Let's Paint!

[Space Voyager]

These all look standard buckets. Why are they not stacked one into another? Drying? This way they definitely take A LOT of space. And this is... A LOT of buckets.

[Zombie]

Yeah. they are not stacked because they need to dry first. Once they are dry they get sorted by type of bucket (all 5-gallon pails are not the same - even some by the same manufacturer) and then they are stacked and stored for when it gets busy again. Buckets can be stored when they are still wet, but the water between them creates a suction so when you try to separate them they take some skill and time, something you don't always have. And if one of the women designers need a bucket in a stack which is wet, they probably aren't going to get them apart. Whereas I can get them apart pretty quick because I've done it for so long and know the tricks. So that means I'll be called away from whatever job I'm doing to separate buckets for them which is... annoying?

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

It was unusually warm outside the last couple days so I decided to do a little spring cleaning in the small garage to get a jump on Mother's Day (which is just about 1 month away now). Remember that we use the small garage for deliveries on the Friday and Saturday before so I need to make room. Anyhow, last fall one of our tables outside in front of the store broke and was not salvageable. After cleaning the house we had the old microwave cart stored in the garage which we decided could be used to replace the broken one outside. The only problem was that the top was made out of a compressed fiberboard which would not hold up outside where it can get wet. I figured I could find a scrap piece of 3/4" plywood to replace the top. Had a look around the garage while cleaning today and found a piece which was painted black on one side. Well, cut that down to size with the circular saw and rounded the edges a bit with a rasp and sandpaper but there were two 1" holes in it from something. I decided to fill them with Bondo (automotive body filler) as it sets up fast. Here's a pic of it on top of the cart with the old top underneath it.

 

 

In order to keep the Bondo from sagging out of the holes I used a piece of blue painters tape to create a false bottom then pushed the bondo in the hole and sanded it down when it dried. The painters tape came off easily and the bondo was completely flush to the bottom of the board so I didn't have to do any sanding on that side. Next up is to prime the board with some of that gray primer. This is the bottom side - you can see the two holes I filled in.

 

 

And when that was dry I put on a coat of gray polyurethane on the top and sides. (You knew this was coming, right)?

 

 

Looks good and should hold up outside for at least a few years. Probably going to put a coat of polyurethane on the bottom of the board yet and another on the top and possibly a coat over the whole thing (not sure if I'll have time for that though.

 

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

(You knew this was coming, right)?

 

Why yes, yes we did.

 

So, you needed a new mirror, huh?

[Zombie]

If any of you are wondering what I've been up to, well, it's that time of the year again with Mother's Day next week.

 

 

The pictures I took last year were actually quite similar which I thought was surprising. But comparing the two, there are fewer flowers overall. We are still missing a lot of carnations, mini carnations and daisies. There are a lot of flower shortages this year. Last year, even though the coronavirus was in full swing we were still able to get certain flowers (with difficulty) due to the flowers being already planted - just needed bodies to harvest them. This year, it was hard finding non-infected help to plant the fields and greenhouses, and when they did, they ended up planting late which delays flowering. Should be interesting, and stressful.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

With or without carnation I say there's enough beauty there at your station to do Mother's day due justice, Zombie.

 

There's no shortage of potentially charming combinations within all them buckets and I know you're handy enough to achieve them to greater or lesser extent when all is said and done. And then there's visibly some cleaning up to take care of afterwards too, inevitably.

 

Most of all, though, I think it bears considering just how fortunate we all are to again bear witness to these floral riots of colour for yet another year!

[Zombie]

There's no shortage of potentially charming combinations within all them buckets and I know you're handy enough to achieve them to greater or lesser extent when all is said and done. And then there's visibly some cleaning up to take care of afterwards too, inevitably.

 

Well, I don't do any arranging (at least not anymore). I used to do minor arranging back in the day when it was "all hands on deck" when it got busy. I remember doing a crap ton of bud vases - assembly line style - to knock them out as quick as possible and fill up the empty section of the display cooler. If I'm going to be forced to do something I'd rather not, then I'm going to do it fast and enough of them to not do it for a while. Hope that makes sense.

