Down and Dirty

As anyone who  has ever attempted even the simplest of remodeling tasks knows, a single task is an impossibility.  Thinking of repainting a wall?  Sure, but before we do that, we really should take out that old socket, and we really need new baseboard, and if we do that, then the next room will look drab, so... and the list goes on.

When we got up this morning, we considered buying some river rock to put around the front and the north sides of the house.  With the painting done, we are now left with either ditches next to the foundation where we painted below the ground level, or dirt put back which splatters up each time we have rain.  With the rainy season just starting, we know that our house will look terrible if we do not put some rock or sod next to the foundation.  Sod won't grow; we are too far into the hot season for any sod to take root unless we plan to water it each day for the next two months.  That, of course, will be impossible since we are leaving for Wisconsin in a couple of weeks. We really don't want sod anyway.  We have long planned on a row of edge stones to hold in the smaller river rock which we want to encircle the house.  That will provide a base for water to fall without splattering up any mud.

Once we got outside, however, the Evil Demon of Never-Ending Remodeling (EDNER) reared his ugly head.  EDNER reasoned: If we have the trench dug for the edge stones and river rock, shouldn't we go a few inches deeper and just bury the underground drainage system we want on the south side of the house?  And since there is a natural, always-flooding gully between our neighbor's house and ours, shouldn't we be responsible neighbors and take it out far enough so that when the water comes up, it will drain to the street rather than back into the gully?  And as long as we are bringing the water from the back of the house to the front, shouldn't we tie in the little front bedroom section downspout also, thus taking care of two downspouts and water problems at one time?  Damn!  I hate it when EDNER makes sense.

The result is that we now have a 50-foot trench dug.  We have gone to Lowe's twice since one Lowe's did not have enough 4" pipe, and we have at least one more trip to make since a couple of pieces put themselves together incorrectly.  (Oops!)

The trench from the back of the house.

The trench as viewed from the front yard.

The clock reads almost 2:30 p.m., and we are well beyond quitting time on such a hot day.  No rain is predicted all week, so the rest of this task will have to wait until tomorrow.  Will it get done?  Certainly.  Once we get the pipes glued together and buried, then phase two starts as we level the ground above the pipe, put in a little paver base under the edge stones, add a bit of the fill back over the pipe, lay landscape fabric above the fill,  and then pick up stone to cover the fabric and to give us the look we want around the foundation of the house.

We are just trying to keep Gladys clean while we are gone, but now Rick just came out the the shower and said that he just wants to finish the pipe and then fill it all in with dirt anyway.  I know that he is tired and discouraged.  Sometimes projects are better left thought about and not attempted.  That way EDNER does not have to get involved.

Internal and External Storms

The last time I posted, I wrote about Duke Energy's hired crews coming in to trim the trees around the power lines.  That has lead to major turmoil.

The crews came back the next day to hack away at our oak tree.  They did not bring in a bucket; instead, two men climbed the tree while a third remained on the ground to haul away the downed limbs and branches.  At first the men were very high in the tree.  The only problem we had with that was that they had no regard for where they dropped the branches that they cut.  At least a half dozen fairly large branches were dropped on the roof of the shed on the property behind our house.  OK, the shed is old and starting to rust, and the house has been vacant for two years; however, their disregard for that property resulted in several 6 - 8" dents in the metal roof of the shed.  If the shed roof did not leak before, I am sure that it will leak now.  Their disregard for property had us wondering about putting in a fence someday.

Our oak before the tree trimmers attacked it.

The oak after the trimming.  The workers were going to
cut some of the lower branches from the right-hand portion!

As the men descended the tree, one got to the branch that hangs over our back yard.  They had already cut away the branches near the line.  Then, with his power saw going, he started out onto the major limb that we paid $250 earlier this year for a professional tree service to trim.  The Duke Energy hired worker was about to cut down even more!  Rick stood under the branch (in the "Drop Zone") and told the man that there was no need to cut any of those branches.  Note that the branches were UNDER the wires and growing downward and away from the wires anyway. The man started to argue with Rick that they needed to trim more branches.  At that point, Rick totally lost it and told them all, "Get the hell off of my property, now!"

