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.