In light of this, I have two pieces of advice that will NEVER let you down:

1. Don’t piss off the electrons, they bite.
2. Always double check your GROUNDS, then check them one more time.  Your stuff will do the most peculiar things if the ground is loose or not connected.  In fact, there are way too many odd things that can happen with electricity if the ground is bad to list here.  So, if you are working with something electrical in your house or car and something spooky or unexplainable is happening…check those grounds.

Have fun and don’t get electrocuted!

I AM a home owner with big ideas and little funds
I AM a persistent guy with little fear of failure
I AM willing to tear it all down and try again

Check with your local building codes before you begin, make sure there are no restrictions regarding the construction of retaining walls or free standing walls.  Also, be realistic and safe about what you are about to do.

If you are reading a news feed from Facebook or Google Reader, click through to the actual blog post.

There are a few pictures and resources on the internet about building a dry stack, round field stone wall.  My intent is to add to the volume of information on this process by including pictures of my build-up as well as put in links to some of the more useful websites I found when trying to figure out how to do this.  More detail concerning my key steps are in the captions of my pictures, so I’ll let them speak for themselves.    Here are a few things you should know before you get started.

1. Don’t neglect site prep.  I live in Southern California and on some pretty hard dirt.  Freezing dirt and frost thrust and all that jazz is just fairytale to me.  But if you live somewhere that freezes, its worth it to dig down nice and deep and put a gravel base in.
2. Natural field stone doesn’t have to be expensive, in fact, it doesn’t have to cost more than a little fuel to go pick it up and lunch for your friends who help you move it.  Any BLM managed land has stone free for the taking as long as you can pick them up by hand and put them in your non-commercial vehicle.  If you aren’t building anything too big, this might be a good option.  If you are building something bigger, take more time and visit more locations.  With a little hunting you can find all the stone material you need.  Don’t be shy about asking around to see if anyone has some stone that was illegally dumped on their property.  Some of these folks are happy to have you come and remove some of the trash that has been left on their property, just ask first.
3. Lay out all of your material ahead of time so you have a good view of it all.  As you are building, remember you are putting together a puzzle with all kinds of pieces that may or may not fit.  Remember that biggest on the bottom, smallest on the top.  Use really small stuff to fill in gaps.
4. Have a lot of DG or soil around that you can shovel in as you go.  You are not using mortar, so you need something to create some friction and to take your stones captive.
5. Don’t be concerned about ‘perfect’.  If you are doing this project, perfect actually doesn’t look right.  You want something more natural looking and a few small gaps here and there are ok as long as there is some soil in the gaps.  Its a great opportunity to plant some cool rock rose or some other small, rock-loving plant.

Click on the pictures below to get a better view of what I have done, there is a description with each picture.  Remember, I am not a professional so this shouldn’t be considered professional advise.  Think of me as your neighbor who did this last year and is willing to offer some pointers from his experience.  I successfully built a wall that is stable and has survived rain and a dog running around on it.  It fits in nicely to a rustic setting and as long as you stay within some simple guidelines, your wall will be successful as well.

[Show as slideshow]

I found these websites helpful when I was figuring this out:

DIY Network’s Rock Solid: Corny hosts, but they seem to know their craft.  They handle this topic a lot.
Drystack Retaining Walls (Moss/Field/Stone): PDF uploaded by Cornerstone Marketing Group.  Handy write up on site prep.  I don’t know anything about the authors.
eHow-How to Bulid a Dry Stack Stone Wall: This was handy little taste of building a wall.  No pictures and brief summaries of what do to.  Add it to the knowledge mass.
Google: Yea, its a sarcastic link to add.  But search for dry stack fieldstone retaining walls, maybe its how you found this post.  Keep searching.  There is lots of good stuff out there.

Remember that being persistent and embracing failure as a learning experience will get any project done well.  Since you’re doing a dry stacking wall - taking it down and changing it up is easy stuff.  When you are done you will have a beautiful fixture in your landscape and it will likely remain for years and years.  And guys, your wife will be really impressed!

Have fun!

I always think, “Someone should put up an article with better pictures or more detailed explanation.”  Well, I am going to start putting up my own how to’s or DIY articles that revolve around projects I have done or want to do.  I don’t think I can do a better DIY article than the other sites, but I think I can help others fill in the gaps that are left by the DIY television shows and free articles online.

I’ll start with a dry field stone wall or planter.  Stay tuned.

But, this morning…I have a new idea.

Keep an eye out, I’ll post something up this evening.

Our system of providing health care is broken, and its getting more broken.  Although we have some of the most innovative specialists in the world in this country, many can’t gain access to them.  So when reading this CNN story it occurred to me.

Health Care provision should not be in the hands of for-profit companies.  Its only natural that they are  concerned with profits, investor concerns and Wall Street.  So they make decisions only as generous as is required by state law.  Their very existence puts them at odds with patients needs.  Maybe its time to rethink this.  Maybe a public option or single payer system is in order because this is an issue of protecting the citizenry.

We have a public military.
We have a public police force.
We have a public education system.

We have private alternatives for each of these.  However, the public service is adequate in most cases and in some cases, exemplary.

Just a few thoughts for this morning.

Yeesh…

[in reference to the comments on the Newsvine Poll currently running: Is Evolution Theory True or False?]