 

Took some pics of the small garage with Saturdays deliveries in it (on Friday night) just for comparison purposes to last year.

 

 

It looks like fewer deliveries than last year, but this was taken just before I went home on Friday night and there were still a good 50-60 orders to be filled yet. Friday seemed to be busier (delivery-wise) than last year which I attribute to our advertising and promoting to order early and also fewer coronavirus worries. For those of you with a keen eye, you will notice my libation of choice for a working Friday evening is a 500ml bottle of Mountain Dew - only drank about half to give me a little boost of energy.

 

On Saturday, in between helping the drivers get their vans loaded, I took a pic of an "average" load of deliveries.

 

 

On the cart in the foreground is one load and in the background is another. This year I tried my best to keep the loads at 10 deliveries or less. If you are a fast and efficient driver and don't run into any obstacles (like people not being at home) and have a "jumper" (a passenger to run the delivery to the door), you can usually do about 10 deliveries per hour (so 6 minutes a delivery) plus 15 minutes to get back to the shop. A fast turn around at the shop takes about 15 minutes (remove delivery boxes out of the van, reload the van with a new load, print out the delivery sheet, bio break and a short highlight of the load by myself on what to expect). Total elapsed time is 90 minutes - if it all works out. Traffic eats into this, as do road closures, driver mistakes, wrong addresses and unforeseeable circumstances.

 

In the past I would try to remember which driver took what load, how many they had and when they left in order to gauge when they would be back. Invariably, I couldn't keep it up all day as there are times when I'm swamped. And once you get behind in remembering good luck getting caught back up. About 10 years ago I started to write those stats down on a scrap piece of paper as a "cheat sheet" of sorts to keep current. But for the last 3 years I commandeered a easel with a chalkboard on one side and wrote all those stats down to make it easier to see at a glance by me (or anyone else) who had what and how many. This is what it looks it looks like after all the deliveries are out (Friday on the left and Saturday on the right).

 

 

I of course get the first load early on Saturday morning with church altar flowers as we have keys or codes to get into them. Plus I don't trust some of the drivers to do it correctly (not their fault - they don't do it every week like I do). The 10 delivery per load limit was only broken 3 times on Saturday which wasn't bad. I think in all three cases there technically wasn't more than 10 stops as there were multiple deliveries going to the same address. And I'm not going to break up a load just because of a semi arbitrary self-imposed limit, especially if all the deliveries are in one concise area.

 

The limit did seem to work out pretty good overall on Saturday but that could have been just luck. The loads were more consistent in size, but variability eventually led to 4 drivers returning back to the shop almost simultaneously at 10 am which was a hot horrendous mess (this has never happened to me in all of my 33 years at this job). I managed though. Eventually I might just do a little research to see how long the commute to different areas of the city are, then back calculate the times from Saturday to see where I could have changed the quantity of deliveries per load or load direction to minimize the number of drivers returning back to the shop at the same time. I prefer a more slow but steady return of drivers as then I can give them all of my undivided attention.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Maybe Zombie won't go so far as to fill in your card, but he still makes darn sure classic traditions die hard!

 

There seem to be a few more gaps in the pics you took now but the numbers you mention remain very healthy and the variety of the arrangements on show is very nice, as expected. There's even a choice of vases.

 

And there's nothing like a balloon to take things that little bit extra over the top.

 

As for the deliveries, you've nearly got that down to an art (what with semi-set load sizes, route planning, rest/rotation management) and it's not a little one-time rush-hour style chokepoint you spoke of that will make a three-decade run of improvements and refinements of methodology go to waste.

 

Heck, you're already planning more exact research on the factors implicated. Just remember, sometimes (as you've learnt elsewhere) it's really all down to the RNG!

[Zombie]

As for the deliveries, you've nearly got that down to an art (what with semi-set load sizes, route planning, rest/rotation management) and it's not a little one-time rush-hour style chokepoint you spoke of that will make a three-decade run of improvements and refinements of methodology go to waste.

