First Yard Work of the Season

I had a couple of huge, nearly dead maple trees taken out of my front yard to avoid them falling on the house.

This didn’t happen until January. I tried to get it done last Fall but they were backed up. They hauled off all the trees.

The crewmember who was supposed to do the stump grinding had COVID-19 so it was in February when he came and finally ground the stumps. He left two holes with big piles of sawdust and dirt.

This past Saturday, March 20, 2021 I decided to take advantage of a nice sunny day. I picked up sticks that were left over, or blown in from my neighbor’s big tree. Plus I have trees on the other side of my yard and got those picked up.

I then raked the dirt/sawdust mix to fill the holes and still have big piles of dirt. It took 11 trips with the wheelbarrow to move those piles to other parts of the yard. I then bought some grass seed at the local hardware store and seeded the ground where the trees used to be.

I am rather amazed that I’m not more sore than I am. I was quite tired.

Before I totally gave out, I also painted under the kitchen sink with Killz, as there was a bit of mold down there. I’m not as flexible as I used to be, so I only got what I could. I’m sure I missed some I couldn’t get positioned to see or reach.

My flexibility is about what is was before surgery. I’ve had knee issues since I was a teenager.

Now that I’ve got a new roof, new gutters, the tree issue resolved, and the issue with my truck fixed. I can plan some other projects around the house. I bought my truck in January of last year to haul lumber and other things for various projects, but COVID-19 and a cancer diagnosis short-circuited those plans.

Now that I’m well recovered from surgery and have other big-ticket items out of the way, I can focus on those projects I wanted to do last year.

Best of all, my daughter-in-law used to work for a contractor and knows how to do all kinds of things. We’ve been strategizing what order we should do things.

All those things should make it really easy to get approved for a new mortgage so I can finally get my ex-wife’s name off the title and loan. We got divorced right when the economy tanked with the housing market crash and it wasn’t until the past couple of years that I’ve been able to dig myself out of the debt hole.