A Lazy Sun Filled Sunday!!!

After mowing the grass Saturday I put fertilizer and pre-emergent down hoping to ward off the weeds as the Bermuda comes out of dormancy with its spring growth.  The problem is, that I don't really like the girls to lay or play on it until it's watered in really well, considering it IS a form of poison!  When the sun poked through on a January day they couldn't help but want to go sun-bathe on the grass!  So, I put out towels and blankets to serve as a "protective" barrier between them and the poisoned ground and as you can see, they didn't mind the pampered treatment!!!

Hard work...Yard work!

 I was over at Mom's house to help her dig out one of her Phoenix Robellini 3-headded palms so that we could attempt to re-plant it a bit deeper.  One of the three heads was starting to fall to the side and appeared to be dying because it was too far out of the dirt and wasn't being supported.  Knowing the plant was way to big and rooted for a simple shovel, Mom picked up a digging bar.  That thing was AMAZING!!!  It sliced through roots like butter and was strong enough to pry that ginormous plant up out of the ground (a shovel would have surely broke)!!!  It took hours of digging and prying but we got it!  We decided to slice off that 3rd head and pot it separately (hoping it would come back to healthy eventually) and just re-set the remaining 2 heads.  Ultimately the planting was successful, but unfortunately we ended up nursing a couple wounds from the ordeal.  Mom hurt her heal from hours of stomping on a shovel, and I bore a whole into my palm with the digging bar!

A Pink Extension Cord!!!

Ahhh the joys of yard work...it's a tough job but somebody has to do it--oh, wait that's me!!!  It's a bit hard to think back to all the random things that happen in everyday life especially when I'm trying to do so nearly 6 months after the fact but according to my bragging text message that I'd sent to mom this all went down at the end of May 2011 too--like I said, May is busy!!!  I was diligently doing yard work, trying to keep up with the "Jones'" (who all but one have professional gardeners).  I'd already finished mowing both yards and weed-eating around the edges when I decided to go for broke and trim up all the bushes too (at least in the front yard)!  I began by going all "Edward Scissor-hands" on my coast live oak tree out by the sidewalk because that darn thing grows in crazy directions and needed some serious shaping!  Sadly, I'm no arborist and have NO idea how to properly prune such a tree so I got out a ladder, plugged in my Black & Decker Hedge-Hog and started chopping!!!  I finished when I was adequately satisfied with the tree's new proportions and then made my way over to one of my Robellinies (Date Palms).  This is where the mishap occurred, you see the date palms are still pretty low to the ground and they'd gotten pretty bushy through the spring season so I had to either be squatted down or hunched over to prune out the under layers and when I was about 1/2 way done my saw blade snagged my extension cord and gardening was over!  Lucky I wasn't electrocuted but slightly perturbed that I had to stop in the middle and leave a bush partially pruned to go to Lowe's to buy a new cord.  Imagine my surprise when I saw this beauty on the store shelves--PINK!!!  Not only was it a fabulous color, it boasted a beefy 14 gauge, 13 AMPs with a lighted receptacle PLUS it was the perfect length for my yard 80 feet (50 is not quite enough and 100 gives me too much, leaving me with a tangled mess)!!!   I know these things are abnormal to get excited about but when the job always falls to me these things matter!!!  :-)

Yard work and sunburns...April 24th, 2011

The weather had been sunny and warm which leads to lots of outside time.  I was clearly wearing a sports bra under a strappy tank top for my all day marathon event of yard work and the aftermath was a very goofy shaped sunburn!!!  This sunburn took almost 2 weeks to fully snake up and peel off--so gross!!!  Part of the day involved pulling crabgrass for hours which gave me a nasty water blister on my index finger that I had to pop in order to get the water out!  Baylie on the other hand seemed quite satisfied with me being out in the back yard and able to play all day!!!  Sure wish I could teach the girls to eat the weeds then I wouldn't have as many to pull up!  :)

A Monkey Pruned Mom's Palms...No Wait, that's WAYNE!

