May 2008

Chris writes:

"So I have to ask…how's the system handling this heat wave? We've got a fan blowing over a bag of ice over here…"

I respond:

"Awesome. I set it at 80deg before I left the house this morning and came home (6ish) to a nice and cool house — I just kicked them down to 74 just because we could. We were worried about the uncooled 1/2 of the house, but it's fine, too… it was over a hundred in Concord today — stepping off the BART train was like stepping into a blast furnace. We're unsure of power consumption, but so far we're VERY happy — without the upgrades in the AC and white foam roof, I'd be sweating in my underwear over here…"

While the back bedrooms are not climate controlled, we found these at big orange last night and I'll be fitting them into the wall — they open to the side yard, so they'll be inconspicuous (and affordable). They have both heat and AC and will run on 120V (rather than many AC/heaters which are 220V). The heat option is what sold me as the radiant heat is dodgy in these 2 rooms.

Since we chopped down all of the trees, it only made sense to plant more. In all seriousness, the ones that were there were weed trees that grew out of control. Hopefully, these will be more appropriate.

— a Japanese Maple (Emperor-1) and Dogwood (Cornus Florida) replace the overgrown Oleanders. These stay in the shade of the Pepper tree most of the day, so I think they’ll be happy.
— a Hinoki Cypress replaces the overgrown weird house plant by the door.
— a standard Japanese Maple (green) and a Suminagashi (red) Maple that will hopefully withstand the sun.
— a Japanese Sawtooth Elm (Zelkova Serrata) replaces the Privet and Mock Orange — this variety should grow to about 50 feet and protect the house from the afternoon sun. Eventually, we’ll have to cut down the Mulberry trees that were planted too close to the house and this will replace the shade that the Mulberry’s provide.
— a Variegated Maple replaces the old raised garden bed and will provide some necessary afternoon shade.
— an Autumn Blaze maple in Steve’s yard replaces an overgrown Oleander. Our deal was that I’d plant it if he’d water it.
— a new standard Meyer Lemon in the new garden area.
— finally, a Yoshino/Akebono Cherry in the front lawn…

The Cherry tree was not an easy one to plant. The soil in Concord is very hard clay. I had to rent a jackhammer (really) to get through the soil. But I learned a lesson: Digging holes is no fun.

When I went to pick-up the jackhammer, the guy at the rental shop told me it was easy to use. "Yeah," I replied, "I guess it doesn’t take a Ph.D to operate a jackhammer"… "Well," he said, "the way I figure it, folks get Ph.Ds so that they don’t have to operate jackhammers…". Truer words were never spoken.

So, we had this rubber tree in the atrium. It was unkempt and grew into the roof. We cut it down. It grew back — it… would… not… die.

It's dead now.

Casie spent a good part of Sunday afternoon making sure of this with the help of a few tools: a chainsaw, sawzall, sledgehammer and pick-axe. It was not pretty, but now it's done… after she pulled the heart of the tree out, she chucked it into the street — it was quite dramatic.

Time for part two… since the tree seemed really happy, but simply unkempt, I thought it right to try again. Besides, the house wouldn't seem the same without it. The previous owner's kids admitted that their mom liked the overgrown look and refused to let anyone trim it — and while I don't mind the naturalistic look myself, we'll be keeping an eye on this one.

I stopped by the local nursery and picked up a small version — and while at big-orange, I spied a larger one. So, one is now in the ground and the other in one of the new Ikea pots we recently picked up.

Edit: Benjamin Franklin defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. In that sense — what were we thinking planting another rubber tree!? We've since planted a beautiful and slow-growing maple tree in that space and everyone's all the happier. The rubber plants will live in the house in nice containers.