New World Datsuns...

It would have been nice to find the same red/gray pavers I started with but that is the way it goes.

Yeah that’s a lot of work. But I like the way that whole walkway looks. I’m looking forward to seeing what you do with all of those.
This is what I did last May. These are (if memory serves me right) about 16”x24” and about 55-60 pounds each. A tiring weekend for me.
Before and afters




Looks a little different now with more flowers and plants.

I started prepping the west area, I figure I will just use these 6"X 9" pavers right now and get it all laid out, in the future I come across some red 8"X16" pavers I can always lift these up and replace them with the red larger ones, most the hard work will already be done.

I was hoping to find more red ones to do the west end, I was thinking about putting the smaller ones in between my rows of plants like walkways, just narrower walkways.

Taterhead wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 5:50 pm Yeah that’s a lot of work. But I like the way that whole walkway looks. I’m looking forward to seeing what you do with all of those.
This is what I did last May. These are (if memory serves me right) about 16”x24” and about 55-60 pounds each. A tiring weekend for me.
Before and afters




Looks a little different now with more flowers and plants.

That is a nice shady spot to put a chair/chairs in and do lots of things like reading/having lunch/dinner and such.

OK, I did this a few weeks ago, I am using a different camera, I need to take photos with smaller files.










This I did over the last few days, does it look nice or should I forget about doing it?







I have enough pavers to do 6 rows as I recall, I like the pavers because things do not get on my shoes and then brought into the house, also there will be a lot less weeding in between the rows.

I like the idea of less weeds.

DRIVEN wrote: ↑Sat Apr 20, 2024 3:51 am I like the idea of less weeds.

The weeds between the rows bug me a little, that is why I water the way I do, I only water the little ditches the plants are in, rain waters between the rows, I have noticed an improvement since watering the way I do now and in the past, I had thousands of weeds when overhead sprinkling, this is a 26-year learning experience, every time I do something it is to make it easier on my body(less work), obviously I am not allergic to work as I create work for myself all the time(Pavers, that is a lot of work), my hands right now are all tore up, when I have a really bad sore/cut I use a band aid, I have two band aids on right now, that is more band aids total than I normally have in 5 years.

I like that row I did, the issue is I will need more pavers as I will need to do all the rows. "Insert face palm here"

I finished another row Saturday, now I will need to let my hands heal, they are really messed up right now, I have 3 band aids on my right hand, I need 5, one for every finger. :LOL:

Here are the photos of two rows done, the third is of the 5 tomato plants I planted and the trellis and 4 planter boxes I put in for the "tasty green" cucumber plants I will be likely planting before next weekend, the seeds have sprouted.







I like these pavers in between the rows, normally I have had 2X8 or 2X10 boards there, but when walking on them they move and I lose my balance sometimes, the pavers feel rock solid and it is wider so I am not trying to balance on a board.

I did a lot of planting yesterday, 5 tomato plants, 2 pepper plants(green/red), 6 romaine plants, 9 Yukon potato starts,I piped the water to the relocated Blueberry plants(used to be under the pine tree in front yard), I cannot remember how many Broccoli plants I planted, maybe 3 started from seeds, I have a lot more things to plant and still have lots of room, not sure if I am going to plant as many corn plants as they have not done well over the last couple years, more to come.

Late last year or early this year when I was stacking firewood rounds I placed a sizeable round on top of another round as I needed to do something, I was not watching/paying attention and that round rolled off and landed on the tips of my fingers on my left hand, it hurt when it happened but the blood between my finger tips and finger nails did not keep me awake when sleeping, today I was looking at my hands/fingers to see how beat up they were and noticed that the end of my little finger on my left hand was bent and would not straighten out, I am "captian little finger hook man" now, I can straighten it out with my other hand and it does not hurt, I can hold the next joint in solid and I can wiggle it just like my little finger on my right hand but it feels weird, I can use it without any pain, fact is I did not even know it would not straighten out until today, I showed a guy I know and he said I broke it, yet it still works fine except all my fingers are straight except that one, and I cannot straighten it out using my muscles in my little finger, it looks swollen until I straighten it out and then it looks normal, I have been picking up pavers without even noticing except I do notice the fingers with blood under the nails, they feel slightly different, it will take pressure, it will pick up weight if needed.

