The Logan Family

Tag: house projects

  • Fescue, Festival, and Foul Ball

    Fescue, Festival, and Foul Ball

    “What do we have going on?”

    “Not much, today we don’t have anything planned until 5pm or so.”

    These phrases are rare; not having much to do for a Saturday is about as common as a Dodo bird around here. The weather was perfect, getting a bit cooler, which meant, it was time for the hardest part of my glorious plans to have a green, green lawn for 2025: time to aerate. And this yard has a lot of room for improvement:

    The lawn after many dry weeks

    To this point, I had already geeked out quite a bit about it. Taylor can tell you, love it or hate it, I tend to obsess over things, and this was another excellent example. I don’t want to just throw some grass seed out there and see what’s gonna happen; this is something I have never done before, so I dug deep into the subject by reading the Turf Files from the NC State website.

    The site describes how the state of North Carolina offers free soil testing during the off season, so of course I took advantage of my tax-payer dollars for this very in demand service:

    THe analysis makes a recommendation of the type of soil to use based on the N-P-K proportions. In my case, they recommended just the K (potassium). If you want to do the same, here is the link to test your soil.

    The Turf-files also go deep into the various types of grass in North Carolina. For a noob such as myself, this was all news: what kind of grass to go with? I always assumed all grass was the same? It is not all the same. In the Piedmont, you can go with some types of warm-climate grasses, or cool season grasses. The NC State Turf Files recommends doing a blend of grass seed, and Kentucy 31 and Tall Fescue seemed like the perfect mix:

    After aerating on Saturday with a 300 pound machine (the Home Depot website says 255 pounds, but surely that number isn’t accurate), Sunday was a chance to do the final, fun stuff of the yard: do a couple passes with the potassium rich fertilizer, as recommended from my soil report; Then, since they didn’t have the recommended seed blend, I took the liberty of mixing my own blend of tall fescue and Kentucy 31 bluegrass:

    A grass seed blend
    Spreader for a small yard

    A couple of passes of the seed, and at this point, in my amateur confidence with no one around to tell me otherwise, I was doing a great job!

    But, not through with it yet: the final part, and most people argue as the most important, you gotta keep that stuff WET. And, since I over engineer everything (See last weeks post about the ring workout setup as an example), I had to do the same here and automate the watering.

    This is a whole ecosystem of gardening specialty tools. How much, or how little do you want to spend in order to keep your precious turf wet? For me, the answer was very little. And no thank you, please do not connect my watering system to my internet: I do not need to water my lawn while I am away from the house. Amazon, give me the cheap garden-hose automation tool that can help do a better job of watering the lawn than I ever will; and since no sprinkler can hit the whole lawn with the low-water pressure issue we have in our old house, better make 2 timers, and 2 sprinklers in the front yard:

    As of the writing of this post, the first watering is underway! We are off to the races, and lord willing, I’m finally gonna be living where the green grass grows in 8-12 weeks! Please, please don’t jump to 90 degrees in the next few weeks!

    Festival

    Years ago (maybe 8 or 9?), Greensboro became host to the National Folk Festival. Downtown transformed into an awesome, 10 stage music venue with all the fun things, and porta-potties needed to support such an event. Some time after that, the National part of the festival moved on, and was seamlessly replaced by the North Carolina folk festival. Still, many stages and music over three days in downtown greensboro.

    We had poor memories from last year’s festival where the music we heard just wasn’t that good. This year, on Friday night, we met up with our neighbors the McCrackens (our Disney Planner) and Rosie got to spend a lot of the night with some of her besties.

    In front of the stage
    Poor Mercy

    This was probably the highlight of the night: Getting to see Elias Alexander, an EDM, Celtic musician (did I get that right?). EDM=”Electronic Dance Music”. What does that mean? It means bagpipes and a Celtic flute with the intense beat of techno. Sounds wild, and it is wild, and it was surprisingly fun:

    Dancing with Mercy

    This music was so good that it made a man who was wheelchair bound get up and do a jig. This fella pushed his way, with his walker, through the crowd so he could get to the front row and show us how it’s done. How can this not tickle your soul with joy?