To make matters worse, when Rick tried to talk to one worker, the man said that he spoke no English.  Rick demanded to talk to a supervisor who did speak English.  When the supervisor came, the man who "spoke no English" spoke perfect English in explaining to the supervisor what the problem was.  That sent Rick over the edge.  Dishonesty drives him insane.  Just be honest.  If the worker did not want to deal with Rick's questions and rage, then he should have said, "I cannot answer your questions.  Let me get a supervisor."  We both hate it when people try to play the race card.  Just be honest.

The supervisor came and tried to explain what rules they had to follow.  Rick asked them all to leave our property, and since they were done with most of their hacking anyway, the did leave.  Rick put a call in to the city arborist to come back to our yard to look at what they had done.

Now totally upset, Rick was in a foul mood for two days.  He was ready to put the house on the market and to walk away from all of our hard work.  We have gotten to the point where we are almost done with the outside.  He has one more final coat of paint on the soffit behind the garage, and the overhead painting is then complete.  I have to wash the windows and screens and put them back up.  I also have to scrape and paint the windowsills on the Florida room east and north sides and the windowsill on the garage.  Then our painting of the house will be complete.

Meanwhile, another concern is the house kitty-corner from us in the back.  That house is in foreclosure, so the renters were asked to leave.  When they tried to buy the house, the bank (for whatever reason) refused to sell to them. The house now has been vandalized and is standing wide open.  We made a call to the Code Enforcement office, left a message, and actually received a call back.  We feel good about what the city is doing to monitor the vacant or foreclosed properties.  The man Rick talked to told us he is monitoring that house weekly, and that he is in the process of getting the bank to take action to repair the vandalism and to replace the doors to the house.  They also are aware of several propane tanks in the back yard and other problems with the house.

When Rick told him about the damaged shed in the house behind us, the man said that the shed is within the 5-foot easement at the back of the property and that it will probably be removed.  He also told us that utility companies and the city have the right to go into that area and do whatever they want.

That information did not give us a warm, fuzzy feeling.  If we put a fence there, they could ask us to move it if the city needed to come into that area.  We talked yesterday and today about moving the fence six feet forward into our yard to avoid possible problems in the future.  That would cause another problem, though.  We would still be responsible for adding a gate so we could go back there to trim the "no man's land" area between our moved-forward fence and the actual property line.  What a no-win situation! One solution causes another problem.

A second option that we discussed was just forgetting a fence along the back and putting in shrubs to give us privacy.  That is what the former owners of Gladys did; unfortunately, by the time that we took possession of the house, everything back there was totally overgrown.  I was shocked to discover, though, that Rick and I had totally different perceptions of what we should plant.

I wanted a soft-scape of various shrubs (some flowering) that would give us privacy while also providing different colors and textures to the whole back of our property. Shrubs like Bush Allamanda have beautiful yellow flowers all year long, and bougainvillea with its pink, white, red, or purple flowers can be trained to climb a well-placed trellis.  Bougainvillea also flower all year long. A Powderpuff shrub has pink or red flowers to add color to a yard, and Florida Privet, Small Anise, Dwarf Oleander, Bay-Cedar, or Cleyera offer various textures and hues of green as well as the potential for seasonal flowers. What I did not want was a uniform, all-green, structured hedge like we see across the street from us in Wisconsin.  They are a pain-in-the-rear to keep trimmed, and, in my opinion, are just plain booooring!

When we discussed shrubs today, Rick showed me a picture of a green, structured shrub and said that is the only thing he would consider.  Wow!  Talk about opposite opinions.  He did not want "something scraggly that is growing all over,"  and I did not want something that was hard to maintain and that reminded me of Wisconsin.  I want the gardens to be tropical, not northern.

Sigh.  OK.  So since neither of us was willing to compromise, we scratch the shrub idea.  I will plant some shrubs later for accents, but nothing as a hedge.  Soooo... that leads us back to the fence.  If we put it on the property line, we run a risk of it getting damaged or of us having to remove part of it (which would be virtually impossible if each post is anchored with 150 pounds of stone and cement).  Otherwise, we can move it six feet forward which would rob us of yard space, add an awkward view of the tree, add the cost of another gate, and make us go behind the fence to mow it. Dilemma. We put out string lines to see where such a fence would be placed.

One thing we did learn (thankfully now) was that we do not want to put a shed within the five-foot easement area on our property, since THAT the city may ask us to move.  We can change our plans to put the future shed elsewhere.

