Lee Harps

A week or so ago, I was informed by my wife (she who FEEDS and waters the birds), that the bird feeder was no longer in good health and it might be good of me to replace it. A new feeder has been built, MOSTLY for the birds, but also in response to my wife’s request.

When my father was still living, he always had a round, squirrel resistant bird feeder just outside his front door, the construction of which always fascinated me. In the past 10 years or so, I’ve tried to copy his ideas for our bird feeders. This is not a great photo, but this is a distant photo of the one that was “failing”.

Here is the one I have spent the past week building as a replacement for the one above:

In this one, I have again used redwood for the shingles, pressure treated southern pine for the post mounting, fir sheathing plywood for the round base and roof bottom, maple for the ball on the top, a bit of cedar for the round piece under the ball, 1×2-inch wire for the squirrel barrier and copper tubing for the posts and the circular perch. I have recycled the bird seed bin in the center from the original feeder. Here you can see some of the detail of the construction:

Corresponding holes in the two plywood circles permit the ends of the 1 x 2 inch wire to create a fairly successful squirrel barrier. In the past feeders I’ve built, the 8 vertical posts around the outside were made of wood. Seems the squirrels felt that, if they chewed them off, they could access the bird feed inside. I had to replace them several times! I’m waiting to see if they have copper filings on their teeth now that I’ve used copper tubing for the posts on ths feeder! I have also replaced the original round wooden “perch” with a circle of 3/8″ copper tubing. The shingles are made of redwood, all cut out with a taper on the bandsaw, then the widths tapered to fit the cone shape of the roof. I have used building cement (in a caulking gun) to install the shingles. Here is a photo showing the interior of the lid:

Having also learned from past feeders that the squirrels will chew their way into the interior of the feeder by removing the shingles, I have installed aluminum over the “rafters”, to which I have glued the shingles. There is NO WAY a squirrel can chew thru that! If they decide to try, I’ll just have to install more shingles, I guess. If you notice, the seed bin extends up into the roof, thus making the filling of it a less frequent necessity. The roof hinges at the back and the lower ends of the “rafters” rest on the upper sheet of plywood when the lid is closed, thus keeping the lid flush with the body of the feeder. Also a new addition to this feeder, I have installed eyelets and a chain to act as a “stop” when the lid is opened for filling the feeder:

On the previous feeder, the roof overhang simply rested on the vertical posts in the back, and consequently damaged the shingles and the posts.

And, there you have it: probably the most brief entry I’ve made to date.

Now you can understand why the French Harp is on hold. Winter is coming….

I received an email from a friend this week who happened to mention that he has not seen any entries to my blog recently! Well, I guess it is time for me to explain why.

First of all, there’s this matter of the local temperature:

I’ve purchased a new digital thermometer for the kitchen window. It didn’t focus well, but in the photo it is reading 101.8 F! (Okay, so what if the sun was shining on it and, if you will look above that figure, it says the maximum temp for the day was 115.9. Shucks, it wasn’t anywhere near that. It was only about 99.6 in reality!). SO, with temps like that, there isn’t a lot being done by this person who would prefer to find a cool place and wait for cooler weather. ALSO, wife and I have been enjoying cooler parts, having just returned from a couple of week drive thru Canada, more specifically, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. There, the weather was GORGEOUS!

I took hundreds of photos on our trip (and will not bore you with ALL of them), but for this entry will simply give you an overview with a few photos, hoping to revisit the various stops in detail at a later date.

Our trek began with a drive to Kingston, Ontario, where we revisited some old haunts we learned to love when we used to take our children there for a music camp. Beginning with Kingston and continuing throughout the trip, we were awed by the beautiful flowers everywhere.

In Kingston, Ontario, we joined up with good friends from Bermuda and enjoyed the remainder of the trip with them as a foursome. We enjoyed some excellent eating and shopping in Kingston, I managed a trip out to old Ft. Henry, where I got to see the goat:

lots of “toy” soldiers

a bagpiper

and some kite flying.

After spending two nights in Kingston, we proceeded on to Quebec City, Quebec. We spent three nights in the old city of Quebec, staying at the Alberge du Tresor hotel.