Wayne was able to get his hands on some climbing gear and tree spikes and he spent the morning up in the tops of Mom's Palm trees.  He worked to cut out all the seed pods that make a horrible mess in the pool and a few weepy limbs too.  He made the climb look pretty easy but the tricky part was to get the pods to fall "gracefully".  Each of them were 4-5 feet in length and must've weighed somewhere between 20-50 pounds each so they dropped like torpedoes!  Luckily we were successful...no people or property were harmed and the trees looked great! 

Gave my yard a face-lift!

My yard this year has given me more trouble than any other, first with the crazy frog infestation on my porch and then a week or so ago when I was mowing my lawn I noticed that my bushes looked blah. The bottoms had dead leaves and then when I looked even closer I saw that they were encased in spiderwebs!!!! I put on gloves and plugged in my hedge trimmer and went all Edward Scissor Hands on my plants. In trimming them all to the bare minimum I was cutting off these disgusting cotton ball sized spider webs (some had big spiders crawl out & required spray glue to stop them in their tracks!) Then I loaded my sprayer with Sevin bug spray and doused my bushes in hopes everything would DIE (except the plants of-course). My next plan of attack was to call back my wonderful bug man (Bakersfield Pest Control) and beg them to come back and re-spray my house to try and get the spiders and ants that I missed. It has now been another week and I am happy to report that for the time being, the bugs have stopped moving, the frogs migrated to someone else's house and my plants are bouncing back!

Ginger was pooped after the long day of yard work...you'd think SHE did the labor!

Home Improvement Project...More Concrete!!!

Ever since I hired a company to pour sidewalk on the gated side of my house I've wanted to do the same on the other side of my house. My brother and I started planning out how to go about getting the side yard ready to pour and I decided I wanted to tie in the new concrete in with the existing patio...which meant taking out some grass and sprinklers. With Wayne working and living up north I with the help of my mom did most of the digging and initial prep work then I'd send pictures up to Wayne for "approval". On a couple occasions he was able to come into town to help fix issues I ran across, the first of which was a sprinkler highway and the next was getting my drainage trench to have enough fall. Finally we were down to the final touches and we got things all framed up on Friday the 25th, wrapped the house in protective plastic and did a bit of a dry run to be sure we were all on the same page so to speak. Then Golden Empire Concrete truck and Chucks pumping service were at my house by about 5:45am Saturday morning ready to pour! My brother and Rodney did most of the standing in cement initial work while the pumper guy handled the hose...mom and I were "on the ready" to hand off tools to the boys and then later we started floating it to knock down the rocks. My biggest job was edging...which was easy on the patio portion but it was quite a challenge as I moved down the side of the house because you only had space for you foot and I wasn't tall enough to reach the wall with my hands like the boys could so I got creative and used by leg! The weather was on our side that morning and the trucks were gone before 7am...we were done working it by around 9:30 or 10! I think it turned out really well, it was a fun project that I had a hand in creating and with a lot of sweat equity and some borrowed hands and equipment it was much cheaper this way! Thanks to all those who helped make it happen...I REALLY appreciate it!!!

Ginger vs. My House...Ginger wins AGAIN!

Ginger plays tug-of-war with my house and Ginger won!!! Mostly my fault...well, not really but I did enable the tugging ease. You see, the weekend prior Ginger ate through my hose (when I'd left it out back) and there was about a foot of hose still attached to the spigot that I never gave a second thought to (BIG mistake!). After a day of work I stopped at the supermarket and didn't arrive home till nearly 5:30 so I have no idea when the destruction actually happened. I walked into my house and noticed a strange noise...water running??? Sure enough...Ginger had used the foot of hose to play tug-of-war with the house and literally ripped the spigot off the wall!!! Water was shooting out of the exposed copper pipes and my backyard looked like a lake (which both girls seemed to enjoy)! Called Todd's Plumbing service and he was so nice to come strait over even though he was technically off work and heading home. I turned off my water main to stop the waterworks and Todd was able to fix my problem in about 30-40 minutes (and didn't even charge me extra for the after hours call---Thank you Todd's Plumbing!!) :)