Problems Dissolve Before Wave of Solutions

I’ve had another exciting two days.

The house I live in is wonderful, and the previous owners did a great job taking care of it. Unfortunately, they made a lot of bad landscaping choices. One example was the choice to leave a large oak tree standing 10 feet in front of the house. At some point, they cut it, and they didn’t have the stump ground. When I arrived here, I had a two-foot-wide stump taking up valuable landscaping space, and it had octopus-like roots extending in several directions.

I have fiddled with the stump for quite a while. I put drilled holes in it and filled them with saltpeter. That softened the wood so it was like a very tough cork. It didn’t get rid of the stump, however. Saltpeter is supposed to cause stumps to rot very quickly. Barring that, it’s supposed to make them very flammable, so you can apply kerosene, set them alight, and watch while they burn down into the ground. I didn’t get those results.

The saltpeter didn’t do everything it should have, but it made the stump vulnerable to conventional attack, so yesterday and the day before, I took a sawzall to it. I had come to understand that a lithium sawzall was a phenomenal landscaping tool. I cut a bunch of roots, and then yesterday, I got out a 4-foot prybar and a maul, and I went to town on the stump.

I would estimate that I worked an hour, spread out over two days. I tore out what must have been 150 pounds of oak, in big chunks. It was fantastic. Cutting and removing the roots gave me access to the stump itself, and it surrendered in a short time.

The stump is now gone. I loaded it in my cart and dumped the bits in the woods. Now I have an area where I can plant another peach tree. I don’t know if my first peach tree needs a pollination partner, but I would like to have two varieties, in case I don’t like the one I already have.

I also fixed the ground under the eave of my workshop. For some inexplicable reason, there is no gutter on the roof, so rainwater runs straight off the roof and down onto the lawn, digging a trench in the ground and splashing dirt onto the workshop porch. I learned about the virtues of melaleuca mulch this week, and I picked up 18 bags. I used several of them to fill in the trench the rain dug. Now when the rain pours off the roof, it will land on a bed of what is supposed to be the most stubborn plant-based mulch on earth. Melaleuca mulch binds together after you put it in place, and it’s also heavy, so it won’t float or wash away.

I may put some sort of plants in the mulch. Not sure yet. I put raspberry plants there in 2017, and the rain obliterated them. Weeds seem to grow really well there, though.

I have another area where the old pine mulch was nearly gone, so I blasted it with glyphosate, hacked out a flowering bush I never liked, and dumped a thick blanket of melaleuca mulch on it. It looks much–or mulch–better now. I also installed a hummingbird feeder hanging from a brand-new shepherd’s hook.

I finished trimming my hedges today. Oops…that’s not true. I finished one more side of the house. But it’s a big percentage of the total hedge burden. I can’t say the hedges look neat now, but at least they look like someone tried to put them in order. That’s a gigantic improvement.

I vacuumed and brushed the pool and got some liquid chlorine. Tomorrow I’ll backwash it and shock it. The pool is still recovering from my recent gutter-cleaning adventure. Lots of roof grit and leaf compost dust went into the water. I was starting to get a little algae, so today I nipped that problem in the bud.

I trimmed a couple of trees today. I have a tree with hanging branches, like a willow, and they interfere when I try to mow. I used to put up with it, figuring I wasn’t supposed to cut the limbs. I assumed the droopy effect was one of the tree’s features. Today I thought about it, and I remembered that I own the house now. I don’t care how the person who planted the tree feels. I can do what I want. I hacked out the limbs that were in my way. Now the tree looks much better. I have another tree with limbs that touched the pool enclosure. It occurred to me that a mouse could climb the tree and walk out onto the enclosure, providing him with roof access. I don’t need that headache, so I cut the tree back just to be sure.

My blackberry and grape plants live in an area bordered by a ludicrous ornamental rail fence, and the fence is not sturdy. The rails have a tendency to pop out and fall. Today I took a long 1/4″ drill bit and drilled holes through the posts and rails, and then I used an impact driver to run long hex screws through them to hold them together. I intend to keep running screws until the rails quit flopping. It’s a great solution. It’s unobtrusive, and the whole job of installing a screw takes 30 seconds.

The blackberries are doing very, very well. The bugs here just don’t like them. Today I bought trellises for them. They will be installed tomorrow.

I ordered more batteries for my 18-volt Makita toys. I figure a total of 6 batteries will be enough to make it highly unlikely I’ll ever have to quit work because I’m out of juice. I considered buying no-name Chinese batteries, but there is some question as to how long they last, and you can find great deals on real Makitas on Ebay, so I didn’t take a chance.

I researched strawberries. Someone suggested I put strawberry plants in the planter that used to house the annoying pygmy date palm I dismembered. It’s a great idea, because the planter is by the pool, screened in. The squirrels won’t be able to get near it, but they WILL be able to hang on the screen and stare at the berries they will never get, and that serves them right.

I put glue rat traps in my storage room. I hear funny noises coming from that area at night. I think it’s just the air conditioning moving doors around, but why gamble? If it’s mice, they will soon come to realize the folly of their decision to trespass in my realm.

I wish the day were longer. I want to kill everything in the poolside planter and dump it in the woods.

Getting rid of the stump is a huge blessing. It was like a Satanic stronghold, right in front of my door. It was as if it were taunting me. When I first came here, it was like cast iron, and I saw no hope of removing it without paying someone. Now it’s out in the woods in pieces, and the front yard has lost a major eyesore.

I’m just getting started. I’m going to kill and remove my citrus, which is all mortally ill. I’m going to get my garage wired up for machine tools, and I’m going to move my lathe and mill up here. I’m going to get my truck painted. I’m going to get the driveway resurfaced. This place is going to look like a civilized human being lives here.

Every morning, I keep asking God to help me fix this place so people who look at it will know there is a God in Israel. Christians shouldn’t do everything in a half-assed way. People shouldn’t be able to point their fingers at us and say, “Look at the third-rate care their imaginary God takes of his children.” Our lives should be in order. We should be examples to everyone else.

My hot rod leaf blower arrives Wednesday, God willing. The crud that has been sitting on my driveway since I pressure-washed it is about to be blown halfway to the property line. The leaves that have suffocated my yard will be lucky if they land before they reach Orlando.

Things are good. God is faithful. Christianity works. Don’t give up.