There we saw many wonderful sights, ate more delicious food, saw more “toy” soldiers at the Citadel, and enjoyed the craftspeople, musicians, actors, artists and performers who graced the streets of this fine city.

Here is a photo of the changing of the guard at the Citadel:

Here is a photo of the Hotel du Frontenac which was located just across the green from our hotel:

Up the hill from the hotel, there was a flattened area where street performers do their thing. This photo was taken, I would guess, on a Wednesday evening and, as you can see, this is quite the tourist mecca.

While in Quebec, there was again much good eating to be enjoyed, and one of our most enjoyable meals there was at the Restaurant aux Ancient Canada.

You’ll hear more about this later as well.

I have many more photos I could share with you, but will do so at a later date. From Quebec, we drove to Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, which is a lovely little fishing village sort of area, very quaint and picturesque.

Here is the famous Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse, famous because it houses a real live post office in the first floor and people send postcards to their friends postmarked “Peggy’s Cove”.

We spent two nights in Peggy’s Cove, then continued on to Baddeck, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Here we stayed at a very lovely bed and breakfast called “Duffus House”, located right on the water in Baddeck, Cape Breton.

Cape Breton is a wonderful get-away island with the St. Lawrence Seaway to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south. Here we enjoyed many more wondrous sights, more delicious eating (surprise, surprise), and some really unique experiences. This was the summer home of Alexander Graham Bell and we not only were able to visit the museum in his honor (hardly anything about the telephone exhibited there…) where I enjoyed seeing his huge, propeller driven hydrofoil boat:

Also, via connections of our Bermuda travelling partners, we had the honor of receiving a private tour of the Bell estates which are still used by the family and which are not generally open to the public. Our tour began with Bell’s first home, “The Lodge”,

and I will have much more to show of the tour later. We also drove the 180+ mile “Cabot Trail” which goes around the perimeter of Cape Breton and saw sights such as this:

From Cape Breton, we headed west once again, returning our friends to Ottawa where they planned to remain an additional week, spending time with friends there. In Ottawa we enjoyed seeing the Rideau Canal.

Along the way, we enjoyed some very good food, and some that was a bit more marginal. This, for one, tasted good, but was a bit lacking in quality and nourishment. Having heard about it from our son who recently “enjoyed” it in Montreal, I ordered a hot dog with POUTIN.

French fries with gravy and CURD? Sounds awful, but it really is edible. We had much better food at a lovely new restaurant in Peggy’s Cove called “Rhubarb”.

For my wife and I, it was a rather pleasant, however long drive from Ottawa to Pennsylvania. It took nearly 10 hours and, having been away for 16 days, it became immediately evident that my work was cut out for me on the home front, what with the grass being very tall and the weeds having had a real heyday growing while my back was turned. We did have some rains in our absence, so the corn was tall:

The tomatoes had gotten some size, however NONE were yet ripe:

My soy beans were ready to yield some delicious edamame:

The zucchini had grown a bit larger than it should have:

The cantaloupes were really looking good:

and the potatoes were overdue for digging:

Other activities that awaited our return were a lovely wedding:

Repair of a friend’s harp:

repair of a hammered dulcimer:

And repair of, yes, a didgeridoo! I was shopping in Kingston, Ontario, found this item standing upright , in a basket, saw that it was badly broken and, before I knew it, I was being told by a sales clerk that I was welcome to take it if I wanted it. I was not anxious to drag it along for the whole trip, but decided the price was right.

This week I used a bit of epoxy and some plastic wraps and, here it is, all ready for some Austrailian aborigine to play:

Remember the French Repro Harp? Well, there hasn’t been a lot of progress, but there has been SOME! I am attempting to give myself some feel for the perspective of the 3-D carvings by using modeling clay (a first attempt with chisels and wood helped me realize I have a few things to learn before wasting more expensive wood). Here’s my initial feeble attempt; I feel there may be hope.

Here in Pennsylvania we have finally begun to have spring and some milder temperatures. With that, there is little time for harp building as any spare time this time of the year is critical for getting the garden planted in a timely fashion. In times like this, one simply THINKS about harp building while working hard in the garden.