 

Just to note, there isn't any rest/rotation planning involved at all. In fact, my responsibility is to eliminate as much downtime as possible - at least at the shop, I can't control what happens on the open road. That's why the loads are crated up and ready to go. That's why I help to unload the vehicle of empty crates to reuse. That's why I help load the vehicles with a new load. It's why I write the order numbers of each delivery down so the route sheet can be created. And it's why I give a quick overview of the route to the driver (tricky streets to find, more than one delivery to the same address etc). I want the drivers back on the road asap. There's plenty of time to rest after all the deliveries are gone at the end of the day.

 

Technically I haven't been coordinating/managing the deliveries myself since 1988. I was a big contributing factor but I didn't start doing it semi-solo till the mid 90's. So it's probably closer to 25 years.

 

Heck, you're already planning more exact research on the factors implicated. Just remember, sometimes (as you've learnt elsewhere) it's really all down to the RNG!

 

There obviously will be some level of randomness I can't determine directly through numbers, but I don't think it's entirely chaos theory either. My current feeling about the situation (a satellite overview mind you) is that there was at least one "under-performer" involved (meaning someone was taking a little too long per delivery or for the overall route) and there was possibly an "over-performer" (meaning someone was faster than normal). There should be a way to at least estimate (or ballpark) the overall route times as long as I have the original sheets to pull data from. So possibly a good starting point would be a route planner like MapQuest or something similar.

 

If that fails to account for the situation I encountered, then the next logical step would be to brute force it. By brute force, I mean I'd take the slip from a driver, route it the way I'd personally do it, then actually run that route myself and time the result. It probably will not be the exact route run by the original driver, but it's a good approximation. (I drive kinda slow and carefully so that will give the original driver the benefit of the doubt, but I do have my own set of routes which are pretty efficient at getting to different areas of the city - like avoiding long stop lights, using streets with few stop signs and avoiding as many left hand turns as possible). Probably a big waste of gas/petrol to most of you reading, but I'd like to know what exactly went wrong and how to identify the situation in the future.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Maximum efficiency recipe noted, Zombie!

 

No time to smell the roses in such a peak day scenario for sure. Besides, there shall be plenty of rest to be had when they get flowers delivered to their own... resting place, right?

 

What you describe just makes sense. Grouping deliveries by area, knowing your routes well in advance and choosing the path of least resistance in each segment is more than half the battle won already.

 

Using GPS tracking in all the delivery vehicles could help further pinpoint what exact routes and times were, stops, etc. Though that sometimes doesn't go down too well with people. Word is going to be "Management are control freaks" and the like.

 

Hey, I've actually heard of far greater demands in the quest for package delivery flood control, if at a whole other level - reports that Amazon drivers have to relieve themselves into a bottle in the delivery van itself just to stay on the predetermined schedule.

 

Naturally, such extremes are perfectly avoidable, particularly when well publicized huge profit margins could easily afford more vehicles and people on the job. The "do more with less" business just needs to be kept within reason.

 

There's truly a lot implicated here as we look at the future. Are people the weak link? Like it or not I think they are, by virtue of their very nature on both sides of the equation.

 

And the thing is technology's march will not be stopped. AI in the warehouse, AI in route planning, robot/drone fielding, autonomous vehicles. None of those are pure science fiction anymore...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCi7KpRkHSY

 

 

Not that perfect yet, evidently, but you get the drift. In the end, Skynet shall prevail!

[Zombie]

Using GPS tracking in all the delivery vehicles could help further pinpoint what exact routes and times were, stops, etc. Though that sometimes doesn't go down too well with people. Word is going to be "Management are control freaks" and the like.

 

Bossman is a tightwad so I don't foresee this happening anytime soon. Beyond this, some of the drivers were using their own personal vehicles for delivery so GPS wouldn't help there.

 

What you describe just makes sense. Grouping deliveries by area, knowing your routes well in advance and choosing the path of least resistance in each segment is more than half the battle won already.

 

So today I was able to pull the route sheets from last Saturday for each of the 4 drivers in question. Two of them had handwritten times for each delivery so I could piece together an actual route (Bill and Ben). One didn't have times but had where he went first, second, third, etc so I could investigate that further (Brian). The last one I couldn't find his original route sheet, but we always print two copies so I was able to pull the master copy to look at (Roger).

