Warm Winter Day, and Other Musings

Hello, and welcome to my page!

The past several weeks have been warmer than usual here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, especially in the south central U.P. It's been above freezing during the day almost every day since probably the beginning of November. It's generally been in the 30s F most days, with some days, such as today, making it up into the 40s F. On a day to day basis, the temperatures are not outside the normal range, but when you look at the last 5 weeks as a whole, it's definitely above averages. The weather pattern that determines the temperatures has moved north by quite a ways this year.

Another thing, we have hardly had any measurable precipitation in the past several weeks. There is still no snow on the ground, and the little bit that did fall at night a couple of times melted the next day. We had snow on the ground at the end of October, but that's been gone for several weeks now. Even Copper Harbor at the tip of the Keweenaw peninsula, well out into Lake Superior, still has no snow on the ground right now.

The ground is frozen, due to the cold night temperatures, but the surface melts a bit during the day, making a bit of mud where there's bare dirt. That means I end up tracking some of it into the house occasionally when I'm working outside.

Since today was a nice sunny day in the mid 40s, I took a few pictures. It makes for a visual record of the weather, among other things. I've been splitting a few pieces of wood for the wood stove in the greenhouse. The splitting block is just out of the picture next to the wheelbarrow. I can only split a few pieces before my back starts telling me I should quit.
This is the garden, sleeping in the winter sun under a nice blanket of mulch.

This is the wood stove in the greenhouse. It's an old cast iron 2 burner flat top stove. It has internal liner pieces and a grate designed to burn coal, but wood works just fine for my needs. I only use it if I want to do some work in the greenhouse on a cold day. The greenhouse leaks too much air to keep it warm, but I can usually get it up to about 50 degrees F with the stove.

The stove is surrounded on 3 sides with cement blocks, both to absorb the heat and store a bit of it, and as protection so it doesn't accidentally catch something else on fire.

Speaking of the greenhouse, I got the bags of potting soil moved into the greenhouse today. I thought there were 3 bags left, but it turned out that there were 4 bags.

I used my garden wagon to move the bags of potting soil, it's easier than using the wheelbarrow.

The first 2 bags were easy to load on the wagon. I slid the first bag off the top of the pile onto the wagon, and then rolled the second bag on top of the first. The third bag was a bit more work, I had to stand it on end and then slide it up and on top of the 2 on the wagon. The fourth bag was the worst, it had to go from the bottom of the pile on the ground to the top of the stack on the wagon. I kind of hurt my back on that one. I don't know how heavy these 2 cubic foot bags of wet dirt are, but I can barely lift them.

The next thing to do was to get the wagon into the greenhouse. It doesn't roll quite as easy with this much weight on it, but it moves well enough once you overcome inertia. I thought I would have more of a problem getting the wagon over the door threshold in the greenhouse, but that ended up not being a problem.

Now I just have to clean up the mess I made moving stuff around to make it easier to get the wagon into the greenhouse, then I can continue with the process of filling up the pots.

The dirt in the bags wasn't as frozen as I expected it to be, so it should be easy enough to work with in a couple of days. I don't know if I'll get back to it then, but I'm not in a hurry. If I don't get it done before it gets really cold, it will wait until spring.

Another project that I've been working on intermittently for quite a while now is the exhaust system on my Ford Ranger pickup. I'll be writing a separate post about this project, but here's a look at where I'm currently stuck. I have been unable to remove a bolt from the left side head on the V-6 engine. This is the bolt that's used to hold the bracket for the dip stick tube. The old tube was rusted off about where it would normally stick up past the exhaust manifold.The bolt head is just above the exhaust port, between the spark plugs. The head is all misshapen from clamping the vice grips on it a number of times in an effort to turn it. So far, I've used heat, penetrating oil, and tapping the head with a small hammer to try to work the penetrating oil into the threads by vibration. I'm still working on it, and it's still stuck. Hopefully I'll eventually get it to turn. It took me months to get the last broken off exhaust manifold bolt out of the head, but I managed to get it out eventually.

This is the new exhaust manifold and the new dip stick tube, waiting to be put in. I had to replace the manifold, but that's a story for a different post.

Well, I guess I'm done writing for this post, thanks for stopping by to check it out!