before filling in a parallel operation.  We fill the bottle, clean up the top, apply the Dripper Top, and then the Lid...  Finished, right?  No, gotta haz label...

Having a cool label on your Hot Sauce makes it a little better.  And you can add all the statistical stuff people want to see, like the Scoville rating.  The people that have been willing to try this seem to like it well.  It has an extremely hot front, but also well rounded flavor, and doesn't linger too long.  The acidity, and salinity are pronounced.  One friend said the Vinegar finds you first, but the Chile soon makes you forget about it.  I think this batch turned out well.  Oh, look at that, time to go eat some delicious nom nomz...

Southgate

This is the new gate on the south fence.  This is the third frame that I have built for a fence gate.  With each one I get a little more understanding.  There are a lot of gates that are constructed as part of the fence, and then you make some strategic cuts, add some hinges, and a latch, then its a gate...

No...  A gate is a door, it needs a frame.  You want it to stay square, right?

 

 

The horizontal pieces on this one are cut with a large radial arm saw to make sure they are nicely square.  The vertical pieces hold the horizontal pieces in place with 4 inch lag screws which are countersunk into the vertical pieces.  So, you can't see the hardware that is holding the frame together.  The hinges span the joint between the vertical piece, and the horizontal piece.  This adds a little more hardware to lock the frame pieces together.  As the wood dries out the frame will loosen a bit, and the lag screws can be tightened to regain any lost rigidity.

The old gate, by comparison, had no frame.  There were several pieces of wood added to a fence section which were intended to keep the gate rigid over time.  It had nails as fasteners, so you don't have the option of tightening the old hardware.  I did add a number of deck screws to tighten it up over the years, but it was still a floppy mess.  The hinges were attached to the upper most, and lower most horizontal pieces.  Then the pickets held all of the horizontal pieces together with nails.  There was one vertical structural member on the latch side of the gate, mostly to hold the latch.

On the new gate the hinges, and latch are attached to the frame directly.  The old gate had both the hinges, and the latch attached through the pickets.  This is another area where the gate will loose rigidity through the shrinkage as the wood dries out.

Probably what we like best about the new gate is that it opens inward towards the house, and is mostly out of the way when you are moving stuff through the gate.  The old gate opened outward, away from the house, and was all the way in the way when you were moving stuff through the gate.

With the gate opening inward I was able to hide all the gate hardware from the outside perspective.  This gives the new South Fence, and Southgate a nice clean appearance...

South Fence

 Last spring I made improvements on the South Gate by replacing the Cedar 4x4 posts with pressure treated Pine 6x6 posts.  This greatly improved the mounting points for the gate, but the gate itself is still the tired 25 year old Cedar.  It is very buggy, devoured by bugs...

Something happened recently to motivate me to repair this part of the fence.  It is the oldest, and most venerable part of the fence at the moment.  I had a Rabbit incursion, and the Rabbits were eating my Chile plants.  Yeah...  Last Straw...

Else where I have installed Dog Boards, or in this case Rabbit Boards to keep curious critters from burrowing under my fence.  The critters are very persistent especially if they know there are delicious nomnoms inside.

I start by peeling away the layers of rotted Cedar.  This stuff is 25 years old so it is crumbling as I pull it apart.  I try to scavenge the nails out of the boards.  Some of the boards can be partially salvaged for rustic projects.  A lot of it is too rotted to save.

Here I am down to the original frame rails.  The lower one is mostly rotted away, and the upper two are in better shape, but I want to replace all of this.  When I did the South Gate I replaced the posts of the gate frame, and added a middle support post.  The post on the right is old, and I will add another mid post on the right side.

The new frame rails are pressure treated pine.  On the bottom are two 2x6 pieces for the Critter Boards, and the other frame rails are 2x4s.  I'm using 3 1/2 in. Deck Screws to secure the frame rails to the posts.  The original frame rails were not level, so I am making the new construction level.