We are in a severe drought as categorized by the State of California Department of Water Resources.  We like them for play and their beauty but we need to get some perspective.  Having a small lawn to play on and roll around in is fine.  These usually happen in the back yards.  Front lawns are dumb.  No one hangs out on them, no one plays on them.  They are just there to provide some green and some extra work for homeowners to do on the weekends.  May as well paint some dirt.  When we make a decision to put in a law we are introducing an artificial fresh water marsh that just shouldn’t ever exist in this part of the world.  There are better options, we should know better.  After all, we live in the future.

HOA Boards, encourage the minimization of these artificial fresh water marshes.  The amount of potable water we put on them is silly and wasteful.  Take advantage of the information found on our municipal water districts websites and the materials they freely give out in the interest of conservation.  Provide them to your residents and encourage them to implement them by giving them breaks on their association dues for being water wise homeowners, don’t forget you are a not for profit organization!  I know that lowering dues sounds foreign to you but if you had more and more people switching to native landscapes maintenance would become a thing of the past.  There would be less ugly landscapes to worry about, less noisy equipment on the weekends and even cleaner air.  That means the energy you put into policing and ’self helping’ these residents would be a thing of the past.  That means the only thing you would have to worry about would be getting together to squash the latest submittal to paint a house Cyan and Yellow.

And [Jesus] taught his disciples not to rule over each other, that they had one Father and they were all brothers and sisters. When someone has been given special abilities or wisdom from God, we naturally follow them as “authorities” because we see they have what is good, what is from God. There is no need of human force to make us obey.

…God backs up the authority of those whom he has chosen.

God’s design requires constant together-ness.  We are incomplete without each other.

How does someone that is trying to fill the role of a leader in one of these faith communities learn from this commentary?  Sometimes a guy has to know when he is at the edge of his gifting and when to hand the baton off to keep things going.

Here’s what I see happening now: People with employer provided health care have a program that works ok.  Some pay a lot for their families but don’t do much about it.  There are those that have great health insurance and don’t pay for anything ever.  There are others that feel that there should be a better option for them because they either don’t have insurance through an employer (maybe carrying 2 or 3 part time jobs) and they can’t afford anything more than an Urgent Care visit or stopping by a Minute Clinic.  And all of them are into this debate because everyone is afraid they have something to loose.

This collage of programs and the current system is a self defeating one in light of our existing ‘free market’ mentality.  Once upon a time congress got excited about this thing called an HMO.  Kaiser was the mastermind of this thing and they are still the shining star for what the HMO can be and is.  HMO’s have an all-inclusive model where everything is included.  Labs, tests, doctor visits, hospitalization, etc.  No one in the program pays for much of anything out of pocket because its all covered by the monthly premium.  If you don’t know this, that premium is pretty big even if you aren’t the one footing the bill.  As people got comfortable with the idea of everything being included and there being a large system that managed their care for them the system got larger and more expensive.  Expense grew for the end user because unlike everyhting else in our lives, we stopped shopping around and letting a ‘free market’ mentality keep costs down.  Now here we are with a very expensive system and we are all a flutter about overhauling it and spending public funds to make sure more people can have this program.  At least thats what it looks like

So enrolling everyone in a public system ranging from public insurance company to single payer health care seems like a good idea except every time we look at the options they are very expensive.  I wonder why they have to be compared to those of other countries.  What is so different here.  I suppose I just don’t know what is so different.  Probably the biggest thing that makes everything look so expensive is the massive military machine that we fund.  That is another topic that I don’t really intend to address, ever.

Perhaps what needs to happen is for the American public to begin to see health insurance the same way they see car insurance and home insurance.  It is there to cover the catastrophic or at least the things that we determine that we could not afford.  Paying for a checkup isn’t very expensive when its on a modest health care plan.  Neither are well baby visits.  Urgent care offices and things like Minute Clinics are great for the small needs and there is no point in getting your insurance involved with those types of things.  We need to learn to shop around not just for what we think are consumer goods, but for our health insurance and doctors because at the end of the day - those are consumer goods as well.  If a people determined to support themselves and take FULL responsibility for their own well being, health and actions were unleashed I suspect this debate would become uninteresting.

So thats it, three long posts is all I intend to write on this topic from now on.  To those that are mad about death panels and denying care to the elderly based on their productivity to society, stop letting your imagination run away.  To those that insist that without government run health care we live in an unjust world and think the government needs to teach us that health care is a basic human right, stop indicting those that want to be left alone to care for themselves and their own families.  It is little more than you want for yourselves.

Continue discussing this with your friends and family and neighbors but stop spreading obvious hysteria and grossly slanted, doom and gloom projections for and against.  Use facts, use reason, use convictions and put the boogy man back in the closet.

Here’s where we are today on the yard.  Got the retaining wall planter in and the retaining wall that will fit behind the hot tub.  I have dug out the ground 4+ feet away from the patio to make room for the patio extension.  We were pretty spoiled at our Snow Gum house because of its HUGE patio.  The patio here is a bit slim so a little extra should make things much better.  Putting power in for the hot tub soon and of course pouring a pad for that at the same time as the patio extension will finish off most the hardscape.  The only remaining hardscape is the flagstone that is laid to go from the patio to the rest of the yard.  Its laid down but its not set, I need to do a little bit of grading to make sure I don’t make a dam and create a lake in the yard next time it rains.  I have a lot more pictures on my Facebook photo albums.

Retaining wall planter and hardscape

Planter