 

I looked at Bill's route first. Nearly perfect (as it should be as he delivered for us for many years up until December when he retired). For the first stop there were 2 deliveries going to the same address so he technically only had 9 stops total. My only gripe was that it took him 6 minutes to complete the next delivery 2-ish blocks away on the same street. Dump and run, 4 minutes elapsed time max. Then another 8 minutes to complete the next delivery. After that it was clear sailing. I probably would have run the route differently going to the East side of the map square first and heading to the most north delivery, then dipping back down to his #2, #1 and two others before heading back to the shop. Can't really complain too much as he got that load complete in an hour.

 

Roger's load was next. I didn't have a numbered list or hand written times to work off of due to only having the master copy. But looking at the load I gave him it was pretty simple. Granted, he had the farthest route away from the shop so the commute time to the first delivery would be long. After that though the deliveries were all clustered around the same area with 4 being along one street (or nearly so) and another 4 further west (the route sorta looks like binoculars or a figure 8 on it's side). I know he had trouble finding one delivery on the list as I remember him mentioning this on Saturday. He must've spent a half hour on just that one as my best guess is the route should have took about an hour and a half (15 minutes commute time there and back - so 30 minutes - plus 9 deliveries at 6 minutes each is about an hour). He left at 8 am and didn't return till 10 am, so yeah, time to point fingers. I always tell the drivers to look over their list before leaving the shop. Any questions where something is, ask me as I have to know where the thing is in order to put in on the route in the first place. Barring that, if you can't find a delivery bring it back to the shop and I'll stick it on another run. I guess I'm to blame a little as I didn't mention to him that this particular delivery was a little tricky to get to. It's on google maps though, and he has a smart phone too so really no excuse. I guess I have to do a quick morning meeting on the Friday and Saturday before Mother's Day with all the drivers to make sure they remember and understand this.

 

Ben. Where do I begin? I think this is primarily an upper management issue (above my pay grade) as he really doesn't know the city very well so shouldn't even be on the road as a driver. It's harsh, but the truth. He has a smartphone, and to his credit, was using a route planning app. But as a free user it only allowed routes of 10 stops and he had a route of 12 so he had to take 2 deliveries out so the route could be updated. Two stops had 2 deliveries each. If he would have went to those first and then updated on the app he would have been golden. Taking one delivery at 9:11 and then returning to the same address at 9:26 for the second is unacceptable. At least he didn't mess up the other stop with 2 deliveries. Taking 17 minutes between deliveries #1 and #2 is also unacceptable as these deliveries are all situated in the heart of the city. I can plainly see how I would have run the route with just a glance. There were 2 deliveries directly east of the shop I would have taken first, then another delivery just south of that. Then I would have bounced west to catch the 2 to the same address and another delivery a block from that. With all those out of the way it wouldn't matter where you went next as they were all a couple minutes apart max. Finger pointing time again. First, upper management for allowing someone to deliver who doesn't know the city. I probably shouldn't have given him this route either but I didn't know the circumstances.

 

Brian. He drives a cab so he should know the city. I'm not convinced he can route a load of deliveries himself though. He might of had some help with an app, but it seemed he was jumping all over the map square. The simple way is to do a U or V shaped route if you have two lines of deliveries separated by nothing. No, he went to the middle of the West part catching a delivery on the opposite side of the road he was on (so he had to turn left across a busy street), and then inconceivably did the same thing a block up. It would have made more sense to do the two farthest deliveries first, then head down the busy street on the correct side to catch the two deliveries a block away from each other. I dumped this list into an optimizer and it claimed it's a 40 minute route. That seems a little overzealous but you also have to realize there were 3 main groups of deliveries with one outlier. Once you get to a group you can whack those out fast because they are so close to each other. So maybe 60 minutes if you hit all the traffic lights on green on the way back. I might run this route myself sometime to see how long it would take by just inspection and not using a route optimizer. The thing to remember is that this route was originally taken out early on a Saturday morning when a lot of people are still in bed and the traffic is light. Optimization isn't really necessary when nobody is on the road to block you from going somewhere.