I am just waiting for the weather to get better again, I will then plant the rest of my plants I want, then start adding pavers to the rows I want them, I have enough for 4 more rows between the rows of Strawberries.

I have been waiting for my hands to heal for a while now, I finished the west end in my backyard, then did that first row between the strawberries, by that time my hands had taken a beating(literally), I did not wear gloves doing any of the pavers(loading/unloading/leveling where I wanted them/installing) and I had sores and dried out skin that was cracking, most of the issue was when I would use a piece of paver as a hammer to get the paver I was installing down to the level of the pavers around it, I did it this way since installing the first paver, the last row between the strawberries I used a sledge, I cracked a paver doing it that way as the sledge face is much smaller than the end of a piece of paver, but my hands could take no more, they have mostly healed now.

A while back when I was bringing in firewood rounds I was stacking them and had an issue, I put that quite heavy round above on top of another round to get it out of the way, it was just barely staying there I put my hand on the round below it to take my upper body weight and was doing something and it moved that round and it rolled off the round it was sitting on and landed on the end of all my fingers, well it appears I did something to the end of my little finger, the last joint in my little finger will not straighten out, if I rest the end of that finger on my thumb/counter/any solid surface I can straighten it out and it does not hurt to do that, but I noticed if I do it enough times the top of that knuckle starts getting black and blue, I suspect I broke something, I can still use it, I can lift quite a bit of weight with it, but it will not straighten out, so now I refer to my little finger as my "Captain Little Finger Hook", as it looks kind of like a hook, it is pointed down close to 45 degrees, so do not be stupid like me and stack stuff that can fall down on your hand and hurt you, 3 of my 4 fingers on my left hand have blood under the nails right now.

I have been slowly working on my Coffee Table Train, mostly I just fool around with it trying to make it better, it's all about smoothness and nothing derailing, one spot on a curve the train has to be going at least this fast or the second car derails, I spent a whole evening trying to fix it and came to one conclusion, the train has to be moving so fast or it will derail, I cannot slow it down more and have it make it, the cars behind it are too heavy when being pulled uphill, the weight pulls them sideways and derails that first car behind the locomotive, so I thought put another locomotive behind that first car(two locomotives now) to help it stay on the rails and it changed nothing which I do not understand, maybe it is doing this because it is a shorter car and weighs less, I might trying to add more weight next.

I need to work on my 1971 Datsun 521 work truck, I think the E-brake cable/cables are seized(rusted) and I need to pull really hard on the e-brake lever to get minimal holding power, it is a major job to do this as it is a dually axle, the axles have to be removed to get the brake drum off to get the cables off, it has been this way for a long time, but at first it held better without having to pull so hard, I guess I am getting old, I will get photos when I do this, photos are everything/something to look at.

Here is what I did to get the train up the hill.


It will make it up the hill with 3 locomotives, but I have 4 with the same type of motor and have got used to it, it will move more slowly reliably with more, the more I put in line, the slower it will go without stopping.

My last computer update screwed up my computer big time, it always messes with my photos, now I can take 10 photos and import all of them and I can see them in my photos, but when I scroll through my photos I can only see the one photo that was taken first, I have to double click on each photo to see it, Microsoft is like photolame now.

I finished another row between the strawberries, I had laid out the red 12" squares in two rows a week ago, today I finished one, tomorrow I will likely do another unless it is raining.

I have enough 12" red pavers to do 28', the rows I am doing now are 14', but them two rows of strawberries in line with the walkway is 28' long, I am unsure which way to go, I will likely stick with the original plan and do two more 14' rows, easier on the body and it was the original plan.