Today Art came back to look at our trees.  He said that everything Duke Energy cut down would grow back within three years, but he also was glad that Rick stepped under the tree when he did.  Art also told us to NOT move the fence forward.  He said that moving the fence would not necessarily protect it from danger or damage, and that the city has so many buckets and lifts and gadgets, that they probably would never ask us to take part of the fence down.  He said, without really saying so, that we would not encounter any problems from the city with the fence just within the property line.  He said we would not want to block the view of the tree, and that we would not want the hassle of going behind a moved-forward fence to mow.  If someone from the city assures me that the city will not ask us to move the fence, I can live with that opinion.  I hope that we can put the fence in as originally planned.

The hammock is great, but the pillow needs a cover!

Today greeted us with torrential thunderstorms, so we spent the day indoors.  While Rick investigated yard drains and other future projects, I took out my sewing machine and made four covers for our hammock pillows.  We are now ready to give it a test drive when the weather finally cooperates with us... which may not be until next Monday.

Fun, tropical fabrics add a bit of flair to the hammock
while protecting the pillows from the elements.

Our options on how to proceed are numerous, but the more we learn, the easier it is to decide the best courses of action.  We do not totally agree, but in the end, I hope that we make decisions that will allow us to relax and to enjoy what we have done to Gladys and to her yard.  So far we are happy with the inside.  Next year our attention and decisions will focus on the outside.

Duke's Devastation

I have not posted for a few days basically because we have been making slow but steady progress on the back soffits.

Last night we looked out the back door window and noticed that we forgot something. On each soffit, we have a metal vent down the center that runs parallel to the house.  This structure gives ventilation to the attic area. When Rick sanded the soffit on the north side of the Florida room, he dutifully sanded the inside track of wood closest to the house and the fascia board.  Yesterday he painted primer on the whole thing, never noticing that he did not sand the outside track of wood.  When we looked at the soffit last night, we both noticed the rough wood and the oversight. Oops!  Today started with Rick sanding out the rough spots and trying the prime coat of paint all over again.

While he was doing that, I started at the other end of the soffits, painting the first of the finish coats.  Rick patched the last soffit behind the garage, and then he came over and rolled the rest of the first coat of paint on the three soffit areas that we could successfully paint today.

The heat rolled in with the high 80s by 10:45 this morning, so we were finished by then.  However, that was not the only action in our back yard today.  At about 8:30 this morning, a young man in a reflective vest came into the back yard, identified himself as a worker contracted by Duke Energy, and asked if he could trim the trees away from the power lines.  We had watched a fellow worker of his butcher the trees in our neighbor's yard, but what choice did we have?

He climbed the tree in the yard behind our house, and we watched the devastation once again.  The worker cut branches off that were way above the power lines and would probably never fall on the lines unless we were in a hurricane.  He cut off branches that were so far below the lines that they would not have any chance of ever growing enough to reach the lines.  What he did NOT cut off was a totally dead limb in the middle of the tree that probably would break off in high winds.  The results of his cutting were branches all over our yard (thank God I did not have a bunch of new vegetation back there!) and a totally gutted tree.

Many branches lie on the ground while the dead limb
in the middle remains in the tree.  

He left for about 20 minutes and then came back with another man who asked if they could bring a bucket truck in to cut our live oak.  Again, what choice do we have?  Rick told him, "No trucks" but that he could bring in a small lift and bucket system.  They left again, came back with a grinder, and ground up all of the branches that the worker cut this morning.  Then they left again.

Our "shade" from the camphor tree litters our back yard.

They have not returned today.  Maybe they saw me taking pictures of their "handiwork" and will spare our oak.  If not, you had better believe that I will be in the back yard watching them tomorrow.  They have already cut more than they had to, thus robbing us of lots of shade in the back yard.  I will not have them totally mess up the live oak and deprive us of even more shade.

The worker saw me take this "before" picture of our live
oak.  We will have to see if he returns tomorrow and what
the results will be.  He really only needs to trim away a few
branches.  If he tries to cut more,  I will protest.

Of course, we are working so hard so that we will have a little time to spend in our latest purchase.  When we sold the old sofa, we promised ourselves that we would buy something fun that we would enjoy.  We settled on a hammock built for two.  It arrived today, and we are looking forward to a little hammock time with a good book on the Kindle.

OUr newest purchase awaits us.

Maybe this will help us relax.

We move closer to that point each day.  I know that Rick thinks he may get bored with nothing to do, but I think that once he remembers how to relax, he will be just fine.

