Saturday, October 4, 2008

PORCH GLIDER!

We finally finished it! We've been working on it since February, and we finally got it done.

Ta-DA!
Completed porch glider in its new home by the patio

The rotten, rusty original came with the house, and we replaced the slats, the metal brackets, and all the hardware and painted everything. It's now go stainless steel bolts, red oak slats, and brackets made from hurricane fence pipes. It glides beautifully, it's wonderfully sturdy--it's altogether satisfactory.

And when we finished, we sat on our porch glider in the mellow, breezy, golden afternoon and just chilled. Exactly as I had planned.

View from our shade patio

Matt did most of the final work on the swing (I did help with the hacksaw, though. Sawing through fence pipe--not fun work). Meanwhile, with my trusty cultivator hoe--I love that thing--I slowly, carefully chipped the large mound of hard-backed earth from the buttress part of the cottonwood. Our tree guy was adamant that we needed to pull that soil back and let those buttress roots get air.

In the picture below, you can see the bit I had fully excavated on the right and the partially excavated side on the left. I think I gingerly dug off about 8 inches of soil.

And now I remember why I decided not to become an archeologist.

Partially excavated cottonwood

At the same time as all the swing/tree excitement was going on, one of our Oxblood lilies was blooming pink. I know that a pink subspecies or variety exists, but why didn't we see these last year? Do we have the true pink, or is it just some response to drought stress? Pretty, though, isn't it?

Pink Rhodophiala bifida (Oxblood lily)

And here are some picture of the cats. They are still pretty wary of each other (Po keeps getting in Izzy's personal bubble. Izzy doesn't like this. At all.) but no blood has been shed. And we only let them mingle under supervision. On the good news side of things, Izzy adapted to her litter box right away.

Po, whose gargantuan paws are twice the size of Izzy's.

Po's GlamourShot (TM)

Izzy, who sometimes looks shockingly sarcastic for such a young little kitty (1 to 1-1/2 yrs)

The Great Dictator

Matt and Izzy

3 comments:

Janice said...

Is Po polydactyl?

Janice said...

By the way, I envy your glider with good old fashioned green-eyed jealousy.

Elgin_house said...

Way to go Janice! Yes he is (polydactyl, that is). On all four paws, in fact. Our little (actually rather giant) freak kitty. I think those monster paws of his were what sealed the deal for Matt back when he first found Po as a fluffy little feral kitten.

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