I bought a new locomotive with 4 boxcars and a caboose for just the cost of a new locomotive and a lot of used ones and it arrived yesterday, I tested the locomotive on the test track and it ran fine, but when I put the boxcars and caboose behind it, it would not go up any incline at all no matter how shallow.

This is the box.



Here it is on the test track with another locomotive in front of it, believe it or not that test track is not on a level surface, without that black locomotive in front of it the blue locomotive cannot pull them 3 boxcars and caboose around that track, it gets to the slightly uphill part and it just starts to spin and spin in place, the wheels have no traction, it will pull one boxcar around that circle but no more than that.



With the black locomotive it will make it around circuit one in my coffee table track, but the boxcars keep derailing, just another thing I will have to figure out and deal with.

I acquired another 70+ red 12"(full 2" thick) square pavers, and 65+ gray ones, and 41 8"X16" gray pavers, I expect I will use the 8"X16" for the sides of the long row next to the walk going to my telescope observing spot, I do not think I have enough 6"X9" pavers to do everything, I am supposed to go pick up another load of containment wall blocks(a bunch of them) and some larger pieces, all for $50.00 and the guy helped me load the truck today.

If I find more of what I need I might have all the walking paths in my garden filled with pavers, weeds will not be as big of an issue anymore.

I did use my Datsun work truck to get them but did not take a photo of the loaded truck, the load likely weighed as much as the other paver loads I picked up a month or two ago.

That's probably the fanciest strawberry patch on the whole block.

DRIVEN wrote: ↑Sun May 05, 2024 5:12 pm That's probably the fanciest strawberry patch on the whole block.

It's the only in the ground garden on the block that I know of, one guy has a raised garden crammed full of plants that are too close together so not many live up to their potential.

Well I made a device today to help me speed up laying out pavers in between the rows, in the past I have dug out with a small hand shovel the spot for every paver, it took time to get it the right height and level, it took 2 or 3 hours to do a row and my body was in pain after done, believe me when done I was happy in two ways, it was done, and it looked good in my opinion, today I did 2 rows, the second one took just over an hour from leveling the dirt to laying the last paver.

I made this.



And this is how it works, all I have to do is make the channel, put nthe pavers in position, then push the dirt onto the outer sides.





I did the two outside rows in this photo below today, it was much easier this way.



I have one more full length row on the left in the photo above, then the rows farther to the left are narrower because the plants are grown in wood/square containers of a sort, it keeps the water around the plant instead of using a ditch, my previous photos show these wood squares I bury 3" or 4" into the ground to hold the water there around the roots, this keeps weeds from getting water except really close to the box edges, weeds and crab grass just find moisture where they find it, crab grass has long deep roots that get down below the bottom of the wood boxes/squares where the water is.

I am making more room on the first pavers I laid out between my patio and garden, I need this room for my telescope observing, all these unused stacks pavers get in the way, over the next 3 or 4 days I should have cleared out most the pavers in my way for observing the stars in that area.

I should get the other long row done tomorrow that I started today, I did not really get the dirt level before laying out the red pavers and had to make adjustments while adding the pavers to the right side of the pavers already laid down, it was warm and I burnt out because of the heat.

It appears I am going to retire from pressure washing June 9th, 2024, I do not really make that much, and my knees hurt all the time now, legally I cannot use a pressure washer without being a licensed contractor, that is a new law made since 2020, and if I got caught pressure washing..........................

For some reason it double posted the last post.

Congrats on being officially retired. I doubt I'll ever get to say that. That rule about being a contractor feels like a bit of overreach.

This is what I seen last night, the Northern Lights.

I did the long row, but I used 8"X16" pavers on the sides and made another side scraper to level the dirt on both sides of the pavers because they are only 1.5" thick instead of 2" thick, this one I made scraped both sides at the same time.