Gutter Guards

 With a large live oak and a neighbor's camphor tree adding shade to our back yard, we have a very livable environment; however, with those trees also comes falling leaves.

Each year when we return to Gladys, Rick has to climb a ladder to clean out the accumulated leaves in the gutters.  This year, after his heel surgery, the job of cleaning out the gutters was not a painless experience. To avoid such problems in the future, we decided to add screened gutter guards to the house.

Rick does a balancing act to screw the back
of the screen to the back of the gutter guard.

Rick positions the front of the guard
before attaching it to the gutter.

Once the gutter guards came, they had to be bent to fit our 6" gutter and then screwed into place.  While the bending was not a great problem, screwing the back side into the back of the gutters took a lot of twisting (since it was at a horrible angle) and a lot of strength.  

The screens should keep the debris
from clogging the downspouts and drains
on the gutter system.

In the end, although Rick was in pain due to his heel by the time we finished, we finished with gutters covered by screens. Hopefully, they will not clog in the future and nothing but water will enter the drain pipes during a storm.

This brush, when attached to a screw-on handle,
will allow us to brush debris off the gutters 
without having to climb any ladders.

As an added bonus, the company sent us a free brush to safely stand on the ground and brush off any accumulated leaves that might collect on the top of the screens. For now, we are waiting for a good, hard rain just to see if the system really works. If it does, we will order out more guards for the gutters at the front of the house also.  

Flowers for Gladys

Every woman needs some flowers now and then, and Gladys, although a house instead of a woman, needed some new ones also.

As we were outside trimming the other vegetation back to normal the last few days, I noticed that the hibiscus next to the backyard shed was looking poorly.  The branches were spindly, no new growth was visible, and the leaves left on the branches were all starting to yellow and fall off.  A closer inspection showed that the aphids were back.  The leaves and branches were covered with them, or with a white fungus that looked like small white bugs.  At any rate, it was time to let it go.  

I chopped down the branches and threw them into the brush pick-up bag. Then we dug out all the stones, separated them from the dirt and other debris, washed the stones, and put them out to dry.  Rick pulled out the rest of the plant by the roots, and we added that to the bag, too.  I took out the landscape fabric and threw that into the trash. Finally, we took a shovel and turned over all of the soil in the garden. Then it was time to shop.

We came to the conclusion that most of the plants that we have previously bought at the expensive nursery have died while the plants that we have purchased at Lowes or Home Depot are doing just fine, so we went to Lowes.

At Lowes, we were confronted with the choice of two different types of hibiscus -- the bush or the tree -- and four different colors.  We knew that we wanted the bush style, and we quickly learned that our choices were further limited by the condition of the plants.  The deep orange/red plant that I originally had in that spot was almost non-existent.  The one or two that they had left looked really beat up.  The peach colored one was not bright enough, the yellow one would not give me enough color contrast with the shed, so that left the pink one. Pink would not have been my first choice, but it has some interesting coloration and does add the splash of color that that part of the yard needs.

This Pink Lady hibiscus has a deep pink center
which changes to light pink and then darker pink
as the eye moves toward the outside of the petal.

New landscape fabric, cleaned stones, and
turned over soil gives this hibiscus a fresh start.

While we were shopping for plants, we looked at possibilities to replace the totally dead Ixoras in the front garden.  Our landscape people said that the summer drought was just too much for them, but truthfully, they did not look to great when we left in March, so I was not surprised that they were dead.

I thought of pentas, but I was not too sure if they would provide enough color to the area.  One group of plants that looked really good and colorful at Lowes drew both of us to their display.  And guess what?  They were two different types of Ixoras!  Rather than choosing the Maui Ixora variety that had died on us, we chose the Taiwan Red Ixora instead.  This variety has a deeper color than the Maui, and both the leaves and the petals on the flowers are pointed rather than rounded.  We will have to see how they survive. 

As the new Ixoras grow, we hope they will added a
needed splash of color along the back of this garden.

Taiwan Red Ixoras have small, pointed leaves
and pointed petals on their flowers.

While we were planting the new Ixoras in the front, a huge claw truck from the city came up and scooped up all of our lawn debris and cuttings and hauled them away.  Hooray!  Our yard is starting to look trimmed and better, and Gladys seems brighter with her gifts of new flowers.