Yard Work

Yup. I've been doing yard work. Labor Day I worked at it for five hours. Amazing, huh? Remember those yaupons at either end of my house in the front, the ones that were uprooted by the February snow? All of a sudden I got tired of always trying to trim them reaching up over my head to do it (yes, they're back to hitting the roof . . . or were). I got my hand saw and started sawing off branches. Now they're both about chest high on me. Of course, the vast majority of the growth was above that, so it now looks like I have nice bare sticks coming up out of the ground at both ends of the house. Maa. As fast as they grow, they should fill back in fairly quickly. Plus they'll be easy to trim now as long as I keep up with it and don't let them get tall again. It did take me five hours though, to cut all the limbs off and them cut them up into trash-able sizes. I was going to take m electric shears/trimmers/whatever they're called to the rest of my shrubs, but after 5 hours, I was over it. I figured I'd do them the next day.

Of course, it rained continuously the next two days. And then I went back to work. So I got back to the shrubs this morning. I went out, mowed the lawn, weed-whacked and then took the trimmer to the shrubbery. Dekita! I'm done trimming and cleaning it up now for the year, except for I notice the rosebush needs trimming up. I was back out there working for about 3 hours this morning, so I think I've done my quota of yard work for the week now. Everything's neat and tidy . . . and I'm tired!

It's in the low 90s today and overcast, so the work wasn't horrifically unpleasant. I'm just not usually a physical labor type, except for weekly lawn mowing, so it tires me out when I do more than usual. I feel it most in my hands though, and in my right wrist. It's swollen again, but not as bad as it was when I cut up shrubbery in February, so I guess it's slowly getting better.

I did call the plumbers back for the leaking faucet in the back yard and they fixed it. It feels like everything is neat and functional now. I still think the little peach may not survive, but I'm pulling for it. We'll see. I think the two days of heavy rain may have actually helped a little, but it's hard to tell at this point. The Bermuda in my back yard continues to spread and thrive and the St. Augustine continues to struggle and die. I really like how the yard looks right after I mow it though. You can't tell how much of the back is weeds! :D Plus Zoe can't eat the black seed heads on the weeds and come in and throw them up. Sadly, that's one of the primary reasons I keep my lawn mowed short.

Anyway, I'm gonna chill now. I know I still need to do a post about vacation, but it'll have to wait until I have more energy. Here's a picture of Addy chilling in my newly-mowed lawn.

Around the House

Hello there! I've missed a whole summer . . . blogging-wise. Maa. I get around to it, or I don't. This summer, that's been a definite "don't".

Since I've been home I've been puttering around and getting some house stuff done. I found another swampy spot in my lawn and called the plumbers out to deal with it. Of course this morning I notice that my outside faucet in back won't completely shut off. It drips slowly and constantly. So after Labor Day I'll have to call the plumbers back out.

I've almost got all my camping gear cleaned up and put away. I'll blog at another time about the trip (which was fantastic). This blog is about house puttering. So besides the leaking plumbing issues, I've also cleaned out my closet, putting many, many clothes items into bags to be given away. Despite the fact that I'm exercising regularly now and beginning to drop some weight, I just have to accept that there are some things I'll never get into again. I've also been doing some minor re-arranging and general cleaning out of things. And of course basic lazy reading.

One big thing I had done on Friday was tree work. Over the summer my peach tree went from lushly overgrown to dying. Remember the pictures from early June with Zoe hiding in the peach-laden branches? Well, one over-laden branch broke and I cut it down and removed it. The first picture in this blog is the tree missing that branch. Now check it against the next picture down with the dying branches turned all yellow-brown. Granted some of those dead branches are other ones that broke from the weight of the peaches, but many of them were not broken, just dying. So I called a tree-trimming-removal service to come out and work on it.

I also had the tree guys do a bunch of other work while they were here, namely cut back the neighbor's trees to the fence-line on both sides of my house. One neighbor tree, a big elm, has been hanging over and interfering with the growth and health of the peach tree. And on the other side a Mulberry in the neighbor's side of the fench, wrapped by a huge vine (base as big around as my leg) growing on my side of the fence were both rubbing on my roof. So the tree guys cut back the elm and the mulberry to the fence lines and removed the vine completely. They also trimmed and cleaned up the tree out by my mailbox so that the lowest limbs are up at 6 feet, rather than down at three feet, causing me to have to struggle under them to mow and causing the mail carrier to have to drive through them to reach the mailbox. The tree guys did an OUTSTANDING job. Not only does that front tree look wonderful, and the neighbor trees are back out of the way, they cleaned up and hauled off all the stuff they cut. PLUS, they fixed my broken fence gate and fixed my half-knocked-over mailbox! Really! I was so surprised and delighted. Sometimes companies really do give you that little extra "After Service" that just basically makes your day. This company was Hallmark Tree Solutions out of Kennedale, TX, and they were wonderful.

And of course, they cut all the dead limbs off the peach tree. The last picture is what's left of the little peach. It's hard to see against the elm behind it, but there is a top section left, which shows just slightly brighter green than the elm, and the limb that projects toward us. I'm not sure if it will survive. I've decided I'll wait until it goes dormant (if it lives that long), then call the tree guys back and have them cut it way back. Then I'll just wait and see if it comes back in the Spring. Poor little thing. I don't know what got it, but it's seriously struggling to live.

I've had kind of a bad year for keeping things alive it seems. I've also lost pretty much all the St. Augustine in my back yard to "chinch bugs". The Bermuda is making a comeback in big patches where the St. Augustine has died out, and the rest of the yard is weeds. Bermuda in general doesn't do as well in the heat, and it's been a hot summer, but the Bermuda is happily ignoring whatever is taking out the St. Augustine. The Bermuda may take over the whole lawn eventually, especially given that the few patches of St. Augustine that are left look pretty sickly. The areas have been treated for chinch bugs, but I'm told it may take a while for it to recover. In this picture you can also see the dead lawn where the grass has died. The bright green in the fence corner is a small struggling patch of St. Augustine. The blue-green area in the bottom left corner of the picture is Bermuda thriving happily against the dead area.

So that's mostly what I've been doing for the last week. I'd like to get all the house-related stuff done before I dive back into work, so I'm probably going to be trimming shrubbery around the front of the house for the next several days. That should keep me out of trouble . . . maybe.