Before I get into the subject of this entry, I will first tell you about some of the other happenings in my life. Unrelated to anything in this blog, I was working outdoors the other day when I heard what sounded like an old Volkswagen overhead. On looking up, I saw something one only sees rarely these days: a blimp. It was the Met Life blimp, complete with Snoopy, asking, “Have you met life today?”

Last Tuesday evening was our monthly SAWS Woodworking Club meeting at the local Woodcraft store. Not related to the topic of the evening was a woodcarving display at the store. If I’m not mistaken, the objects in this display were made by members of the California Woodcarver’s Assn. and was purchased by Woodcraft and is “circulated” around their retail stores. Anyway, it is a saloon scene and has many stories incorporated in the display. I would guess it is 3 feet wide, perhaps 2 feet deep and 2 feet tall. Very cute and entertaining. (I took lots of photos; perhaps the subject of a later posting.)

One of the monthly features is our “show and tell” segment of the meeting where members bring along things they are working on to share with the other members. Naturally, I took my harp soundbox along and tapped the wealth of talent there by asking questions as to how I might proceed with certain engineering challenges remaining with the construction of my “French” harp. Other things that were shared were Alan’s spalted cherry candle box which he made as a gift. It has hand cut dovetails.

David brought along one of his very unique stools, complete with toes, that he makes for young newborn relatives as keepsakes. I was particularly impressed with his incised lettering on the stool.

The main topic for the evening was hand planes and the use of them. The first presenter was Dan, who owns a very impressive “bag of tricks” collection of the high end hand planes made by Lie-Nielsen. He showed and demonstrated the use of these metal planes.

Next, one of our few female club members shared with us her passion for hand-crafted wooden hand planes. Kari attends workshop session with professional plane makers and has learned not only how to make the wooden parts, but also how to grind, temper and sharpen the blades. Her work is most impressive! You should hear the nice “whoosh” when she passes her planes over a piece of wood! Her’s is clearly a talent I will never even attempt to emulate!

All the planes in this photo are ones Kari has built except for the one sitting crossways in the back . They’re not only gorgeous to look at and to feel the wood, but unseen are some of the highest quality cutting blades I’ve ever seen! Kari is so committed to the use of planes that she does not use sandpaper in her construction!

FINALLY, I’ll get on to the topic at hand: Mrs. Wabbit!

Here are some photos of some of the livestock I find myself dealing with in my attempt to have a growing vegetable garden. Here is one of our many chipmunks whom, to my knowledge, do very little damage to the garden.

With THESE, however, it is quite another story:

Realizing they must eat too, I’m afraid I am not willing that my rabbits be GOURMET rabbits! They have voracious appetites and have made my gardening success very difficult.

One evening last week I was taking a near-dusk walk by the garden, stopped to admire the things that were growing, and to my amazement, saw several quite small bunnies traveling from my potato row to the RABBIT FENCE, crawling thru the spaces in the wire fence, and having a good time. If you recall my earlier posts, the whole object of the complicated fence I built around my garden was to KEEP THE BUNNIES OUT!! Several days earlier I found Mrs. Wabbit munching inside the fence, chased her out (jumped thru one of the higher 2-inch openings in the rabbit fence), and I proceeded to tighten the security by adding 1-inch chicken wire to the rabbit fence. Apparently the chicken wire had successfully kept Mother Rabbit OUT of the garden, but unknown to me, she had already delivered a family of 4 in the straw IN the potato row! Since she couldn’t get in to feed the young, the young were going to find her. Here is the nest from whence they came:

And here is what the little critters looked like (this is two of the four):

For those of you who are S.P.C.A. members, I was a bit frustrated, but I brought NO physical harm to the youngin’s! I very humanely escorted them to the OUTSIDE of the fence, then, using thin wire, carefully fortified the chicken wire so that it very closely hugged the rabbit fence. The little guy in the photo was clearly the “runt” of the litter, and a neighbor lady took him, hoping to nurse him to adulthood. Unfortunately, he did not survive. I am inclined to think the others did, however, as I saw them darting under the bushes as I mowed the grass on Saturday. They look quite healthy. I’m inclined to think the mother may even be caring for them under the same bushes. I have a family of baby doves who seem to like to hang out in the garden straw, but it’s pretty difficult to deny residence to things that can “fly in”! I don’t think they will bring much harm to the garden. I THINK the garden is secure against rabbits now, but then, I thought the same the last time….

