Main goal today: Clean up the back porch.

Tasks to complete in order to achieve that goal:

1. Store the deck chairs and the hoses away in the garage attic.
2. Store the cold frame in the garden shed.
3. Take the composter down to the basement.
4. Sweep the leaves off the deck.

Goal: Achieved!

Distractions along the way: Uncounted dozens.

I didn’t bother to clear all the stuff off the back porch last fall and regretted it all through the winter. I was reminded of my laziness every time I tried to shovel the snow off the deck and the shovel caught on a pail lid, or I had to shovel around a deck chair, then move the deck chair, then shovel a clear space to put the deck chair back in. So this year I promised myself I’d clean off the deck. A part of me laughed and said, “Yeah, right,” but today I actually did it. Took a little longer than it should have, though, because like every other project I’ve ever done, I got distracted by other projects that have been on my mental blackboard for months or years.

For instance, there was a coil of garden hose on the back deck, left over from when I put the hoses away last weekend. Don’t know how I overlooked that one, but there it was, so I hauled it up into the garage attic and tossed it on the pile of hoses already up there, and that’s when I realized that I was going to have to hang them up if I wanted to have enough room to store the deck chairs. The way I’d hung them up last year, by tying them with a loop of nylon cord, then hanging the loop over a bent nail, worked well enough but I wasn’t satisfied with it. This year I cut a couple one-foot lengths of stout dowling, screwed them to the wall frame and hung the hoses off them. Worked great. Wrenched my back doing it, though. It’s always something, isn’t it?

Then I stacked up the deck chairs and swept the leaves off the deck, which took at least twice as long as I thought it would because I had to move v e r y slowly and carefully. Every sweep made my back stiffen up and go “Ow!” but I kept on sweeping until I got all the leaves off, chucking them under the edges of the deck rail. Found the chimney cap in the corner, buried under a pile of leaves. Oh, I knew it was there. It’s been there for weeks. Every couple of months the wind blows it off the chimney and I make a mental note to put it back, then forget about it for months. This was the month I remembered to put it back. Climbing up onto the roof with it was probably a stupid move for an old guy with a bad back that went “Ow!” but I didn’t feel like asking Tim do it, or calling a general contractor. Probably should’ve, but I didn’t roll off the roof and die, so there’s that.

While I was putting the chairs up in the garage I noticed for the umpteenth time the bag of grass seed on the shelf in the back of the garage. It was full of holes that spilled grass seed everywhere. Who knew mice liked to eat grass seed? Not me. I just left it there, and they chewed through the bag and had a feast, strewing grass seed everywhere. After stowing the chairs, I grabbed a foxtail broom and cleaned up the mess, then swept the floor of the garage.

To clean up that mess, I had to move a couple pieces of three-quarter inch plywood and a dryer vent I bought a month ago. I was going to cut the plywood to fit the window in the corner of the basement where I brewed beer. If I wanted to keep brewing beer in the basement, I was going to have to find a way to vent as much of the steam as possible out the window, and I figured the easiest way to do that was to cover it with plywood and cut a hole in it, then fit the hole with the same kind of four-inch tin ducting and a vent like the kind used for clothes dryers.

The basement window opened up awning-style, hinged at the top, and the outside was screened over. I plan to just unscrew the hinges to take the window off, leaving the frame to hold the plywood. The screen was made to come out, but whoever built the deck didn’t leave enough room to get the screen out so I had to break it up to get it out of the window frame. Then I very carefully measured the plywood and cut it on my table saw. Funny thing: I’ve never had a problem cutting large pieces of thick plywood on my table saw until today when I read an on-line article about how to avoid kickback, something that happens when the wood binds against the saw blade and gets thrown in the direction the blade is turning, which is usually in the direction of the operator. I’ve read about kickback before but today was the first time it happened to me. Don’t know if it was because I was thinking about it too much or what. Luckily the saw didn’t kick the wood out very hard, just enough to give me a shove. Scared the crap out of me, though.

I got both pieces of ply cut to size, then clamped them together and started drilling holes: one in each corner so I can bolt the pieces together, sealing them over the hole where the window used to be, and two off-center in the middle of the plywood. Using a jigsaw, I opened one of them up to a four-inch circle for the dryer vent. The other one will eventually be a two-inch circle for a drain vent, but before I could get to that I ran out of momentum and had to knock off for the day. There’s only so much steam in my boiler and I’d run out.