Friday Finishes

Mission accomplished, but we are both dead... or at least wish we might be if that would put us out of our misery.

I had hopes this morning of scraping and washing the soffits on the north Florida room wall.  In actuality, I not only finished that soffit, but I also was able to scrape the east-facing wall behind the garage.  All of the scraping is finished!  Hooray!  So why didn't I wash the last soffit when I was finished removing the loose paint?  Because summer has arrived in Florida, and by the time that I finished with the scraping, the sun had moved to such a position that it was starting to bake the east wall. Having spent two summers working down here, we have learned that when the sun really starts to beat, we know it is time to quit for the day, or at least move to a more shady location.

Rick spackled the east wall of the guest room soffit and the east wall of the Florida room until he ran out of spackling.  A trip to Lowe's for more around the lunch hour was a nice break.

I was ready to quit for the day, but Rick had other (perhaps not-so-good) ideas.  After lunch, he started to dig the trench for re-routing the front downspout drainage underground.  He dug the trench to follow the slope of the yard toward the street with the trench ending 19 feet from the house.  The pictures show that we had to jog out at the downspout to avoid the footing/ slab on which Gladys is built, but the rest of the 4 inch piping is a straight shot away from the house.  We had to do this because in the future we want a sidewalk that will lead to the gate of the new fence. If we did not bury the downspout, we either would have to walk over the downspout extension on the sidewalk or in front of the gate.  This was our only alternative.

The pictures show the progress better than my words.

Rick studies the slope of the drainage pipe,
probably wondering, "Why in the world
did I start this project today?"

A slight jog in the pipe moves the pipe away
from Gladys' foundation.

Always use pictures to show locations of underground pipes.
This one shows that the drainage pipe is 26.5 - 29.5 inches
in from the driveway of our house.

The completed downspout beats having to jump
over downspout extensions.  We like the clean
look of the finished result, especially since this will
be in front of the new fence in the fall.

The green cap at the end of the pipe pops up
when the pipe fills with rain water and disburses
the rain toward the street. Once the grass grows back,
the whole system will seem to disappear.

After it was all glued together and buried, Rick ran the hose down the gutters to make sure that the pop-up valve would allow the water to clearly run toward the curb.  Wow!  A 19-foot long, 4-inch pipe takes a long time to fill with water.  We finally got it to open, so we know that the whole system works.

The bad thing about starting a task after the lunch hour is that the work continued until almost 4:00 p.m. which is the warmest part of the day.  We are both exhausted, but we are glad that the job is finished.

We had one other question answered today.  The concrete contractor that Rick called yesterday stopped by this afternoon and gave us a bid for pouring a slab for a future lanai.  He knew what he was talking about and had some good suggestions.  Because of the slope of the land in our backyard, we will need to pitch the whole slab to the north, and to be safe we will have to add a 2-inch drain in front of the laundry room door.  That way, we will never have to worry about that doorway flooding, and we will have an in-lanai drain if we want to wash down the floor.  The bid came in at $2400, so now we know how much we have to add to the budget if we want the slab poured in the fall.

The contractor also told us that he could not pour a cement slab on the north side of the house.  Our city has a law that concrete cannot be poured within five feet of the property line,  so we cannot have concrete in that area.  We just do not have the room for it.  Our solution?  For now, we will just put down a couple of large patio blocks to go under the garbage cans, and we will worry about what to do with that area after we have the slab and the fence in place.

One step at a time.  We accomplished what we wanted to finish today, and Rick even did much more than I had planned.  We both are very tired, and we both are very sore.  Tomorrow is Saturday.  Perhaps I can talk Rick into going to the Farmer's Market before we get back to the ladders and the overhead work. We did not finish all of the soffits by our original Friday deadline, but that is OK.  Tomorrow is another day.

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!

Confusion

The more we know, the more confused we get.  I'll explain that statement in a moment.

What we DO know for sure is that we are painting Gladys in the right way.  We have had three different professional painting centers tell us to remove the old paint, patch, seal, and finish with two coats of paint, and that is what we have tried to do with every inch of this house outside.  To that end, we got up this morning and added the second finish coat to the rest of the house.  The wall painting, except for a little touch-up work, is now complete. (Sigh of relief.)  Naturally, that means that we have the dreaded soffits and fascia left.