    Finally, at the end of the night on Saturday, I was able to stay up late enough to go to the 11pm after party at The Flat Iron. My friend Hence went the year before and said it was awesome. Though I could only make it to see 45 minutes of the show, it was awesome and gave me Nashville vibes for this small venue in Greensboro. Totally worth the $15 admission to hear Sam Fribush and Friends do their Organ music jam:

    Also, I haven’t been out that late in a while, but you get to see some things at that hour you wouldn’t see normally. Our group spent about an hour sitting behind this fella, who was a couple heartbeats away from his night ending poorly, but everyone who walked past did smile pretty big at the sight:

    Foul Ball

    Ok, I am running out of time before the kids wake up, but, we went to the final baseball game of the season with some good friends and it was fun. Sorry Andy and Laura, you left before I was able to get a pic, but it was fun hanging with your crowd as well:

    Until next year, grasshoppers!
    Sarah and the girls
    Mercy never smiles

  • What a structure! And, the last bowl.

    What a structure! And, the last bowl.

    Have you ever heard of “the ring” workout? “The Ring” doesnt refer to the Japanese horror novel turned into a film; “The Ring” is what they do in men’s gymnastics at the Olympics. There are a lot of different workouts and exercises that can be done with this simple setup, and it works your stabilizer muscles really well. The first time using “rings” to do, let’s say, some push ups- you will find yourself shaking like a leaf. It is pretty intense, and can leave a person wiped out in 10-15 minutes.

    PARIS, FRANCE – JULY 29: Brody Malone of Team United States competes on the rings during the Artistic Gymnastics Men’s Team Final on day three of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Bercy Arena on July 29, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

    Some friends of mine have done this workout for a while and really enjoyed the results, so I got a pair of rings; but, there is nowhere to hang them. We have a kids swings that is about 6′ off the ground, and that worked for just a few of the exercises, but was far from the best setup. If a man wants to get strong in his own yard, it has to be the best setup, right?

    If the swing set wasn’t high enough for a proper ring setup, surely a tree branch would do? Also no. There is not a single branch from our 6 gigantic trees with a proper branch to hang something from.

    I had to build my own ring setup. This would be easy. This would be fun. Surely my amazing wife would love and support the idea, right? Obviously this is the right thing to do to save money on a gym membership.

    The challenge was the support beams needed are too long to fit into the car: 8, 10, or 12 feet long. Usually my mom’s cargo can used to haul paintings would be a good resource, but she was out of town. The next best bet is Robert Core’s 1988 V8 Chevy Custom pickup truck. It’s army green:

    And it’s a stick shift. My friend Houston and I used to drive around town and mow yards in this very same truck 25 years ago. And it still runs.

    With Taylor’s blessing about a vague, but simple thing I wanted to build, and the truck to go get the 4 x 4s from Lowe’s, I got the saw out, drill, etc. and went to work. The plan changed: instead of dropping the wood beams into the ground as a permanent structure, Taylor’ requested it be above ground. You know, just in case I don’t continue using it for more than 3 months (a very reasonable position to have).

    On a daily basis, I work on a computer writing computer code; I am not a “handy” kinda person, but I can get things done. Over-analyzing makes me good at my job, but not-so-great at other things. So, for this simple project of building a pull-up bar, I needed to make sure it wouldn’t fall over in ANY direction. Also, these small, amazing, but curious and troublesome kids would also end up pushing the limits, I wanted to make sure these 4x4s could support it.

    And I accidentally went too large by using 12′ poles; however, these can be trimmed back, OR I can drop it into the ground at some point in the future. However, I present to you an over-engineered structure that my supportive, but embarrassed wife, hopes will keep my attention for more than 3 months:

    It’s hard to stay healthy. Taylor works. I work. We have to get groceries, but it is hard to go to great lengths to make sure we have super healthy meals. I run a bit, but get bored after reaching a distance of about 10 miles; the gym is expensive, and for some reason I am not motivated to lift weights. I started riding my bike for exercise, and that is fun so far (I am not great at it). If I can do 4 cardio workouts a week, that’s good- at about 20-40 minutes a piece.

    Also, this month is Sober-september to take a step in the right direction. Too many IPAs over the summer put me at +7 pounds since June- I am so lucky that my bathroom scale keeps track of that for me.

    Wish me luck!

    The last bowl.

    Part of our wedding registry was at a store called Anthropologie. It is hard to adequately describe the store, I will just fall flat on this, so I will not even try.

    However, we got lots of things from there. They are pretty neat, a little more artsy and colorful than what you may get at a boring department store. They fit Taylor’s style pretty well, and she still shops at this store to this day.

