Where Do You Find Good Help These Days? Feb-March in Windsor Park

 Where Do You Find Good Help These Days?

Especially at a reasonable cost! Well there is only one place left to look. Right in the mirror.

Everything and everybody cost more, considerably more. If you need some work done around the house or anywhere else it is best to have some DIY skills. You can always go to YouTube and learn some. Our house has needed lots of small to medium project work done and THANKS to my Grandfather for teaching me many of my DIY skills and showing the importance of  self reliance. Diving right into a fix it yourself moment was always the first goto since an early age. There was no YouTube in those days, trial and error was the teacher, even if you had to go buy the same part twice cause you messed the first attempt up it was always cheaper and you bought yourself a good lesson for future reference.

Our home needed a spring touch up coat of paint. 

Last year I used several tubes of caulk on the exterior getting things ready for painting. Now it was time to scrape and get it done.

Really impressed with the new paints, 

it is much thicker and one coat was plenty, in fact I only needed 1-3/4 gallons to do the whole job.

I did 1 wall a day and it took 7 days.

Just turn up the Jazz and the brush strokes come easy.

I even worked in some grilling while painting

While painting I noticed that the pipe insulation around the air conditioning refrigerant line was disintegrating, so I replaced that. You want everything about your AC to bed in perfect condition in TEXAS.

While cleaning the last wall for painting I had my head down within inches of the Gas Meter. I smelled gas. You could not smell it just by walking by the meter so I new it was a tiny leak. I called Texas Gas Company and they said Get out of the house now and stay 50 feet away, they immediately sent a service man over.

Virgil arrive within 20 minutes

Virgil sprayed some soapy water and found the leak in about 20 seconds, it was at the bottom of a union that connects the round regulator to the service pipe coming from the ground.

While taking the old union apart, it just broke off. The union and connecting fittings were first installed in 1958, Two years ago they came through the neighbor hood and replaced all the meters up to the old fittings. Who knows how long this thing was leaking? could have been two years!.

Virgil gave us a new regulator also.

He even painted the new fittings

Turns out Virgil lives in the same area where we first moved to the Austin Area out near Webberville. We knew some of the same folks out there. As soon as he told me his name I asked him where lived. I knew by the way he talked that he was from that area, He said "its a small World!:

Then the city showed up to remove a tree that was leaning on an electric line

We already had one of these volunteer trees fall over and this one was leaning over on the electric line, 

The Admiral called the city to report it and three weeks later this crew made short work of it.

See: https://youtu.be/tuqLCRj5fQ8

March is Garden Time

This year I have time to get it started right.

Learned this valuable Lesson back in the mid 70's from the farmer who was our neighbor Howard Davis in Webberville.

Bury a bale of hay and put 4-5 inches soil on top then a layer of cow manure compost.

plenty of space for 6 tomato plants

I us a Leaf Mulcher/shredder to build the walking paths and mulch the garden. Plenty of free bags of leaves in Austin! See: https://youtu.be/IsDj2MsuU5A

Guaranteed to grow the biggest,tastiest  

you have ever eaten!

Very luky to get a really nice rain the next day after getting the garden done.

 

Since then rains have been sparse and light.

Then we had a movie company make an Indy film across the street

This is Vinnie Hogan Shooting his indie movie "Aura"

Vinnie Hogan is a composer and producer, known for Electric Nostalgia (2016), The Fable of Shannon Cable (2013) and Shifter (2020).

We live just a few blocks from the Austin Film Commissions Film School of Film and Filming Studios so Windsor Park gets a lot of this type of filming just due to proximity.

They put up large signs on both ends of the street notifying those driving through that there were movie actors with guns. She stepped through the end of our garden for this shot.

The same week SNOWBALL was covered in snow.

WE got a dose,
 

It froze the rain gauge and cracked it. 

But by noon it was all gone but the cold.

As I continue to study and practice the blues I get came to learn tunes from the greats.

While I was painting a song came on Blues Fan Radio, it was Stanly Jordon playing Willow Weep for Me: https://youtu.be/AybVy2egROc I recognized the tune, it was one I was currently working on. Now I could put a name to the tune. A little research showed that many major Jazz and Blues musicians had their own version of the song out see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_Weep_for_Me

This was Clara's Idea I think.

Wow, we spotted this bee hive. Never seen one around here before.

Blue Bonnets in Full swing now.