The completed paint job blends exterior cables into
the paint.  We need to replace the downspouts, and then
only the soffits and fascias await our attention.

After rolling the final coat on the walls, Rick climbed the tall ladder once more to put on the first coat of finish paint on the south side soffits.  Once he gets the second coat on tomorrow, we are almost done using the tall ladder.  He still needs to caulk around the HVAC unit vent, but then we can hang the tall ladder away for a while.  Hooray!  Rick does not like being on it, and I do not like him on it.

This wall looks so much better now that one unified color
hides evidence of where holes were patched and telephone
boxes and cables were removed.

Oops. I forgot that he needs the tall ladder to access the roof of the house, too.  We need to paint the electrical mast so that it does not rust out.  The neighbors have even painted the soil stack pipes to prevent them from rusting.  Ah, Florida's moist air is so wonderful!

While Rick was up painting the soffits, I started to excavate a tree root that was causing grief to our landscape service.  We talked to Shell yesterday, and she mentioned that she always has to mow around one specific protruding root.  We know that the root in question is from the dead holly tree that we removed a couple of years ago.  The tree service did a crapola job of actually grinding down the stump.  They did not even properly remove all of the resulting ground mulch from that area, so we now have a mound of mulch, dirt, and weeds that make the yard even more uneven than usual.

This chunk of root is just a forecast of the work that awaits
us when we start to dig holes for the fence.  The yard is
criss-crossed with roots from old and still living trees.

Once I got into the rotting roots, I ended up filling one whole 30 gallon bag with just chunks of root, root fibers, rotting wood, and bark.  I started on a second bag, and then hit the main root that we have to remove.  I dug around that root but finally gave up.  It is firmly connected to other roots and probably goes down much further than I care to dig.  I am hoping that Rick can make short work of it with a persuasive SawsAll application tomorrow.

After lunch, we set out to see how much trees might cost us in the fall.  We went to a nearby nursery.  Their stock looked very good and healthy, and we got some ideas of what kinds of trees we might plant.  Although Art suggested an elm, we know that the tree is deciduous, so it will not have leaves for most of the time that we would be down here in the winter.  That is the same reason we do not want to plant a crepe myrtle.  The trees are beautiful when they leaf and bloom from April through November, but that means we would only see that beauty for a few short months. The woman at the nursery gave us some other suggestions, so we have a lot of planning and decisions to make before we take our old trees down and try to replace them in the fall.

Then the discussion turned to irrigation systems, and that is where the confusion starts.  No nursery in the area will guarantee their plants, trees, or work unless a homeowner has an irrigation system.  One nursery worker that we talked to was totally opposed the reclaimed water.  He said that we would get the water from the Pinellas County site (which we do not believe is true), and that the water clogs up the heads and homeowner's irrigation systems all of the time.  He also said that he did not trust the quality of the reclaimed water.

Rick had already talked to the plant manager at the city's reclaimed water plant, and the manager said that they treat the local water at that local site.  The payment system for the city's reclaimed water is different than the payments for reclaimed county water, so we believe that the two systems are not from the same source. The city plant manager was fairly confident that their system delivers fairly clean water, and that using reclaimed water offered very few, if any, health risks if a person used it in a sensible manner.

The man at the nursery said he used regular city water, to the tune of almost $90 a month, to keep his $20,000 gardens at his home irrigated.  He was very negative about reclaimed water, saying that it was sewage water (true) and that it posed health risks. The woman working at the nursery was sort of middle-of-the-road in her opinion. She said that some systems clog up, but that the health risks probably were not all that dramatic.  She suggested that we have a professional put in a city water system, and that way they could come out to the house and check the filters every four to six weeks.  Yeah, right.  I'll just contact a service and write a check from my bottomless bank account.  Oh, wait. Slight problem here.  I do not have a bottomless bank account. Darn!

Thus our confusion.  Is reclaimed water safe if we take normal precautions?  Is putting in reclaimed water practical, or will it just clog up every month?  Is using reclaimed water better since we can water three times a week while with city water we can only water once a week?  Who could we get to check the filters monthly while we are gone?  Would we ever consider using a city water system?  If so, would we be comfortable leaving the water on while we are gone? How much would it cost to get it installed, and what monthly service charges would we have to cover?