 

So I learned some things from this dive. I perhaps should have crossed my t's and dotted my i's and been a little more careful and meticulous when getting the first loads of the day out. It's hard to do though as you want to push those deliveries out the door asap to make more room. And everyone seems to come in at the same time in the morning so there's the issue of drivers standing around while you work on squaring one away first. Not sure what the answer to that is except maybe pre loading a van before the driver clocks in for work so he'll be ready to go. Or having the first driver help to load the other drivers while I coordinate. However, one thing I can say about my performance is that I did an impeccable job of making concise loads. I would have killed to run any of them as they looked nearly perfect.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Great rundown you did there, Zombie.

 

You seem to have singled out most of the mishaps in the drivers' respective performances.

 

It does appear to me you need to take potentially on-the-fly arbitrary decisions of drivers out of the picture.

 

From the get go they should be handed (by someone with direct experience out on the field, like you) the exact intended sequence of deliveries from first to last and what specific trajectories to take in between, considering the stretch heading away from the store and then the return trip part.

 

In short, take any unknowns (how familiar a driver might or might not be with a certain part of town or peripheries) and turn the delivery into a straight-up explicit point to point run including in-between instructions.

 

Ultimately, it shouldn't be about driver choices or leaning on technology of their own volition on a case by case.

 

Outright normalize the heck out of it - no deviations unless something extraordinary happens like car accidents, police intervention, road blockage, etc.

 

Hey, nobody ever likes to feel confused on the job or having to admit uncertainty about what the right course to take might be. Having clarity of purpose beats doubt every time.

 

Then review their resulting performances of the day much as you did now, so comparisons can be drawn. My guess is it will show marked savings in both time spent and fuel consumption. Clients will be happier with swift deliveries, management will be happier with the demonstrated efficiency.

 

And I can't help but comment on the free app thing. Standards: either all drivers install the same app, preferably paid by management or make it your business to ensure drivers get to know their way around the routes without question (hence, no technological reliance).

 

This is not something best left to individual employee discretion. Is "showing initiative" the goal? Let's see who can wing it. Well, you know how that turned out in this particular case study day.

 

Also agree with your idea about pre-loading the vehicles before driver arrival where possible and any idle drivers should help load other vehicles instead of simply waiting around for their turn to head out while others have to double-time it to serve them their loads.

 

Just don't know how much leeway you'll have to eventually make these things evident to the bossman. Sure is in his best interest though.

[Zombie]

I like the theory you propose Mr T., especially for inexperienced drivers. However, my beef has been, and always will be: do not hire inexperienced drivers or those who not know the city very well for delivery. That alone will will nearly eliminate most problems because they could figure things out for themselves without relying on a routing app. (Take for instance the test I ran of an app vs me. Our routes were almost identical. And I think my routing could end up being a little quicker than the app because I avoid busy roads and those with long stop lights. So even a somewhat experienced driver could have similar results to an app without going through the time-consuming task of entering addresses into the app and waiting for the route to be generated. By the time you get all the addresses entered you could have already delivered one arrangement).

 

I'm not sure how a pre-planned route would go over with seasoned drivers though. One thing here in the States is that you never tell someone how to drive because they just will not listen. Murphy's Laws of Technology apply: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables the organism will do as it damn well pleases.

 

If any of the drivers had been a tiny bit more efficient it would have been only 2 or 3 drivers arriving back at the same time which would have been fine. So it's something to think about for the next major holiday (which would be Thanksgiving in November). Plenty of time to think on it.

 

Back to painting I guess.

 

Remember the apartment I painted a couple years ago? At the time I painted the bedroom, living room and kitchen and the other two rooms were storage for the flower shop So I didn't do anything to them. Recently the tenant got a roommate (unbeknownst to us) and she ended up moving a lot of our stuff out of one room so she could have a private bedroom. Some of the stuff went into the basement but she also threw out a lot of stuff too. That should have been grounds for immediate eviction but bossman allowed it because he had her paying rent too. Well, she was a meth-head and had bouts of rage with the upstairs tenant so we had to ask her to leave. She did, but her bedroom is kinda a mess. Lots of holes in the walls (which she or her friend half-assed patched) and two of the walls were painted an accent color.

