Yard Work April 2014

This is a great time of year to catch up on a few projects around the house. The weather is good and the ground still soft until the summer sun starts drying it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSPzWCs1HRg&feature=youtu.be

As I had mentioned in an earlier blog, our front porch slopes toward the house rather than away from it. So today the guys are tearing it out for a re-pour of the porch.
Donna, who has been laid up lately in Spokane, is missing a historic event, us making the first major change to the house. After seeing the video she was good with it. :-)



The guys did a great job of breaking it up...considering



Considering, the f'ing concrete was up to 9 inches thick, thick enough for a 4 lane highway, and the re-bar was laying on the ground underneath the concrete which further leaves me with nothing but more contempt for the former owners. The builder spent tons of money on the house and upgrades but the folks he sold it to used every cheap trick in the book to degrade any upgrade. My propane guy told me they sold the original propane heating stove...$4500 according to him...on craigslist for $250 so they could put in a wood-stove and cut their own wood. He was sick about it because he was about two hours late in buying the original stove. Why do I say cheap? See that drain in the concrete...it was a fake, like two others with no drain system attached.



Ok, "calm down Tom"... my wife would say. The guys had to fill in quite a bit of the washed out soil under our aircraft runway cement with some of the crushed concrete. This will be great when it is finished...the right way! I'd do it myself but a man's got to know his limitations!





Just another example of the dim wits before us is this drain line for the rain gutters. The top was visible on the surface of the side driveway because someone was too lazy to actually set it below grade.



After cutting the line and moving it, I dug it down at least two inches below the top of the driveway. As you can see from my very "straight" trench, this is one of the reasons I don't play well with construction.



Not really knowing much about construction I did think it might be a good idea to have some drain rocks to help percolate the water into the soil. It's not actually rock but concrete the former folks decided to camouflage with mulch hiding on top near the side of the property.



Ok...just one more grip about the JO's of whom we bought the property from. The black line laying on the surface you are looking at is actually a water line going out to one of the water spigots for the yard. Totally their style!
It will be fixed in the coming week.




While Donna is recovering I tease her with relaxing photos of the back patio. My distorted sense of reason is, this will push her to recover and join me. Last fall Donna and I set about 100 tulip bulbs in the flower bed near my feet and they are just starting to come up. There is a little wire fence (three feet tall) just to keep the dogs from wondering off and I really have no intention of blocking our view with a deer fence to save the bulbs.

TADA!

My son told me about these motion detectors that shoot out a stream of water when prompted. Denny has one brand and I went with a slightly more expensive one that has a few more "bells and whistles".
Below is my evaluation of the "Orbit Yard Enforcer"...I've had trouble attaching videos to the blog lately so a youtube video is the only way to present it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmmwanHp00A

Disclaimer: no animals were harmed or killed in the making of this video.

I turned off the "Yard Enforcer" so they could come back and eat the apples but I'd say our tulips might be safe this year!