Honey Do's

The last few days have been tiring to say the least.

Monday was actually not too bad, mostly running errands and spending money at True Value. We picked up a bunch of potting soil, a couple of hand tools for the garden, a hedge trimmer, some seeds (they got some more in stock), and I got to pick up what I think is my new favorite tool.

Meet Ol' Painless.

We also got some paint samples and started playing around with those in the bedrooms. I think we have settled on what colors we want, so now it's just waiting for all the logistics to come together to get it done.

By noon the wind had kicked up pretty bad. I don't know what the deal was, but the winds were worse than Santa Ana's, though not as bad as the Fontana winds. But, weather be damned, we needed to get the gardening beds groomed and ready for planting. So, we all chipped in and got them done in pretty short order.

All ready for planting.

A nice surprise was found in the beds: one of them has several bunches of green onions...

I think it's time for baked potatoes.

...and there's even a few asparagus shoots that have come up.

Too bad there's only like four.

Monday wrapped up with Stacey and I talking about getting a wire fence up around the north and west side of the property.

Tuesday was a different story altogether. It started by Stacey leaving for Cortez with RJ, and my taking doughnuts to the mechanics and marketing people at work. From the marketing people I got a snazzy new hat (you'll see pics at some point I'm sure). From the maintenance guys I A) found out that one of the mechanics had left way sooner than I thought they would be, and B) got the hook up on a fence post driver, which saved me sixty-five dollars at True Value.

The next stop was San Juan Building Supply to get fence posts. Apparently sixteen six-foot fence posts are about all that will easily fit into my Yaris, so that's the number I brought home. And the fun began.

First I demolished an old, dilapidated wooden fence on the corner of our property: a ten-foot section, six feet high, already falling apart. It took me and O'l Painless about five minutes to knock off all the pickets and stringers. The posts were half rotted in the ground and I just pulled them straight up and out of the ground.

Then I, again with the help of old painless, demolished part of what we have come to call "The Fort". Apparently the previous owners built their kids a fort out of what I think might have been material from what was previously a fence, not unlike the one I demolished.

Ol' Painless: Destroyer of fences and childhood fun.

Whatever it was/is made of, it was in the way of my fence line, and was no match for eight pounds of steel on a fiberglass handle. With the demolition complete, it was time to move on the real work; driving fence posts.

Once I get the line set and the lilacs trimmed it was on. sixteen posts, sunk two feet into the ground, every seven feet apart, each post taking about twenty hits. After three straight hours of setting posts I finally got a break. Stacey came home with RJ - RJ had to get some cancerous growths removed. It was found he also has a thyroid problem, which is why he had gained so much weight to begin with and why he actually has mange.

A post-op, mangy, sad RJ.

Seriously, I told everyone he had mange. No one believed me. There it is, in a doctors report, diagnosed and everything: mangy beast. Anyhoo, with Stacey home I had a vehicle that I could get the rest of the fence materials - eight more posts and a few rolls of welded wire fencing. With those procured, it was back to the task. By days end I had driven twenty-four fence posts, hung fifty feet of wire, and set fifty more feet in place to be secured in the morning.

The next morning, Wednesday, I woke up in pain. In a loooooooooot of pain. I think I'm going to rename the fence post driver to "the torturer". The good news is that the hard part was done. The bad news is that we still had wire to hang on the posts. This went easy enough, and with Stacey's help it was a fairly quick job.

After the fencing was done, Stacey decided that we needed to border the planters with some rocks that were laying around the property. Luckily by now I had been up and moving about and was a bit less sore. Also, we had the help of a trusty old friend for moving the rocks.

Vintage Radio Flyer, hauling everything from children to rocks for 30 years.

I gotta say, the planters look nice with the rocks. And we found a couple of surprises: one rick has some flakes of iron pyrite in it, and we found a couple pieces of sandstone the red and yellow streaks.

This morning I still woke up sore, but no where near as bad as the morning before. It was an easy morning too, starting with sanitizing my new wine bottles so I could rack my mead later. After that it was time to stain the rose arbor out front.

Keira wanted to help, of course.

Stacey told me she wanted a dark stain when we were at True Value a few days prior, so I got her the second darkest stain on the shelf, "Jacobean".

It's a little darker than we expected, but it's too late now.

While Stacey and K finished the arbor, I got to work on the roof. On Monday, the wind had managed to remove a few shingles from the roof. So I climbed on the roof with a few spare shingles, some roofing nails, and a hammer, and got to work replacing shingles before the rain in the forecast arrives. Luckily San Juan Bulding Supply had a bundle of asphalt, three-tab shingles that almost matched the color that we have. Oddly enough, they aren't a prefect match for size, because for some reason shingle manufacturers have decided to go to metric sizes, and we have standard. And here I thought the Stonecutters were keeping that sort of thing down.

After all the house chores and such, it was time for a hike. There's a loop trail about a ninety-second drive from the house that provides some nice views. So, I took out the camera and decided to try the panorama assist mode. I was able to get a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view from atop a lookout tower. Unfortunately the panorama pictures are too big to post on here. On the way back around I got a good shot of Abajo from the trail.

Abajo, still covered in snow.

When we got back home we finished our indoor starter pots for the garden.

They're mostly carrots, thanks to Stacey.

Then I racked my mead...

Real racking action!

...Into my new wine bottles.

All corked and everything.

Today finds me once again busy, as I have to do laundry, get packed for Hawaii, hit up the dinosaur museum after Cassie gets out of school, and drive to Phoenix. I'll spend the night there tonight, any my flight to Lihue via Honolulu departs at eight am. The next pictures I post on here should be of Hawaii.