daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
This is one of the longer hills near our house but the school bus gave me an extra bit of motivation to power up it today.
When facing a big hill, I usually think of a saying: “Just keep your legs moving and let the top of the hill come to you.” It’s worked every time! 😊
Have a great day!
Here’s another of Anko’s frequent napping locations. It looks a little nicer than her last one.
Today’s route took me around Koa’s high school, where I took a few photos, saw a mountain biker head off into some trees, followed him and found some nice trails and a shortcut to the adjacent neighborhoods. Lots of fun exploring! Of course, Koa said these “secret” trails are used by the cross country team. But still, new to me!
A few weeks ago, we saw in an local online forum that screech owls live in our neighborhood and thought that it would be fun to see them. With that goal in mind, I built a screech owl box by following these plans. It’s a fairly easy project, but the end result is a large and heavy owl box. From the photos at the website it doesn’t look so big, but using 1-inch thick wood gives it significant heft, and the longest edge is over two feet long. That may pose a challenge in finding a good place to mount it, which is what I have to decide now. 😊
I mentioned that the box is easy to make, but there is one thing to keep in mind, at least here in the US. While most lumber at the hardware stores has nice, round measurement numbers on their labels, these may be misleading. For instance, the 1″x12″x10′ piece of wood that is sold in my Home Depot actually measures .75″x11.25″x10′. Why is it like this? Well, there’s the concept of “Actual” and “Nominal” lumber sizes, which you can read about here.
This has the potential to cause significant frustration to unknowing DIYers (like myself) working on their projects, but for this owl box there’s only one piece that is problematic, which is the bottom panel. I cut it at 12″, but it didn’t line up flush with the sides, which were actually 11.25″ wide. It would have been nice if the nominal vs. actual dimensions were mentioned in the instructions. Oh well, live and learn! (the bottom panel was easy to cut down to correct size)
Anyway, I assembled the box, then put on a few coats of water sealant that I had leftover from sealing our deck, and now I just need to find a place to put it in our yard. It’s recommended to place it at least 15 feet from the ground, which is pretty high. We’ll see how it goes. And I hope we have some owls move in soon! 🦉
Since I don’t go out socially during the COVID-19 pandemic, a typical Friday night is spent with a bicycle ride and a beer. Not at the same time, of course, but hmmm… maybe I could fill a water bottle with an adult beverage, or throw a bottle of wine in the pannier and head to the park? An idea worth pondering. 😀
I hope you had a nice end of the work-week!
If you are on Strava, let’s connect so that we can cheer each other on!