 

Long story - I need to patch and paint that room. Luckily I have plenty of paint leftover from the other rooms, so I should be able to whack that out pretty quick once I patch, sand, sweep, prime and tape up. Some of the gray polyurethane paint is off the floor in the kitchen due to sliding a stove and refrigerator over it. That needs to be touched up as well.

 

My work never ends. There's always something, right?

 

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

Well, she was a meth-head and had bouts of rage with the upstairs tenant so we had to ask her to leave. She did, but her bedroom is kinda a mess. Lots of holes in the walls (which she or her friend half-assed patched) and two of the walls were painted an accent color.

 

Long story - I need to patch and paint that room. Luckily I have plenty of paint leftover from the other rooms, so I should be able to whack that out pretty quick once I patch, sand, sweep, prime and tape up. Some of the gray polyurethane paint is off the floor in the kitchen due to sliding a stove and refrigerator over it. That needs to be touched up as well.

 

Crap, sounds like a problematic customer. Good riddance. Judging from the history of this thread, piece of cake for you, but additional work nevertheless.

 

My work never ends. There's always something, right?

 

- Zombie

 

Darn tootin'!

[Zombie]

Last week I noticed some kids rolling around the shop on electric scooters. Not really all that strange but the scooters all looked the same. And I saw multiple people riding them. Long story short, a company is now renting them in town, that's why I keep seeing them around.

 

Case in point, here's a couple sitting in the alleyway behind the shop.

 

 

For a change of pace, how about a little planting project? Backstory: I've been planting a bunch of graves at a cemetery since as long as I've been working at the shop. It started with a few gravestones of relatives of the old bossman (he passed away in 2017). People visiting the cemetery must've started asking around about who was planting the gravestones because they looked so good. Over the years we had a number of people inquire so now I'm up to 11 paying stones and 4 non-paying (old bossman and his wife, his mother and father and his two sisters). Most of the stones get some perennials and then the remainder is annuals for some color. The annuals die in fall/winter but the perennials come back so then I'm left with cleaning up what's left. Before cleaning and after cleaning a typical gravestone:

 

 

I dig everything out first. I cut a line around the intended planting bed areas with a spade then dig out the perennials and remove the old blooms and stalks from them. Then I examine the root ball for the roots of weeds (crabgrass is the big one). Once they are cleaned I set them aside and start removing the annuals from last year. Now I turn the soil with a spade, break up any blobs of dirt with a pitchfork and smooth the surface, add some granular starter fertilizer, turn that into the soil with the pitchfork and finally replant the perennials. And because I disturbed the root balls I need to water them in. Basically good to go, all I need to do is add some geraniums and annuals to fill in the empty spots. (By the way, the plants on the ends are sedum and the two in the middle are hosta. The hostas are there for the unique variegated foliage and the sedums have some reddish-pink blooms in late fall).

 

I was only able to clean up 7 gravestones today as I started on it right after lunch. And it was also beastly hot (92F or 33C) with very little shade so I can only work as long as my ice water supply lasts. I'll try and get some pics of a completed planting soon.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

"People zipping around downtown on the scooters"; "By the time the rollout in Sheboygan is complete, about 100 scooters will be available" - so, how good are your dodging skills, Zombie?

 

 

Kidding aside, you know there's going to be a spike in accidents with both pedestrians and bicyclists, right?

 

We've had our fair share of such unpleasant accidents in Lisbon and they're not to be dismissed overly casually. Here's a brief article on the subject from a couple of years ago.

 

So, watch you step. Such proximity means some broken vases are not entirely out of the question either.

 

As for your side planting project, I do think you've nailed it. The plants look nice. They're discrete and tasteful too and do seem hardy, so they're rather light on maintenance.

 

Of course, the downside is you've created a little bottleneck for yourself as said maintenance needs will coincide in time as you've just experienced in your latest "sunbathing" bout.