Today was our very first really warm day. I’m hopeful that the warmer temps will encourage things to prosper in the garden. Here is what those early cabbages (and the potatoes) look like at the moment:

I am fairly adamant about limiting the use of chemical insecticides, but the cabbage butterflies had made their marks and the leaves were being eaten up (literally) and I gave them a dusting of Sevin. They are now looking pretty much picture perfect. We’ll soon have more cabbages than any one couple could eat. The sweet corn has been progressing slowly with the cool weather, but hopefully will prosper now that the nights are warmer.

It was fairly labor intensive to install, but what you do not see in the photo of the sweet corn is the watering system. Hidden under the straw mulch is a strip of ’seeper hose’ that delivers water just to the row where the plants are growing. Here is the one I installed for the marigolds and the peppers. The straw will be added when the plants develop a bit of height. A single hose connection at the corner of the garden supplies irrigation water to the entire garden.

A plant that is showing its colors at the moment is the sage plant:

The chives are also in full bloom:

By the lawn, a peony bush is presenting its show at the moment (didn’t notice any black ants on the blooms):

And, by the house, rose bushes that came with the property when we bought it back in 1970, are giving us a show. I am not a rose person (I don’t like the thorns nor the smell of roses, but I do enjoy their blooms when they are fresh):

Finally, I have a photo of one of the few apricot fruits still remaining on the apricot tree. We have not harvested ripe apricots in many years, thanks to the squirrel population. They are busying themselves to harvest the fruits now and, by the time the fruits would have been ready for picking, the tree will have been denuded of any fruit. We must buy our apricots, I guess.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. I hope you have a wonderful holiday and that we may all remember those who have died for our country (and continue to do so today, unfortunately) who will not be able to share picnics and family events. We in America enjoy such a marvellous level of luxury and freedom. May the powers that be make wise choices, restore our dignity and respect as a country with other nations and preserve for us that which we hold so dear!

We are still having quite cool nights here in Pennsylvania, hence the growing progress in the garden has been a bit slow. I’m happy to report that, thus far, it is McGregor – 1, Wabbit -0! Here is what has happened to the cabbage plants I planted around the time of the previous post:

I’m quite pleased with their progress, however I cannot say I am pleased with the lettuce plants I planted at the same time. Here’s one example of where they are:

It seems it takes more than a rabbit fence to keep the house sparrows out of one’s garden, and they seem to LOVE fresh lettuce leaves! They are tearing my lettuce plants to shreads! I do have leaf lettuce coming up, so my hope is that, before they destroy the plants altogether, there will be more variety for them to feast on so that both McGregor AND the sparrows will find their fill. Another favorite of the sparrows, I have found, is PEAS! I had a nice row of sugar snap peas coming up but in a day or two discovered them to be snipped to the ground. To protect the peas (don’t know if 1-inch mesh wire will stop them or not), I formed a protective cover for them:

This morning, before going to church, I stood by the corner of the garage watching the sparrows hop over, around and atop the wire, with no evidence of them actually entering the enclosure. It will take a few days for the peas to snap back.

I do have a couple of additional successes to report. The potatoes are coming up nicely:

The sweet corn is looking really nice (thus far). You will notice the black tubing in all the rows. In anticipation of what may be a very dry summer and in an effort to be environmentally friendly with my watering, I have spent some time installing a “seeper hose” watering system with which the water seeps from the black hose just in the immediate area of the planting row.

This is Silver Queen corn. I also have an early Butter and Sugar variety coming up as well. Along the outside of the new garden fence, I’ve planted some day lilys that I divided earlier and have incorporated the watering system to them as well.

Here you see the clear tubing which carries the water to a circle of seeper hose connected to the main water line with a couple of “T” connectors. The beauty of the watering system is that, once in place, one can water the entire garden with a single hose connection. I will eventually have mulched the entire garden with a layer of straw which will serve both to deter the growth of weeds and will also slow the evaporation of plant-preserving water from the soil.

