The last couple of days have been devoted to this and that yard project, and it looks as though the next few are gonna be the same. L got out and chopped away a little more of the hackberry débris in the front, and yesterday E came over with two crape myrtle trees salvaged from a road construction project. The crape myrtles are about fifteen feet tall, and their root balls were so damaged by the backhoe crew that pulled them up, I’m not sure they’ll survive. However, we’ve dug holes for them at the foot of the front walk and we’ll give it a go at saving them.
E helped me carry the pieces of the new gutters home from Home Depot yesterday, and I’m going to spend several days’ time working on this project, I can already tell. Large parts of it will be two-person jobs, one to hold while the other sets hangers and anchors and such. The hoses are on the new rain barrel, and it only needs to be put under the place where the downspout will go.
The compost pen posts are all set and waiting for me to get out with a roll of wire and start stretching the fence and tying it to the posts. In the process of sinking the posts, I discovered the bamboo has sent out runners and I’ve got a dozen shoots in the yard that I have to grub up before they can get past the shoot stage. Ghods, how I hate bamboo! We’ll be years killing it out once we can afford to begin, and I want so badly to get rid of it and put in the pomegranate hedge we intend to go back there. Pomegranates are so much more sightly a hedge than bamboo, not to mention they’ll produce fruits, which L loves, once they mature.
Because of the other yard work, and because our tax refund came in to give a little cash, I went to Home Depot and bought bedding plants—Gerbera daisies, coreopsis, variegated marigolds, lavender, peppermint, and basil (lots of basil). T and I are gonna have a job cut out for us tomorrow, getting all of them in the ground before they dry out.
This morning while M and I were out on our walk, I found an estate sale in somebody’s back yard, and my eBay dealer imstincts took over. An hour later, I left with a silver-plate tea set, with dates between 1906 and 1908 on several of the pieces, and a box of fifteen old fishing lures, all for $210. I hope I haven’t got myself into a tight on the lures, because I’ve never tried selling them before. I took the word of the woman running the sale that lures move fairly well on eBay, and since she knocked WAY down on the price, I might come out all right. (She sold me the whole batch for half what they were marked to retail, because I was willing to take ’em all so she didn’t have to sit around and watch to see they didn’t get pilfered, and because I made dealer-ish noises that suggested I was on the level.) The tea service has the potential to be extremely nice, if the plate isn’t too badly worn. The set looks to be related pieces that were given as gifts to a family over several years’ time, because each piece has a different person’s name on it, but the (deep) engraving is obviously in the same style, and the pieces match too well. I have two teapots, a milk jug, two sugar bowls, mint dish, and slop jar. Now I have to get my ass in gear, research all this stuph, clean it as much as I’m going to, and list it on eBay to start getting my money back.
Things to do:
- Buy materials for the new gutters.
- Look over Linux certification texts at Bookstop.
- Sink the posts for the compost pen.
- Stretch the wire for the compost pen.
- Clean new Waring Stuph stock.
- Write copy for Waring Stuph items, so I can list them out.
- Get out the circular saw and claw hammer and chop up the ruined cabinetry for disposal. (partially done)
- Get out the chain saw again and chop up some more of the big hackberry in the front yard.
- Hang the window screen that’s been on sawhorses in the back yard for a year and a half.
- Build the pipe trellis to go in front of the southeast windows.
- Hang the new gutters.
Jay Gatsby fights Alexander Pope and contaminates the Eiffel Tower. Fnord.