Is saying "to hell with it all" and just buying the trees and shrubs in November and watering the daylights out of them until May our best bet?  Steve and Chris do not have an irrigation system, and most of their vegetation and trees survive quite nicely.  I agree with Chris that what survives deserves to be in my yard, and what does not survive should not be a part of my landscape.

Rick is overwhelmed, so he is crabby about it all.  He says we will not plant anything, and then we will not have to worry about spending money on something that will die.  Grump, grump, grump.

We have some decisions to make.  I am not sure that spending money on any type of irrigation is a good thing.  I would rather buy another good hose (so we have one for the front yard and one for the back yard) and a couple of sprinklers, and just buy trees in November and water them until May.  That is what Art suggested before he saw that we could hook up to reclaimed water.  He is all for reclaimed water because then we could set it up for year-round watering without having to keep municipal water active while we are gone, but he did say that trees probably would do just fine if we bought them in November and watered them according to schedule until we left in May.

At that point, Florida is getting into the rainy season, and I guess I would just trust God to take over at that point.  After all, if you cannot trust God, who can you trust?

Winding Down

Even though we have owned Gladys for three years this coming June, she still is revealing secrets about her past.  When Rick removed shovel-deep dirt from in front of the east wall of the Florida room, he unearthed hundreds of small, woody roots.  The roots undoubtedly are the remnants of a row of hedges or shrubs that used to border the windows.  Although the area was bare when we bought the house, at one time the owners had spent both time and money to landscape at least that part of the back yard.

The tinted sealer coat is Step 1 on finishing the back walls.

We had to remove the dirt, of course, so we could seal the plaster in preparation for new paint.  We finished the sealer coat yesterday, so today's initial task was to get the first finish coat of paint on the walls.  We both had reasoned that the walls would be easy to paint and would cover quickly because they were filled with windows and doors.  Silly us!  All of those windows and doors meant a lot of cutting in with paint before rolling the major areas, so painting these walls was both putzy and slow-going.  We started fairly early this morning and did not finish until 11:30.  Thankfully, the day is overcast and cool, so we had perfect painting weather.  The forecast calls for no rain all week long, so we hope to make real progress on the walls and the soffits.  Maybe by Friday we can have the whole house painted.

Rick fills the paint roller as he finishes the corner where
yesterday we removed the conduit with the electrical wire.

The finished first coat of paint gives the back of the house
a uniform, clean look.

Rick continues to investigate installing a reclaimed water system.  We learned today that even though our county has the cleanest reclaimed water in the state, the county officials still have listed on their website a warning that residents with compromised immune systems like me should not be outdoors when reclaimed water systems are running due to possible bacteria or viruses that may be present in the water. Oh, good.  Now if we use water to keep our trees, plants, and grass alive, it may make me sick.  Some days I cannot win for trying...

Rick actually went to the city today and asked the water department about the warning.  They told him, in effect, that the county probably was trying to cover themselves against a possible lawsuit, and that they had never heard of anyone getting sick from using reclaimed water for irrigation purposes.  The man Rick talked to said he certainly would not use the water to drink, to bathe in, or to swim in, but that once the water was on the ground, it should be safe.  His advice: ask your doctor.  Since I have to see my rheumatologist in a couple of weeks, I certainly will get his opinion on the matter; however, I would not be a bit surprised if he told me to ask the water department if the water is safe.

Rick is out right now buying yet another gallon of paint.  The house has taken more than we had anticipated (Gladys is thirsty), but hopefully this will be the last gallon of Honeysuckle that we have to buy.

Our repairs and purchases this year have pushed the budget to its limit, so I am glad that we are nearly finished for this winter season.  We still have money reserved for putting in pavers and for the fence next year, but the budget will totally be depleted after that.  Anything after that point will just have to wait until we can save enough to move forward.  Are we sorry that we have spent so much to make Gladys a clean, secure, livable home?  No.  However,  I think that we are both glad that we are getting near the end of the major projects to make her complete. At our ages, our energy is dwindling nearly as quickly as the budget!

Patches and Plans

Happy Easter to you all!  We both hope that you are able to enjoy the day with family and friends, and that signs of Spring are with you no matter where you live.

