Power Washing Florida

 The little known fact about living the "glamorous life" in Florida is that many times, it is not all THAT glamorous.  For example, in addition to keeping doors shut so that lizards and fruit rats do not creep into our house, we also contend with numerous techniques to keep the termites and cockroaches at bay.

And the most glamorous thing of all is that black mold grows on every concrete surface -- be that patio blocks, sidewalks, paver edging, or driveways.  Any where that does not get a high volume of traffic (such as in the middle of the road) eventually will grow mold.

The old pavers needed lots of washing to look new again.

Yesterday Rick replaced the carburetor in our power washer so that he could power wash the pavers we put behind two of the storage sheds in the back yard.  We want to paint the pavers the same color as the new concrete that we installed, but paint does not stick well to mold growing on pavers.  So his first job was to power wash the mold off the pavers in preparation for painting tomorrow.  We checked the pavers today, but they were still damp, so we will give them another day to dry before Rick adds paint.  The paint will protect the surfaces from future mold.

In the meantime, another glamorous job of the spring is raking leaves from the live oak tree.  The leaves of a live oak are small, oval-shaped, and have a waxy consistency.  They are hard to get out of the grass, and we seem to have an overabundance of them this year.  

I call this time of the year "Sprall" since it is both spring and fall.  The new spring buds on the trees force the old leaves of last year to fall off.  What a mess!  We bagged five 30-lb. bags of leaves last weekend, and we added another two 30-lb. bags of leaves today.  We only raked about a third of the yard, so if we wanted to add more, we certainly could do so.

Rick hits the dirt at the edge of the driveway
as he power washes off the mold. (That line
of darker pavement in front of him is not a shadow.
The black color is mold.)

After lunch today, Rick went back outside to power wash the mold off the driveway.  The picture shows him hard at work at that task, and the splattered mud shows he got a little to close to the grass along the edge of the driveway.  I will say, though, that power washing is a great way to blast out any weeds that are trying to grow in the joints between sections of the drive.

Temperatures are climbing toward today's high of 82, so I do not expect that he will be in the sun working too much longer.  Whatever he does not finish today certainly will wait for our attention tomorrow.