School Days

"Back to School" seems to be the theme every where one goes these days. So we will combine a little history, biology, and physics into today's lesson. We left California for a new opportunity in the Great White North, and the house we moved into looked a lot like this:

Then, as happens every year, the snows melted in the spring to reveal a typical tract home front yard, landscaped by the builder, which means you get grass and, still unknown to us at this point in time, a landscape feature, consisting of 2 large rocks near the tree and the tree:

We interrupt this little story to bring you a commercial endorsement for the Snow Boogie Blade Runner from Costco (the red sled), seen here in it's primary use, entertainment for youth. Keep an eye out for the real reason we like this sled so much. It is a very talented sled.

So, in the summer, the landscape feature turned out to be a bit underwhelming. We were able to rescue the grass, but the curb appeal simply was not there. What we needed was a dose of medicine that Michelle has been able to share with so many people over the years. We started with the area around the tree.

All it needed was a border, and a loosening of the belt, an expansion and some relief (small mounds in which to plant flowers and other flora. The real plans involved a new planter at the front of the house, another "landscape feature," but not in the tract home sense.

While at the store one night, we saw and purchased a sod knife, known to the rest of the world as a linoleum knife. Left to my own devices, I let the knife get away from me, and before I knew what was going on, we had removed about 200 square feet of sod for the low low price of $6.95 and 47 mosquito bites.

Last summer we had discovered a rock in the back yard when we were installing the raised bed planters for the garden. We never did get it out of the hole, but we did get to buy 2 new shovels and a pry bar. This summer we found out how large the rock really was - about 350 lbs! After a brief introduction to the science and physics of a lever, a fulcrum, and a sling, we had extracted the rock for transportation to the new planter area.

Unfortunately, we have been unable to eliminate or significantly reduce either gravity or friction, which is really a pretty good thing in the big scheme of things. The blanket dragging method worked for approximately 2.5 feet.

"Boys, we need to modify our approach to this problem. We need to reduce friction more, or hire a bunch of slaves to move this rock." A quick inventory of the garage revealed another dual purpose device - the motorcycle loading ramp/litter.

This method was significantly improving our efforts by a factor of 2. Now we were 9 feet from the hole in the back yard and only needed another 70 to 80 feet to call our efforts successful, installing the rock in its new home in the new planter bed. Back to the garage, I mean drawing board.

Here is where we nearly laughed our selves silly - the red sled. You see, the top is a medium density polyethylene mould, but the bottom is a high density poly ethylene sheet. They make sewage pipe out of this stuff because nothing sticks to it, therefore, it has a very low coefficient of friction. Both boys thought the old man had finally lost the few remaining marbles rolling around loose in his greying noggin. In fact, it worked so well, we made the next 60 feet in about 8 seconds. Not quite as fast as Hussein Bolt, but fast enough for us.

Crossing the concrete driveway was the next little challenge, back to the moving blanket - better, but still too hard. What we needed were wheels. What we had were a few steel stakes for concrete forms left over from the garden box construction project from last year.

The task went from hard to "zing" in 2 seconds flat. Samuel placed the stakes under the red sled and Joseph pulled it across the driveway as easy as the ancient Egyptians.

Then, all that was left was to turn loose a little testosterone to roll the stone into place and then use the lever and fulcrum again to install small wedges under it so it would not roll away from where we wanted it.

After a quick wash job to remove the mud, and an afternoon planting, we now have this at our front door:

You may recognize the wagon from Concord. The wheel set was a gift from our loving neighbors, Larry and Helen Crump. The wheels are from an old cart used by the original landowners where our house was. The area used to be a walnut orchard, and the wheels were from a cart they used to collect walnuts at harvest time from the orchard. The rest is a planter box made from scraps of lumber.


Class dismissed. See ya'll later.