 

Time to hedge your bets in that plant lineup? *wink, wink*

[NoXTheRoXStaR]

Don't you dare worry about the paint. Joe will take care of it.

[Zombie]

"People zipping around downtown on the scooters"; "By the time the rollout in Sheboygan is complete, about 100 scooters will be available" - so, how good are your dodging skills, Zombie?

 

 

Kidding aside, you know there's going to be a spike in accidents with both pedestrians and bicyclists, right?

 

And cars too. Some of the scooters are downtown from us (so it's south east of the store) which runs about 10 blocks south to north (12 blocks if you are generous). It ends at the street the store is on and unofficially continues west past the store. Most of the scooters I've seen are along our street. There are a lot of bars around us so it wouldn't surprise me if there will eventually be some "driving" while intoxicated accidents. Even sober, teens have really no idea how to use a scooter on the road. The second day they came out there were 3 teens cutting across the busy street with no regards for cars at all.

 

We've had our fair share of such unpleasant accidents in Lisbon and they're not to be dismissed overly casually. Here's a brief article on the subject from a couple of years ago.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Time to hedge your bets in that plant lineup? *wink, wink*

 

Actually, there are a few gravestones where relatives planted a yew "hedge" in front (or off to the side) of it thinking they will never have to do any maintenance. Wrong. They grow pretty fast and need a trimming every year to keep them from getting overgrown. Eventually the thing gets too overgrown which causes all sorts of problems (ground heaving due to the big rootball, weeds because the shrub shades the ground, invites chipmunks, ground squirrels and woodchucks because of the shelter it provides and of course, long grass because the mowers can't get close enough to the bush to cut the grass. It's a real mess. Next to old bossmans grave we had to dig one out which wasn't easy.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Today I was doing some more planting at the cemetery. Another hot uncomfortable day unfortunately. Anyhow, I saw this car come rolling over near me and a guy got out to look at a grave. Before he left, he made a beeline over to me to ask if I worked for the cemetery. Nope, I do not, I'm planting while on the job at the flowershop. Needless to say, I think I'll be planting one or two more gravestones this year as he seemed interested. Do you see why I get more and more stones every year?

 

I turned the back cooler off again last weekend and it had a chance to dry out in there finally. Took a peek at the floor in there and there are a couple areas where the paint started to bubble up so it looks like I'll be doing a little touchup on it. I'll probably put another coat on the threshold of the one red door again and I still want to put another coat on the long table in the backroom (kinda been putting this off). I want to try to get the cooler floor done first as you never know when it has to be turned on again. The other areas can wait until a less hot and humid day is forecast.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

It's good to be appreciated before one is pushing up daisies, right, Zombie?

 

And, suprise, surprise - painting projects becon thee once again. As you say, never done but you're quite proactive so things never really get out of hand with you on site.

[Zombie]

So I was back at the cemetery again today, this time planting some of the grave sites. I didn't get it all done, but most of the paying customers are complete and finished. Here's what the featured grave stone planting looks like.

 

 

In the back are 4 lavender-pink geraniums, in front of that is 2 packs (8 plants) of pink petunias and the whitish plants in the front are dusty miller (2 packs, this time 12 plants). A lot of people think it takes a lot of plants to fill up a grave, but it's honestly not that bad - especially if you have 4 perennials coming back every year. On this particular grave I normally use salmon or peach geraniums, but we didn't have a lot of that color left at the store so pink it was (I try to use up the colors we have the most of so as not to wipe our selection out).

 

Some graves (like this one) are "dealers choice" meaning I have complete control over what plants go in, the quantity and color. Other graves have specific colors to abide by, but here again, I have control over how many of each to use (some years the geraniums are big and bushy and thus require less plants to fill an area). Still other graves are requested to contain only perennials. There's one grave I do that's so small it doesn't pay to put in a perennial as I can fill it up with just annuals for cheaper so that's the oddball in the bunch. Eventually I might stick a couple perennials in there though - it depends if I have another grave site with some perennials that don't look so full, I might dig those up and use them for the small grave. It's kind of a strategy thing when you boil it down.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

The pictured ensemble works very well, Zombie.