    We got a set of rice bowls from there; the set had either 4, 6, or 8 bowls, hard to say, but they are the perfect size. Good for ice cream; rice, sides for dinner.

    As a side note, we eat at home a lot. And, we never use paper plates (unless feeding a large crowd). So our dinner set gets used pretty often; 5x a week. If you include breakfasts and lunches, maybe much, much more.

    We have been married 14 years now. Thats 5130 days, or 732 weeks. If that bowl set was used a conservative, 4x per week- that puts us at 2,928 times that bowl was used.

    This week, finally, after putting away another load of clean dishes from the dishwasher, it’s lone matching bowl slipped and broke on the marble (or granite, I am not sure what our counters are made out of) counter. It had a good run. RIP to your brothers and sisters, little bowl.

    Maybe I can find some antique versions to replenish the set as some sort of really good, thoughtful husband gift; or maybe it’s just time to get some new bowls.

  • Father’s Day, summertime, scrub the deck

    Father’s Day, summertime, scrub the deck

    A friend recently asked about the blog saying that he enjoyed reading it, and I thought how I enjoy writing blog posts, so I will keep writing from time to time.

    For Father’s Day, Taylor planned a daytime adventure for the family and I off to Saxapahaw, North Carolina. If you haven’t heard of it (of course you haven’t heard of it, who in the world is familiar with Saxapahaw?), it’s a 45 minute drive away in some direction that the GPS took us.

    Once there, there is a great little mill-type building that has been re-finished into a brewery/event space/coffee house/place for shops.

    For a Sunday after church, we went to the brewery. It was a great little spot right on the river. The place was slammed for the occasion, and even though it took a while to get our meal, it was delicious.

    We keep telling Mercy she is going to regret it one day when she gets older and there aren’t any pictures of her because she either a) runs away, or b) frowns for a picture.

    After lunch, we crossed the bridge to the small state park on the island in the river. It has a few trails that go in different directions. I’m not gonna lie- my “watch out for snakes” alarms were going off in my head. We didn’t see any though.

    We got to play around in the river, just like the words of a country song about living in the south. And, the playground was pretty great: shaded, and simple, and it looked almost like Jonah and the whale.

    Also for Father’s Day, Taylor got me a shirt for our upcoming trip to Disney World. The back story is, all my life, but especially when I was in middle/high school, when meeting people and introducing myself, people would respond with something like “Luke? Does anyone ever say ‘I am your father’?” in reference to Darth Vader’s famous line in Star Wars.

    So, since Star Wars is now a part of Disney World, I am pretty excited to see Darth Vader, and Tay got me this special shirt as part of the occasion:

    Summertime

    Summer for us is a lot of pool, swim team (also at the pool), and whatever this is:

    We had some friends over for a cook out last week, and it was great. It is hot as fire outside, but it didn’t matter much. Between these three families (we miss the fourth family of the group, Hernan and Cathy, as they moved up North to Rhode Island). These kids have known each other since the beginning, so when they get together, they just pick up where they left off, and it is awesome to see.

    Mercy and Popsicle
    Waiting in the line at the pool
    Mercy and her cousin Everly
    Mercy with Amelia
    Slow, tired mornings

    One day I was taking Mercy home from school, and she randomly pointed to a street and said “I want to go home that way”, so we took another route home. We weren’t in a rush, and even though I often feel like I am the “no” parent saying no to everything, I said “yes” to Mercy’s little request that day. We ended up at this park near our house and just played under the trees. It just reminds me how beautiful Greensboro really is.

    Scrub the deck

    Are you a “handy” kind of person? Like, would you consider yourself pretty capable of fixing things around the house when you need to?

    I’m not. I’m not really a handy person. I work on a computer all day, and mow the lawn, but I am not really a fixer-upper kind of person.

    But, my deck is looking terrible. A few boards are rotting, and it just felt a little embarrassing when people came over.

    Deck before
    Deck Before

    So, before the dinner party above, and using that as a motivating deadline, I went to town, doing an hour or so of work every day, plus a full day on Wednesday in honor of Juneteenth, and it turned out pretty good.

    A few boards had to be replaced. I listened to a book on tape about Elvis Presley and it was kinda nice to get down and dirty and work with my soft office hands to create something that looks pretty good.