The arrival of summer has energized hubby, who recently decided that the garden needed some dramatic changes. Dramatic as in the removal of two monster bushes, both of which had been allowed to grow unchecked by the previous owners of our house. Monster No. 1 was a cypress “shrub” that had grown past our roofline and spread to nearly 18 feet. Monster No. 2 was identified as a “dwarf” mugo pine whose height should never have exceeded 5 feet. But, the overachieving mugo had emphatically rejected its dwarf status and proudly ballooned to twice that height.
I suggested we hire a tree service to remove both shrubs, since many of their primary branches were more than 10 inches in diameter. And I could only imagine how deep their root systems might be. However, hubby scoffed at my tree service idea. Why pay for something that we could do ourselves?
So, what a tree service could likely do in a few hours, we accomplished over five full days. And that doesn’t include the two days we had to wait for a new chainsaw chain to be delivered, as hubby had broken his trying to chop up the shrubs’ larger branches. Worst of all, the prickly mugo fought back. And even though hubby and I were wearing heavy garden gloves, both of us left the fight battle-scarred.
After days of hacking down branches and digging up massive roots, I was in pain. The heating pad became my new best friend. Each night, as I sat soaking in the heat and popping ibuprofen, I repeated hubby’s mantra, “We’re saving so much money. We’re saving so much money.” Hard as I tried, though, I couldn’t quite psych myself into actually believing that the sore muscles, back pain and scratched-up arms were worth the savings.
With the two monsters vanquished, hubby decided his next project would be to pressure wash the driveway. However, he had to wait until the neighbors across the street left for a weekend trip. Apparently, the across-the-street neighbor has a better pressure washer than we do, and hubby said he would be embarrassed to have the neighbor see him using an inferior pressure washer. Tool envy? It’s a guy thing, I guess.
All I know is that hubby decided that while he was doing the driveway he might as well pressure wash the two large concrete urns that flank our garage. Are the urns cleaner now? Um, I guess. Do the urns have any finish left on them? Nope, not a trace. I am now in the process of re-staining the planters to replace the finish that hubby blasted off.
When we aren’t working on the garden, I’ve volunteered to help design a new website for our homeowners’ association. I’m about 90% done, and the HOA board thinks the new site is brilliant. I appreciate their effusive praise, but take it with a grain of salt. The site I’m building is just a standard website template with some text and nice images of our neighborhood mixed in. But I have a feeling that most of the elderly board members think that anyone who can drag and drop photos into a pre-built template is a tech-savvy genius. And that’s okay. I’ll gratefully take whatever flattery I can get these days.
Speaking of tech, we gifted my 90-year-old dad with a record turntable for Father’s Day. It’s retro tech, but he’s been talking about getting a turntable and some records ever since we started visiting the half-price bookstore, which also has a decent selection of albums that pique Dad’s interest: big band, swing, classic musicals, Sinatra. (Dad does think Sinatra was a jerk, but he really likes his music.)
We’ve tried to introduce music through Mom and Dad’s TV and/or iPad, but they can’t ever seem to remember how to navigate to the music channels on the TV; and the iPad remains a complete mystery, regardless of how many times we explain how to use it. I think a vintage turntable might finally do the trick.
Happy summer everyone. |