In other garden-related things, the new white dogwood that we planted by the house last year is already blessing us with lovely blooms at the moment.

The wild peppermint by the house that I’ve been battling with to eliminate for years is apparently still quite alive and well. It smells good but has a habit of sending its tendrils underground and taking over one’s flower beds.

And, on the deck in all its golden glory, is the new pot of Yellow Violas that our daughter gave us on Easter.

As the real planting season approaches, all is well and life is good. Stay out of my garden, Mr. Wabbit!!

I feel a bit of true guilt at having called this blog “Leeharps” and having written so little about harps, but here ’tis, spring, the blossoms are coming out, it’s just not the time to be holed up in my workshop when there are so many fun things to do outdoors!

Having said that, I’m here to tell you I am taking issue with Mother Nature! Those blasted WABBITS have made gardening a nightmare for me! For over 30 years, I have been planting, weeding and harvesting this self-same garden, but last year it was a near disaster. In consultation with our neighbors, we think we understand the problem: About a half-block up the street was May’s Greenhouse, a small, ma ‘n pa greenhouse where I would take the kid’s coaster wagon and get it filled with plants for my garden as needed. Behind the greenhouse was a 5-10 acre field on which was generally planted sweet corn. Several years ago Mr. May retired, others tried to make a go of the greenhouse business, but in the end the property was (you guessed it) sold to a developer and is being turned into townhouses!

The cornfield, as we figure, was habitat to many, many rabbits who lived very comfortably, eating the clover and foilage of that acreage. With all that destroyed by the diggers and bulldozers, what’s a bunny to do?! Hey, there’s a guy in the neighborhood who grows a fantastic garden, why not just move over there to eat?! Since the construction has begun, when one walks from the house to the garage at night, one nearly steps on rabbits who are doing their nocturnal rounds for food! It has never been necessary for me to protect my garden from rabbits in the 35 years I’ve lived here, but after the disastrous results of last year’s garden, I’ve decided a fence is my only option if I have any hopes of successfully raising a garden.

Since Christmas, I’ve been scanning the Internet, visiting fence merchants at the State Farm Show, talking with friends, scratching my head for ideas and, having done all that, came up with a fencing solution of my own design. Everyone tells me my fence is too low and that it will not work, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Here’s the fence I’ve designed to, hopefully, keep out Mr. WABBIT. Is it a viable design? I’ll let you know.

What I’ve done is cut 8-foot pressure-treated 4×4s into 4-foot sections for posts, cut horizontal 3.5 inch dados into the tops of them for the horizontal boards (radial arm saw, dado blade), rounded the top ends with a 3/4-inch router bit. My plan uses 28-inch rabbit wire stretched around this structure, placed into the ground 4 inches, leaving 24 inches of wire extending above the ground. The posts are positioned approximately 10-feet apart.

Here you can see a roll of the rabbit fence waiting to be installed.

The post next to the roll of wire, unlike the others, was a locust 4×4 that I happened to have on my lumber pile that I decided to use. Big mistake! It will last forever, but it was so dry and so hard, I could not get the fence staples to drive into it! I had to bore holes and use screws to fasten the wire to it!

Here is a corner post with the wire installed (note the lettuce plants INSIDE the wire).

The horizontal 1×4 (cut to length) boards were attached using galvanized (coated) 2-inch screws. I attached the wire to the vertical posts with wire staples, but it is difficult to pound staples into boards like this, so I chose instead to use galvanized wire to make loops to fasten the wires to the boards.

It being necessary to take tillers and the like in and out of the garden, entry gates were necessary, so I arbitrarily designed the gates thusly:

I can’t help but wonder if the shape might be a subconscious image that I acquired as a small child from a favorite Peter Rabbit book or the like. I did have some Internet input in the construction of the gate. I read an article by a man who, using West System epoxy, made a garden gate without nails nor braces, using thickened epoxy as the bonding medium. I use West System epoxy in building my harps (see, I just HAD to mention HARPS), decided to try it this way, and have a pair of very rigid gates that I suspect will endure for quite some time. The gate hardware was inexpensively purchased from Lee Valley Tools – one of my favorite tool and hardware sources. The posts were also attached to a semi-buried horizontal board which was epoxied to the posts. The gate closes against this board, again, hopefully, creating a barrier against the pesky WABBITS! (Did I mention that I’m having a problem with rabbits in my garden?….)

