It’s been a couple of years since I rented the skid steer and cut out the hill between Kent’s place and mine and paved in a parking spot for the RV. I had aspirations to finish paving the alley on the west side of the house and then onto the backyard. With the time off, I finally pulled out the tiller and set out to get the alley done.

But the tiller wouldn’t start, and I’m super excited to say I finally have figured out how the small engine carburetor works and managed to fix the tiller. In this case, the input from the bowl was clogged. I had to use the wire from a cat 5 cable to clean it and voila, it worked.

So tomorrow I should be able to make good progress but here are some pictures of the work today.

I never did get the hang of Sundays but it always helps to get some yardwork done. So I got it applied to both the front and back yard. Another thing that happened today is that we broke a record high for temperature. We hit 82 and the previous high was 80. And some people say there’s no global warming.

We got the twigs bound and cut up anything larger and put it on a patio tile base in the corner of the yard to dry out so we should have some firewood by fall.

More importantly than finishing up the clean-up, we got fertilizer applied and this will stand as a record of when it was first done this year. I also used up a bag of grass seed that was sitting in the barn so we’ll see if that does anything. I’ll still need to put down the pre-emergent for the grass burr but I’ll get that done later this month.

So Sandy is more comfortable getting physically fit when she’s in a class setting or working with a trainer. Which is quite the opposite to what I do which is exercise on my schedule. To that end we started the ‘Energize’ class this morning. We’re the youngest and I’m the only guy. My only iffy moment was when someone said they’ll let us know how to vote, LOL lord help me keep my mouth shut. It’s all good but given that I have some serious yard work that needs to be done, I wasn’t sure about starting my day exercising. I was right as Sandy is so exhausted she went to bed at 7:30pm.

We got some more cleanup done and then measured, flagged and planted all the plants. According to the documentation on the site, it said to plant every 4 feet for a wall and 6 for side by side trees. We did 4 foot on the back (north) fence line and 6 on the east fence line. That house is a rental so who knows who will be there next time.

Toby Kieth died yesterday and news broke of his passing today. I forgot that his music was around since the 90s and were around for a lot of good times. Stomach cancer was the cause. Sad.

Here on some pictures from the day, oh yeah, it was taco Tuesday too:)

I hate cutting trees, only because I they take so long to grow and I really like trees. But as discussed yesterday, it’s time for a change. So we spent the day taking out the old and getting ready for the new. I thought that 16 trees would be way too many but now I wish I had another 16…

Lots of years ago we tried to put fruit trees on the north fence line in the backyard. Every year we had high hopes as they grew and got green and even some initial fruit. But always a disappointment. So we decided that a green wall back there is the way to go and bought 16 1′ emerald green arborvitae from Fast Growing Trees. We’ll see how they grow this year and if they establish properly we’ll do the east fence line and part of the west side.

Sandy took off for WinStar and left me to my own devices. LOL, that just means that I don’t have to be quite when I wake up at 3am and start on the computer. I did get some yard work done. I kind of got happy that I got the leaves picked up and remembered that the live oak that’s in the front yard doesn’t shed it’s leaves for another month.

Speaking of which, I ordered sixteen Emerald Green Arborvitae for the back fence line. I’m getting rid of the two peach and pear tree because after years, I’ve given up on ever getting any fruit and would prefer something evergreen. I’ve order the fertilizer too and will put in the root watering system to spur growth. I’ll try to remember to document the whole thing.

I really felt like doing nothing today when it started but I talked myself into doing some tree cutting. I should have taken before pictures but I don’t know that you’d be able to tell. The hard part about doing tree cutting is that in order for the trimmings to be picked up, you have to bundle them which is actually more work than cutting the limbs in the first place. Oh well, at this time I’m not making enough to pay anyone to do it so I spent 3 or so hours cutting and bundling limbs.

I then finally got around to organizing my sockets. I know, sounds silly but I haven’t done that in a while and I stand to save literally hours if I can lay my hands on the right tool without having to spend 15 minutes looking for every little damn thing. I swear half of any project is wondering around saying ‘I know I had it here somewhere, I remember seeing it’. Well at least I managed to get something accomplished today and there’s more to do tomorrow.

Almost 10 years since the dishwasher was installed and it starts throwing errors. Honestly if everything were so dependable the world would be a better place. It simply need taken apart and cleaned, had some funky gunk that looked like label pieces from jars and such. Pretty gross but I got it all cleaned up and it seems to be working well. As the old saying goes, if the women can’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.

I’ve owned my house for 12 years now, it was just this year that I’ve procured keys to get in my front door. So the garage door is the main egress point of the house. We finally got around to putting in a Genie Access retrofit that allows an app on the phone to tell us if the doors are open or closed and be able to open them remotely. Also allows us to have friends/family to download the app and give them access to it. So we can give friends a garage door opener on the app. Cool!