 

I can see how a dash of peach geraniums in there would fit in quite perfectly too as an alternative pairing. There are different shades of green foliage and the mix of shapes and sizes captivates the eye.

 

It's fair to say that, as demonstrated, people are very safe in trusting your "dealers choice" arrangements.

[Space Voyager]

Ha, you might have stumbled upon a well paying niche job, Z! "Flowering your dead loved ones inc."

 

Personally I'm more in favour of pure stone, no maintenance. People have been stealing flowers (even some pigmey bushes) from my father's grave, so I proposed to close up the hole in the stone with a stone lid. My mom did not like the idea...

[Zombie]

Last week I was cleaning out one of our delivery vans. The carpeting on the floor under the drivers side was caked full of dried up crystalized salt (from melting snow in winter). Tried scraping it off with a putty knife but had 0 luck with that as it was stuck too tight to the carpet fibers. What to do... hmmm? I went full out this time and doused the crusted areas with soapy water, brushed it in, then I went around to the passenger side with the garden hose and sprayed out the drivers side with water. Worked great, but now I had a flooded drivers side to contend with. I used a rubber squeegee to scrape the majority of the standing water out the door, then got out the wet/dry vac and sucked the carpeting as dry as I could. Put a fan on it with the door open and it dried in an hour or so. Looks beautiful now!

 

While I was waiting for the carpeting to dry, I decided to clean out the back. For delivery, we have a 4x8 foot sheet of 5/8 inch thick plywood to protect the floor and on top of that is an indoor/outdoor commercial mat (these are commonly used in entrance ways to stores and such - we got a few of these for free a long time ago when a grocery store was throwing them out because they were showing their age). We use the mats because our vase delivery boxes and crates "grab" on to the mat and prevents stuff from sliding around or tipping over. Took out the mat and cleaned it off with some bleach and bucket cleaner then rinsed it off and let it sit in the sun to dry (The bleach doesn't leave marks on the commercial carpeting as those are made out of plastics and rubber).

 

I was looking at the 4x8 sheet of plywood and it it was pretty dark with who knows what (probably just ground in dirt, it wasn't black mold or anything nasty). I can't just clean the mat and not do something to the wood, that's just wrong. Well, out comes the bleach again. Used a 50% diluted solution of that with water and some bucket cleaner, this is after rinsing.

 

 

That did diddly squat. Time to bring out the big guns: 50% straight beach with 50% wooden deck cleaner and some bucket soap. Scrubbed on that with a rough broom for a little while then applied a second coat and scrubbed some more. After rinsing.

 

 

It's a lot better, that's for sure. But the wood is still dark in spots. I was honestly out of options at this point as straight bleach and deck cleaner is about as caustic as I can make it. Had to call it good enough - left it in the shed to dry overnight. This is what it looked like the next morning:

 

 

Even better. Still not perfect but at least the dark spots kinda disappeared. (Maybe the dark spots were from ground in rubber from the back of the mat)? The only issue was that all the scrubbing I did raised the grain of the wood and caused fibers to stick out all over. I ended up sanding the board by hand with 50 grit sandpaper against the grain (lightly) to loosen up those fibers. If you ever have to do something like this I would highly suggest using a random orbit sander with 100 grit sandpaper - it would still loosen up the fibers without causing a lot of deep scratches because of the random obits the pad makes. Anyhow, you can see the commercial mat to the right of the board drying out. This is what it looks like back in the van:

 

 

At least everything is fresh and clean again. Have to do a little more detailing inside yet when I get the chance... clean windows and the vinyl and plastic parts and then apply some Armor All protectant to give it the new van look.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

So now I know, Zombie - that's what they call an overnight sensation!

 

After the initial post-bleach & deck cleaner defiant impression of "That's all you got? Ha!" I sure didn't expect that plywood to so dramatically improve upon drying.

 

Goes to show once again you know the strength of your chemicals. Orbit sander finisher: noted.

 

All I'd maybe add as a final touch would be something like an odor absorbing air freshener (example).

 

Regardless, van ready to ship out!