This fence has been occupying much more of my time than it deserves over the past couple of weeks, and having completed it today, I felt impelled to put it to the rabbit test. I went to the local Agway and purchased lettuce and cabbage plants which I planted this afternoon.

Here are the cabbages:

And here are the lettuces:

If, perchance, I go out to the garden to check on my new plantings tomorrow morning only to find them having been eaten, you may read dastardly things about me in the local papers! My hope is that the nay-sayers here will be wrong about the effectiveness of my low fence. If it turns out that I was wrong, it will be quite easy to drive metal stakes beside the posts and apply higher wire. (What if the damage will have actually been caused by the squirrels and blackbirds, who ignore fences? I guess then I will have wasted my time…. I’ll keep you posted.)

It’s been very dry here in PA. It was probably 3 weeks ago that I planted some onion sets, hoping to have some early green onions. Because it was so dry, only today did I begin to see some life from them.

My wife serves baked potatoes with sour cream and fresh chives fairly regularly, and the chives are absolutely wonderful at the moment.

The rhubarb is beginning to show signs of life, but, for my money, aside from looking nice, it is a waste of garden space! I think it a shame that local people, supposedly of sound mind, would ruin perfectly wonderful strawberries by adding RHUBARB to them! My wife would do that and I only grow the rhubarb for her. As for me, no thanks! (I used to sometimes take fresh rhubarb to a friend at work who liked it and she would sit at her desk, peel it down and eat it RAW! No thanks!)

Now, here’s the one I’m waiting for! ASPARAGUS! If you’ve never eaten spring asparagus, picked fresh from the garden at mealtime, cooked for a few minutes till tender, slathered with a bit of real butter and a sprinkle of salt, then you haven’t lived! Asparagus from the store or the market can be tasty, but not as good as fresh from the garden.

Having had the camera in hand and with it being such a gorgeous, sunny afternoon, I strolled around the property in search of other things that might be worth being photographed. For example, the apricot tree is in full, white-flowered bloom:

The artemesia (wormwood) plants I had cut back to the ground only a few weeks ago, in spite of the dry weather, have grown by leaps and bounds!

The next door neighbor’s forsythia bush is in full bloom (I removed all my own forsythias many years ago).

And, rising up very high behind the forsythia bush is the tulip tree, regaling the neighborhood with its colorful plumage.

Then, also adjacent to the tulip tree, was an azelea bush, very colorful but whose blooms were almost overshadowed by its colorful neighbors.

As I crossed the deck to bring the camera indoors for processing, I couldn’t help but notice the array of colors in the basket of pansies my wife had placed by the back door. Spring offers such an abundance of newness and beauty. It’s a wonderful world. Now, have we solved the WABBIT problem?!

Last night I got a haircut (got my “ears lowered”, as my Dad used to say.)

Today I found myself in warm sunshine, very cool air, feeling the chilling effects of having had my “ears lowered”! I was exercising one of the responsibilities of having a garden with a split rail fence: that of maintaining the fence.

Every rail fence owner also needs a supply of replacement rails and posts.

Today, it was my duty to replace the center post in this photo, as the old one had rotted out.

I’ve discovered that those who cut (split) these rails are folks who have obviously never tried to install them. Rarely can one find a rail that will fit into the holes in the posts. Having recently replaced the blade on my electric chainsaw, I decided to take matters into my own hands and cut the rails to actually fit into my posts.

As I looked on the ground at the pieces I had removed, I was somewhat amazed to see something alive; it is still too cold here for insect life. In a tunnel bored into one of my rails was a live carpenter bee!

Apparently I was not the only one to have gotten a haircut! To have made the chainsaw cut this close to the tunnel, the bee surely got a haircut as well. Unfortunately, further investigation found its mate lying in the grass. Perhaps his/her haircut was a bit too close….