Part of replacing the frame rails was undoing the hinges for the gate.  My next project will be replacing the gate itself, but for this project I want to keep the gate right where it is.  So, I made a brace to hold the hinge side of the gate in order to release the post side of the hinge mount.  The frame rails also hold the hinge mount.  This way the lag screws for the hinge are biting into new wood.  Once the lag screws for the hinges are in we can release the brace holding the hinge side of the gate, and be able to use the gate again.

Adding the new Cedar pickets on a nice sturdy frame made of pressure treated wood is easy.  All that framing stuff is done, and this is just the facia.  It certainly looks better than that old rotted Cedar.  I'm not quite happy with the way the pickets line up.  I'll fix that when I make the new gate.

OK, looks pretty good.  The new gate will make it looks better.  Inside looks good too...

 

 

Xmas Pi

 Small computers are BIG!

 

 A network of small computers can be more effective than one large master computer.  Look at it like multiprocessing.  Automotive computer systems are a good analogy.  The engine management is a dedicated task, so you need one computer to focus on that task.  But there are other functions that need to be managed like the body control module, or the anti-lock brake module, or the suspension control module, or the window control module, etc.  Many small computers can be more effective at managing a system than a single Master Control Module.

We all have many computers now.  So lets diversify a little more.  This is a Raspberry Pi computer.  I had a couple of these boards laying around, and I thought maybe I can do something with them over the Xmas Holiday.  This is also kind of a Scrapper project, so, for the most part, I am going to use materials that I already have without buying new stuff.  Now, having said that, I did start by buying new stuff.  I had the Raspberry Pi board, and SD Card, but didn't have a power supply, display, mouse or keyboard.

My aim was a "small" computer, and I kinda took that literally.  I got a 3.5 inch HDMI Touchscreen, and a tiny keyboard with a mouse pad.  Well that was neat, but I can't see the incredibly small characters on the screen.  I was using my readers, and a magnifying glass to see what was on the display.  So, when I needed to I would hook the Raspberry Pi up to the 32 inch TV, and then I could see it, LOL!  The mouse pad on the tiny keyboard was hard to use as well, so I wound up using an old USB Mouse.  I wanted a bigger display, but didn't want to buy a display, So I wound up using an old 720p TV that we bought about 10 years ago.  The resolution is 1280 by 720, not bad for a "Toy" Computer, LOL!

It is an Element Brand TV, and I was never impressed with it as a TV, but for my Xmas Pi it works good.  The sound system has no Bass, and I need to fix that for sure.  Every TV produced now has a mounting point for a wall mount bracket.  I have used this mounting point to hold the Raspberry Pi.  I fabricated an Aluminum Plate that fits the screw holes in the TV, and also the screw holes in the Raspberry Pi to be an adapter.  Then it was a matter of finding some screws, and a really short HDMI Cable.

Now that is a lightweight computer.  It is impressively powerful too.  It has wired ethernet, and WiFi, plus Bluetooth.  At the moment it is playing Black Sabbath, albeit with insufficient Bass...  Big Puppy Sigh...  I kinda wish I had a 1080p Touchscreen, but there is always room for expansion in the future.  The wall mount plate is a VISA Standard, so in the future, when I find a better monitor my little Xmas Pi will bolt right on there...  Yee Haw!

Eight Planets to See...

 ...and More...  This is a pretty auspicious display of all the other planets in our system.  All of the major planets in this solar system, eight of them, are able to be seen from our vantage point at this time.  This is pretty rare.  Of course you can't see all of them with eyes alone.  It takes some time to look at the whole line.  Pluto rises at around 11:00 PM, and then you can see the whole line of planets stream over the eastern horizon until dawn.  Having a relatively powerful telescope will help a lot...

Blood Beaver Moon

 Really close to a Lunar Eclipse. The Blood Beaver Moon is about 97% Full Eclipse. It is also the longest eclipse we can see in around 1229 years. The last eclipse like this was in the year 1440, and the next is in 2669. The moon is close to its apogee, which is the farthest away from Earth in its orbit. This makes the Moon appear smaller, and apparently spends more time in the Umbra, Earth's shadow, making the eclipse last longer. Another thing that makes this lunar orbit unique is there will also be a Solar Eclipse on December 4, 2021. One Orbit, Two Eclipses, rare, and unique indeed...