Sorry there have not been any updates this week.

The title pretty much says it all. This week I have been making small repairs to Jason and Linda's house. The house is only 2 years old but suffers from a general lack of quality building materials. The devil, it's been said, is in the details and that is the case here. I have replaced two drawer slides. Both of them the plastic wheel that they ran on degraded and developed a flat spot. At less than $4 each they were not expensive to replace but that was probably the problem to start with.

Another project I've done is add hinges to the kids' bedroom wardrobe doors. The doors are solid mahogany and with the kids abuse needed more support. The hinges are those complected style with a number of pivot points and adjustable in several ways. The feature that makes them adjustable also makes them able to be pulled off the frame. The doors, if they were sold in the states, would probably be more than I paid for my last car in raw materials alone. The tragedy is the wood was never properly dried. The doors have warped some. Maybe drying is what makes the wood so expensive in the US but I doubt it. It is just heart breaking somehow to see such good wood not treated right.

This is 2 year old landscaping in Linda's backyard.

The climate here is just great for growing things. Monday Jason bought 2 mahogany  trees. The area where the house is built is reclaimed swamp and the fill dirt, as it turns out, has quiet a bit of rock throughout. After digging in the sometimes quite clay soil I'm feeling very 40. They already have one mahogany which is two years old and probably 10'+. I asked the guy at the place how long it would be before you could get wood from it. He didn't really answer my question but said it would be about the size of a power pole(actually he pointed at a tree that size) in 12 years. Jason also has a number of teak trees. They are closer to 20' and the size of your arm. They just shoot straight up with a few large leaves growing from the trunk and then grow from there. With no branches whatsoever for the first 20' it's easy to see why they are valued for timber. 

As I type this I have a "toy" that is shaped to look like a tennis racket. What it is in fact is a bug zapper. It has a rechargeable battery and when you see a mosquito you push a button and take a swing. It doesn't get them every time but when it does it is HUGELY satisfying. As soon as I was told what it was I couldn't find any mosquitoes, strange that. Somehow child safety people in the states might have a problem with it, I can't think why.