Pain, Pooped, and Plans

Shoulder surgery has been a part of both of our medical histories, so when Rick's achy shoulder turned into severe pain on Tuesday, we knew it was time to quit the overhead work for a couple of days.  Stopping soffit work was fine with me because frankly, I am pooped.  I hope that my tiredness is due to just trying to do too much rather than to being a symptom of my medical condition as I continue to reduce my Prednisone.

That is not to say that nothing has been accomplished.  Rick started today by getting back up on the tall ladder and painting the caulking around the HVAC cover.  Everything except the windowsill is now complete on the north wall.  Alleluia! Rick also got onto the roof yesterday and painted the electrical mast so that it will not rust.

After the painting, we tackled the stump I had exposed yesterday.  That part of the stump came out with about six cuts with the SawsAll, but, of course, that part of the stump lead to another...and another... and another.  We ended up removing two full bags of stump cut-offs, rotting wood, and wood chips along with the two huge stump pieces I have pictured below.

Thankfully, the stump pieces were rotten enough that we
could wrestle and pry them out of the yard.

We are glad that the stump is removed for three reasons: 1) Shell can now mow over the area without having to worry about ruining her riding lawn mower, 2) we will not have to worry about digging out the stumps in the fall when we are trying to put fence posts in that area, and 3) the raised part of the yard is now gone, leaving in its place room to put the dirt that we will remove when we dig the fence posts.

That is not to say that the yard is now level.  Far from that. But a bit of transit work and measuring today did give us an idea of the high and low spots on the yard and how we are going to plan our fence for next year.  Nobody plans better than my husband; however, in all of his years, he still can not accept when everything does not go according to his well-thought-out plans.

While we were removing stump pieces, Duke Energy workers were in the neighborhood removing trees from around the power lines.  They were in our neighbor's back yard for quite a while, and truthfully, I am glad that we have had most of the trees from our yard removed.  What a hack job they did while clearing branches from the trees!  We watched in horror as they then moved to the front yard and basically sliced the front half of a palm tree away from the wires in our across-the-street neighbor's yard.  If I were that homeowner, I would be outraged.  The lesson here: watch where you plant a tree, and plan for growth 20 years from now.

Strings and posts outline where we would like a new cement slab.

The other thing we did was to lay out the yard for an expanded cement slab.  The small slab that is outside the back doors is sloped in such a way that it ends in a huge mud patch when we get rain.  The path that leads from the back doors around the corner to our garbage and recycling cans also is a swamp on rainy days.  A large cement slab, properly sloped, that may someday hold a lanai is the answer if we can find money for it in the budget.

Anyone know how much a 14x20 cement slab will cost?

Rick called for a bid today, so we will get that question answered within a few days.

We also made a decision not to put in any kind of irrigation system.  The hassle and health risks of the reclaimed water system are just not worth it.  We would hate to spend almost $2000 to hook up to that system only to have it clog up within a couple of months of installation.  Even more so, I want to be able to go out into our backyard and enjoy it without worrying about whether the grass and watering will make me sick.  We just cannot do it.  As Rick said, "Two-thousand dollars will pay for a lot of city water, and with trickle irrigation, we really won't use that much."  We will buy trees and shrubs in November, and water them until we go North in May.  They should be established by then.

We took funds that we gained by selling our old sofa and ordered a hammock today.  We really enjoy the hammock that we have in Wisconsin, so we wanted to have one here also.  We hope to someday be finished with all of the remodeling work, and we look forward to being able to get outside (the temps were beautiful today), to read a good book, and maybe even to take a nap in our double-wide hammock. Ah, the good life!