One of the things that bother us here in Florida is that church services are late.  While we can go to a 5:30 p.m. Saturday service, the Sunday service does not start until 10:00.  We are used to 7:45 a.m. services in Wisconsin, so 10:00 a.m. feels almost like mid-day.  However, since today is Easter, church held a "sunrise" service at 7:00 a.m.  We figured our little church would be packed since a pancake/ sausage/ fresh fruit/ eggs/ etc. breakfast followed at 8:15.  Boy, were we wrong!  We probably only had 25 people in total at the service; the place was practically empty.  I guess the reason church holds later services is because the older folks down here do not want to get up early.  I'll bet more show for the breakfast and then go to the services afterward today.  That somewhat surprises me. If I were having family over to celebrate, I would want to go early and have time to prepare for guests; however, like us, many people have children and grandchildren elsewhere, so I guess they have no one to rush home for. We also know that many of the people in the congregation are Snowbirds like us, so they have already departed for homes in the north.  We are glad to be home in Gladys now so we can Facetime with our children and grandchild when they roll out of bed (Central Time) and call.

We did not accomplish a great deal yesterday, but that is OK.  We still are on track to finish the house before we go home in a few weeks, and that is all that matters.  When we bought the house, we noticed a 20 amp outlet in the wall next to the Florida room door.  The electricity to the outlet was run through conduit on the outside of the house.  We still do not know if the outlet was added later to run medical equipment or if it was used for something like an aquarium.  The placement of the outlet seems odd; the location is not centralized, and the dedicated line seems to be in an awkward position.

Rick works at removing the conduit from the
wall outside the Florida Room

At any rate, when we updated the electricity almost three years ago, the electrician cut the line and left it dead.  The conduit outside was an eyesore, and the awkwardly placed outlet inside was not attractive nor necessary either.

This corner, which someday may be inside
a lanai, will look much cleaner once the patches
are painted and blend in with the rest of the wall.

Yesterday, Rick took care of that problem by removing the conduit and wire on the outside, by plugging the hole in the soffit where the wire fed into the house, and by patching the hold left in the wall on the inside when he removed the outlet box.  A second coat of spackling on the wall today should fully erase yet another scar that we removed from Gladys' exterior and interior.  Like the long-gone and forgotten air conditioner that used to hang through the dining room wall, this outlet, too, will just be another little secret that Gladys will hide under a good coat of plaster and paint.

A second coat of spackling, when dry, will soon hide
any evidence that an outlet used to be in the wall.

Rick continues to investigate how to add a sprinkler system next year so we can hook up to the reclaimed water in the neighborhood.   The more we learn, the more reasonable the whole proposition sounds.  We have to make provisions now, though, so that any pipes we want to put into the yard are accounted for before we do any pavers or cement work.  That means preliminary plans for the landscape also.

While I am not about to commit to a total landscape plan in the backyard, we can somewhat commit to an additional tree centered between the two oaks that shade our backyard, and two or three replacement trees in the front yard.  We probably are going to remove the large palm tree that is planted too near to the house.  I would like to plant new palms in the front yard along with a Florida elm to replace the dying bottle brush tree.  Additionally, I have started to plan the front flower gardens.

Replacing our mailbox next year is a priority.  The post that holds it is almost eaten through with termite damage and damage from our lawn service.  Mike, the man who trims, edges, and power-blows the clippings, is a bit overzealous with his string trimmer.  He has almost cut through the bottom of the mailbox pole!  I would like to put in a new pole and then make a small flower garden around it just to keep the trimmer away from the new mailbox structure.

Colored-pencil sketches outline preliminary plans
for flowers and shrubs for next year.

To that end, I have started to plan the rest of the front gardens.  Planning landscape here in Florida is fun because I have a whole new set of plants with which to play.  Rick laughs at me because I always try to sketch out what a garden may look like.  I want to keep the look tropical, so I plan to use red or pink hibiscus, blue plumbago, orange/green/yellow/red leaf crotons, yellow and green-striped ginger, various grasses, green and yellow ?? (I see the bushes all over, but I don't know what they are called!), green Fortune's Mahonia (which look like little palm trees), yellow bush allamanda, red pentas, and red Ti plants.

My "blueprint" for front gardens will help me when I actually
go to a nursery to start selecting plants.

Of course, once I get to the nursery or better define my gardens, some of my plans will undoubtedly change.  For right now, though, dreaming and planning costs nothing.

We are to the point where we are starting to wind down on what we want to accomplish yet before we travel north.  I am content to finish the painting and soffits.  That way, we will leave Gladys looking bright and new, and she will be a welcome sight when we return in the fall.