kellan_the_tabby: (wedding)
2025 03 01 15.03.02

[ A hanging pot holds a slightly sparse-looking aloe vera plant. It’s getting plenty of light from the left side, at least. ]

That’s Sebastian!

I’m not usually one for naming my plants, but Sebastian was already named when he came to me a couple of years back at a Newcomers event in Unser Hafen. Apparently someone’s aloe vera was just getting too big, so they divided him up & handed pieces around to anyone who wanted them.

& then apparently this happened a few more times, so now Sebastian lives in a lot of homes throughout the Outlands.

This is hilarious to me, so I was happy to keep the name, & if I pass pieces on to anyone else, I’ll be sure to tell the recipients that these, too, are Sebastian.

& then a few years later at the farmers market I purchased a tiny aloe vera planted in one of those plastic cups you get tiny tomatoes in, thinking, well, now I’ll have two, & also the kid selling them is adorable & totally deserves three bucks for being clever about making a little extra on the side. It was probably a year before I replanted it, but it grew well, easily surviving the time or two it got knocked over by the cats. A few of the bits that got knocked off rerooted, & I figured I’d repot them when I got around to it, & then I’d have a couple spare aloes, which is really never a bad idea.

I finally got around to repotting them a couple months ago, & my friends, it was not a few bits growing in that pot.

It was SIXTEEN bits.

2025 01 16 17.34.48

[ A table under a window holds a whole bunch of aloe vera plants, most in cans with the tops cut off, but a few in pots. There are also a couple of cans with the stumps of green onions planted in them. Ten of the aloes are separately potted, & the one planted in old cooking pot has five little stemlets tucked in with it. ]

I do not, obviously, need that many aloe plants. Some of these will be going to other people — I’ll likely bring them along to events & shows this summer. But I’m not giving away aloe plants without naming them, so I’d like to introduce you to Gustav. Would you like some of Gustav? Find me at an event this summer!

Of course adding the second window meant there was MUCH more sunlit space for plants, so now Gustav lives on both sides of my room.

2025 03 01 15.03.19

[ Five soda cans, two bean cans, and a former cooking pot now hold thirteen iterations of Gustav. They’re gathered around a green bowl with a bit of water in the bottom, and the whole lot of this is sitting on a table in front of the new window. ]

Here’s the green onions, now growing very well! I need to stick some of that in dinner, is what.

2025 02 11 14.30.46

[ A tin can, formerly holding peaches, is now filled with dirt. Four green onions stems are enthusiastically growing in it. ]

& lastly, my rubber plant, currently unnamed, but MUCH happier now that it gets direct sun in the afternoons. For a while there it had lost most of its color (& most of its leaves, alas) but now it’s doing very well.

2025 03 01 18.52.09

[ A much bigger purple pot holds a rubber plant; each branch ends with a rosette of pointy-ended, oval leaves, dark green with accents of yellow and orange. ]

The local convenience store & cafe has a BIG spider plant in the lobby, with a whole bunch of babies growing from it. Next time I’m in there I’m gonna see if they’ll let me grab a couple. I can always use more plants!


originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!

kellan_the_tabby: (wedding)
Pxl 20250201 221542429

[ Me and Morgyn leaning against the side of a big black pickup truck. An IBC water tank sits in the bed. I have a really, really goofy smile going on. ]

As part of the ongoing process of making things less horrible around here, a couple weekends ago we wrestled one of our two IBC tanks up onto the roof of the container. Why? Because of gravity.

This was a bit of a process. At about a hundred pounds when empty, they aren’t _that_ heavy for their size, but that’s still more than most people want to haul up a ladder. So we got creative.

Step the first involved getting the IBC into the back of the pickup, which is easy enough; that happens every time someone runs into town to get water. But that wasn’t near high enough to get it onto the roof without more finagling.

So we used the van.

That top pic? is me & Morgyn celebrating backing the pickup as close to the van as we could manage.

This close:

Pxl 20250201 221535171

[ One corner of the lowered tailgate of the truck would be touching the side of the van, except that it’s in the gap directly above the rear tire. The other corner is probably six inches away from the side of the van. ]

Then, with me on the roof of the van, CJ in the pickup bed, & Morgyn standing with one foot in the bed & the other inside the van’s side door, we hauled the IBC up & onto the roof. Success!

The next step? Backing the pickup as close to the side of the container as possible.

…this required some cogitation, because I’d envisioned the necessity for someone (me) to be on the roof with the IBC in case it decided to go slidey, & also for someone very familiar with the van (me) to do the backing up part. Fortunately Morgyn is _also_ very familiar with the van, being one of its previous owners, so they did the backing up, I rode along on the roof, & CJ handled ground crew & videography.

[ The van, seen from the side. I’m on the roof, grimly hanging onto the IBC. Morgyn’s behind the wheel. The van starts backing up, slowly, to the left; it goes about ten feet before the van and the video both stop. ]

They got the van pretty close to the container. How close?

Pxl 20250201 223359024

[ To the left, the back of the van; to the right, a wall of straw bales. There’s probably most of a foot between the bumper and the straw. ]

… not as close as we got the pickup, but it worked out.

Then, of course, came the part we didn’t get any pictures of. This consisted of me squeezing around the IBC to the back of the van, surveying the situation, shoving the IBC around some, then squeezing BACK around it to the front, then repeating that about six times. Yeah, there was only about six inches of roof left on either side of the IBC. So what? I had the IBC to hold on to.

Then Morgyn, who had the brain at that moment, handed up a pair of 2x4s to use as skids. That made a LOT of sense, but I still couldn’t get anywhere trying to push the IBC onto them, & CJ, up on the roof, couldn’t reach far enough to grab it & pull.

Eventually, inevitably, I wound up with one foot on the back of the van & the other on the roof of the container, hauling the IBC along the 2x4s. Which worked fine until the IBC moved far enough to cover the edge of the van roof. I didn’t have anything like the right leverage to haul myself up, so I thrust a hand in CJ’s direction & said, Pull.

He pulled. I think he was worried. He pulled hard enough he damn near threw me off the other side of the container.

… but I didn’t fall, & the IBC was close enough for both of us to grab & pull, & that was basically the end of it; we just had to rearrange the straw bales CJ had moved out of the way & that was it, that was the job.

Behold, an IBC!

Pxl 20250201 223259637

[ A cube of white plastic surrounded by a metal cage, probably a yard in each dimension, sits on the container’s roof. It is surrounded by the single layer of straw bales that make up the roof’s insulation, with a few extra straw bales supplying a second layer around it. ]

How far did we have to haul the IBC to get it from the van roof to the top of the container?

This far!

Pxl 20250201 223303960

[ To the left, the container roof, with the IBC in place. To the right, the van. There’s probably two feet between the van roof and the edge of the straw bale wall, plus the thickness of a straw bale before the actual roof starts. ]

… yeah that went about as smoothly as it was gonna.

Alas, none of us thought to hand CJ’s camera to Morgyn before CJ got on the roof & we got that part going, or there would be LOTS more pictures of me making poor safety decisions & once again, inexplicably, not dying about it.

I credit my patron saint. Who’s my patron saint? Clint Barton, of course, patron of coffee drinkers, extremely depressed people, & anyone making poor safety decisions.

Next up, adventures in plumbing. Which usually doesn’t involve drilling a hole an inch anna half across in corten steel, or so I’ve been told.


originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!

June 2025

S M T W T F S
1234567
89 101112 1314
15161718192021
2223 2425262728
2930     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 25th, 2025 06:48 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios