My new solitary bee house is already attracting bees!
This mama appears to be loaded with pollen:
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I discovered yesterday that Mr. Linkey never did that art project in grade school where you paint a picture of a tree by blowing on the paint with a straw, so we made these. (I picked mine up before it was dry, so it looks kind of macabre, but his came out awesome!)
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āMurderous Treeā by ClutchLinkey.
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Be a little careful, borage can be a beast.
Nothing too terrible but certainly harder to get rid of than I had anticipated.
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This looks amazing! Have you done a pollinator site assessment? Xerces Society has one Iāve been using (I think I cued it up for your region, but if not, they have them for all over).
I think you already score high, but we found last year when we did our property it gave us ideas we wouldnāt have thought of otherwise, like leaving leaves and logs and rock piles and such.
Also, it was really fun cataloguing all the plants that grow, it took all year minus winter.
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Thank you for the heads up! Now i know to keep an eye on it. I just planted some today.
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Thank you! I didnāt know about the assessment, that will be fun to check out. Much of the purpose in what we planted/did is definitely native insect and bird support. I used the Texas Wildflower Center as a big resouce. Their plant database is amazing and not just Texas plants. Texas Wildflower Central - Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
I found so many of the native seeds from Prairie Moon nursery. It is hard to find milkweed seeds. The ones we bought are germinating at a fantastic rate. https://www.prairiemoon.com/
Now that I know the seeds from Prairie Moon are viable, Iāll be purchasing and stratifying more for some guerilla gardening.
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How deep did you drill the holes, pray tell?
Itās going to be a soggy day tomorrow, so ideal drill-pressing weather
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5" deep for holes larger than 1/4". About 3-4" deep for holes 1/4" and smaller.
https://extensionpublications.unl.edu/assets/pdf/g2256.pdf, see page 3.
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Disneyland isnāt quite open to guests just yet, but my niece still got to have a taste of the experience for her birthday. I made some progress with the ride vehicle, and think the shiny sheetmetal looks pretty keen. It will probably never look that shiny or clean again, though.
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This is AMAZING! I love the airstream design of the capsule. The skids are a nice touch. Now, you need a snowy day and a release mechanism to turn this into a powered death-toboggan.
ETA: Have you considered making another capsule on the other end, perhaps for your attorney to ride in? You could have a sliding counterweight to balance the load for different-weight victims passengers.
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Thereās an idea! Iām just one parachute short of the āParahawksā from The World is Not Enough.
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Yes, Iāve considered it. The existing counterweight does slide to balance the load, by the way, using a cheap ATV winch from Harbor Freight that includes a remote control if I want to force the kid to land.
The problem with a second vehicle is that only one rider would have any control over the speed, height and direction (achieved by thrust vectoring the fans) plus loading/unloading gets to be a bit more difficult as one side is up when the other is down. But mostly I just donāt want to make a lot more work for myself at this point. Forming that sheet metal body by hand without the aid of any rollers, breaks, or other special tools was a challenge that Iām glad to be done with. The kids can just wait their turns!
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I once built a system for an NIH project that had multiple databases utilizing row-level encryption to support a study on a population with greater than usual PII protections, so that even the those communicating with the subjects and their caregivers to schedule appointments couldnāt see more underlying data than absolutely necessary.
But this? This is has been harder. The crunchiest crunch time I have ever crunched. Perhaps had I been able to sit in an air conditioned office whilst working on itā¦
Also, who thought it was a good idea that the newbie should be the one to improvise a metal roof system?
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Looks good, but why no floor or floor joists? And will the wood on the front side be ok long term with no footings to keep it off the ground?
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The floor will be thick rubber stall mats on top of granite screenings. All the 4x4s are ground contact rated, and itās what the original design called for, soā¦ hopefully? That point has worried me a bit, so Iāve considered working the front edges of the stall mats under that front edge to eliminate the question.
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