Weekly garden update (sort of)

Eloine

Ok so this weekly garden update is not so weekly! Oopsie! That’s because anyone who lives near the bay area of California right now knows that for the past couple of weeks it’s been raining and raining and raining! Remind me again…. this IS California isn’t it? I thought it didn’t rain here. Hey, not complaining though the hills are indeed INCREDIBLE this time of year!!!

and once the sun starts to shine the mustard is going to bolt upright to the heavens! This red winged black appears to be waiting for it.

So here are a few updates:

  • My potato plants seem to be doing well as you can see from above. Both store bought and organic from the garden store. We’ll see when I harvest if I only get pretty plants or if I actually get fresh buttery potatoes!
  • Started building a “jungle gym” for the parrot in my veggie garden. It’s already covered with bird netting for protection and a metal frame to hang stuff on. Amazing that should bring a destructive bird back IN to the garden! As you can see Max is enjoying himself up there.
  • Did the usual jaunt to the hardware store to pick up some supplies and as always came back with more plants. This time some sweet broom, boxwood basil and a couple of red tip photinia

 

 

 

 

LMC Brentwood Center

Eloine

I went to photograph the future home of the new Los Medanos College Brentwood Center. For the past ten years it’s been housed in an old Lucky’s shopping center and even with their upgrades it still felt like the old grocery  store that I used to shop as a kid. Their new home not far from the John Marsh House is going to really feel special. As you can see below there isn’t much yet but I had to post this because it sure is a pretty time of year!

Estimating time by weighted average

Eloine

Anyone who knows me is going to find it extremely strange that I of all people should post a math formula! When it comes to managing your projects though there doesn’t seem to be any way around it. Your client is always going to want to know how long the project is going to take. You’re going to want to know too since you don’t really want to work for peanuts. It’s difficult at times when the projects are complex and lots of factors involved. I was discussing this with a friend the other day and it made me remember a formula they taught us that I think it pretty useful. I thought I would share it with you just in case you haven’t heard of it and are having trouble figuring out how to estimate your time on a project.

It’s called the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT). It’s a pretty simple formula that goes like this:

 

Expected time  =  ( Optimistic  +  4 x Most likely  +  Pessimistic ) / 6

The time you would tell the client is the expected time after you factor in the optimistic time (time it would be done if everything goes smoothly) plus the mostly likely that you are sure it could be done (x4) plus the time if everything goes wrong. Then you would divide all that by six and it comes up with a pretty accurate number of a length of a typical project!