There’s just not enough time to get every thing done. My blogging has been suffering, but I just had to take a little time to let everyone know what’s been going on at the Urban Ranch. It’s been a busy place this summer, and it’s a great life if I just don’t weaken. I’ve been making it through the night after a long day working outside with a little help from my two friends. They’re called Aleve and Ibuprofen. The heat index has been really up there this year. Today the temperature was about 95, but the heat index which takes the humidity into account was about 110.
This is a picture of Interstate 29 heading North from my city. The area you see here is supposed to be all farm ground with no water at all in this area. The Missouri river is about a half mile to left of this Interstate highway. Due to extreme snow fall in the Rocky Mountains and extreme spring rain fall in Montana, the four dams along the Missouri are filled to capacity and have to use extreme water release measures to keep the dams from failing. These waters will be like this through September maybe longer depending on the amount of rain received. The Corps of Engineers is releasing a record amount of water from the Gavin’s Point Dam just over 100 miles north of my city. They are releasing 160,000 cubic feet of water a second. This equates to well over a million gallons of water a second.
I have never seen the dam in this condition in all my years of life. Usually the down river side of the dam has a 30 to 40 foot drop to river level. This is an incredible picture for sure. Fourteen flood gates are open and dumping water as much as possible. It’s just been a crazy year for river water control.
Many years ago I built a PCV structure to help me paint the house up high. It has been silently sitting in the side yard doing nothing for all but a couple of those 8 years. I decided to help with the cleaning out of the side yard to use that structure to build a fort for Bradley while he is away visiting his Dad. This picture is the structure upside down. The plywood which was on the top of the structure needs to be replaced so I’m removing the old rotten plywood from the structure assembly. Bradley doesn’t know that I’m building a fort while he’s away, so it will be a surprise when he returns in August.
So far things are progressing. The foundation always needs to be the strongest it can be. Here you see the holes being dug into the ground. They go approximately 3 1/2 to 4 feet into the ground. Form tubes will go part way into the hole and 4 foot long rebar will connect the ground pillars with the actual PCV structure. You can see the bottom of the support structure and one of the foundation pillar tubes that will slide into the holes. The hole is actually deeper than the tube by a foot or two. Some may recognize that the bottom of the PCV structure has toilet phalanges attached to them. The beauty of used toilet phalanges is they will fit perfect into the tubes and they have built in bolt holes to hold the structure to the concrete. Nice. I hardly ever use something for what it’s intended to be used.
You can see the tubes are filled with concrete and the bottom of the support structure is in place. The top of the carriage bolts you see in this picture are 5 1/2 inches long and have been pressed into the wet concrete to solidly hold the structure in place when the concrete dries. Also another thing done for strength of the structure was four foot rebar pushed down from the top of this bottom section into the hollow legs. Two foot was pushed into the wet concrete in the ground and two foot stuck up above the concrete base pillars inside the hollow legs.
Well, here it is the support structure is up. The four vertical legs will be filled with concrete from the base to the top. The top will then be set in place for the floor of the fort to be strapped onto. When completed there will be 16 eighty pound bags of concrete in the pillars in the ground and to fill the vertical legs for a total concrete weight of 1280 pounds. With the 32 gallons of water it took to mix the concrete it brings the total weight of the structure for concrete to 1500 pounds. Three fourths of a ton. Yeah, I do have a tendency to over kill some times. I didn’t want a strong wind to blow it over or a 65 pound boy to knock it down. I don’t think it’s going any where. What do you think?
Ok, lets move on. The neighbor next door had an old swingset that his kids had out grown and he mentioned to Bradley, my grandson, that he could have it if it was Ok with grandpa. Since it only needed a “little” repair and since grandpa was such a handy kind of guy he could fix it up for him. Well, how do you say no to a six year old grandson with deal like that? You don’t. So we pulled up the swingset and carried it over to grandpa’s house. You can see that the cross bar just didn’t stand up to the boys in the neighborhood. Well, I have a plan. Yes that is concrete on the ends of the swingset poles, but after digging holes to set those chunks in the ground I mixed up and put another 160 pounds of concrete on top of the concrete that’s already there. If you look close on the other side of the dangling blue chains of the broken swings the first of the new bars has been installed. The new bars were fabricated from the top rail of a chain link fence. Bradley tested it out by climbing up on the bar and jumping up and down to see what it would do. Well, I already knew it would be fine as I tested it with my rotund body so Bradley was like tick on the back of Clydesdale horse but it was just fun to watch him try to bend it.
I hope you enjoyed the peek into the life around the Urban Ranch. Now it’s time to kick back, grab a cup of coffee and spend some quality relaxing time out on the poor man’s patio. See ya next time and have a great day in the garden.
The patio’s looking pretty spiffy now that I have the right kind of plants growing in the containers. This picture really doesn’t do it justice as the trellis is quite colorful this year. The plants across the top are Impatiens and the ones up the sides are Begonias. The big leafy things by my feet are zucchini plants but all but a couple succumbed to the dreaded vine bore. I’m not sure how to thwart the greedy little munching worms, but I’m determined to find a way.
See ya next time, and don’t forget to leave a comment and tell me how the summer gardening is in your neck of the woods.
