knowing elias arrived at 8am yesterday to paint, i woke up early to take my ebike out of the basement before he can set up. before i could even set foot outside though, i got a phone call at 7:30am. if you call me that emergency, it better be a damn emergency. elias told me he benjamin moore doesn't make slate grey in arborcoat anymore, but he can still match the color. i said fine, he said he'd be right over. i barely had time to use the bathroom before he showed up on the doorstep. he walked me through what he did yesterday. that's when i saw another guy in the backyard. so it wasn't just him, i was kind of curious, since normally the person i speak with initially isn't the actually person doing the work. it wasn't just one other guy, but there was a total of three people in his crew. he made a point to show me the primer he used, mad dog brand. i don't know very much about the different brands, but apparently it's the best, and it goes on clear. while i was out there, i quickly went down to the basement and grabbed my ebike.
i took a quick shower before leaving around 8:30am to belmont. there was still plenty of yard work i needed to do, including applying some crabgrass preventer before a forecast of rain later this evening, bringing out all the garden refuse trash, and watering the plants in the grow room.
with the lack of rain and relatively dry weather, flowering trees can keep their blossoms longer. it'd be nice to ride around and grab some photos. i saw okame and yoshino cherries, plus a few i didn't recognize. it's still too early for callery pears. i stopped briefly at a belmont neighbor's house to admire the flowering tree on their lawn. google lens tells me it's a nanking cherry, but those are supposed to bushes, not trees. i'd love to ask the neighbor what tree it is.
it was only yesterday that the new fence was installed, but it already feels like a long time ago. looking from a distance, i could see some gaps underneath the fence where the sunlight was shining through. as a rule when they install fences, they don't bury the fence, but try to keep it as close to the ground as possible. all i had to do was move some dirt around to patch up the gaps. these are small gaps anyway, not big enough for rabbits to go underneath, but better to not have any gaps, don't want to give them any ideas, have them dig underneath the fence.
i spent a good deal of time raking the lawn to remove any dead grass. it'd rake a little bit, and then go do something else. what the lawn really needs is some aeration. i'm hoping to rent an aerator machine from home depot in the fall (classen). it's $81 for 4-hours, or $115 for the day. a lot of the heavily trafficked areas in the backyard have very compact soil that's bad for grass growing.
i opened all our rain barrel valves, so all the rain water is shared between the barrels. that requires making sure each connection is watertight and not leaking. a few connectors were missing rubber washers (fell out during storage) which i replaced. if we get some rain tonight, the catch barrels will collect the rain from the gutter downspouts then divert the water to the barrels. the only thing missing now is a 12v on-demand pump. i'll need to wait for my father to come back to hook up the pump to one of his 12v solar-rechargeable batteries.
i did some weeding, spotted a few dandelions, but mostly i pulled up any creeping bellflowers. i'll never get rid of them completely, but if i can pull them up while they're small, and prevent them from ever flowering, hopefully each season there are less and less.
i planted some sweet basil seeds in two 2ft long plastic planters. the seed instruction said 3 plants in a 1ft planter, so i should be able to have 6 plants in each. sprinkled a bunch of seeds in a grow, i'll thin them out to 6 per planter once they sprout. i covered them up with some chickenwire to prevent squirrels from digging in the dirt.
i took a break around noontime to have an instant cup of shin black beef bone broth noodles while watching the news.
i finished raking around 2pm. today was a hot day, temperature in the upper 70's. i went inside a few times to drink some water and cool off. i filled a plastic barrel with branches to throw out, particularly any willow branches infested with oyster shell scales. i then climbed the platform ladder with the EGO pruning saw and cut down a few sucker branches. i finally stopped when it got a little dangerous, a large branch falling behind me, almost pinning me to the tree. i figured that was my cue to stop.
at 3pm i started applying the crabgrass preventer plus fertilizer. i started with the front lawn then worked my way back. it comes in the form of tiny yellow-orange granules. it took half an hour to finish. i ran out of preventer by the time i reached the western strip of grass.
finally i went down to the basement to water the plants. i applied 3 tsp of gnatrol to 5 gallons of water. i don't see anymore new catches on the yellow sticky traps, nor any flying gnats. but i learned my lesson from last week, don't just stop applying gnatrol if i don't see any gnats, continue for a few more weeks to make sure they're 100% eliminated.
it took me 45 minutes to water all the plants. i left belmont around 4:15pm. it was warm enough that i only wore a t-shirt.
i was worried the cafe would get a lot of phone calls on this week that we're closed for vacation. but we only got one call today, around 5pm. naturally i didn't answer, the voicemail answering machine message has an update telling customers we're closed this week.
elias was still at the home when i arrived. he showed me the work that they did today. besides painting the back of the house, he also painted the two sides, as well as replace any rotten or missing shingles (he did that yesterday). this morning he said he'd paint the front of the house as well (the bottom part), but i saw he didn't do that. i could probably do it myself. he probably discovered it was more difficult than he realized, since there are leftover ivy roots stuck on a bunch of shingles.
i noticed a strange sound on my ebike earlier. after an inspection, i found out that the rear fender was rubbing against the tire. one of the screws was missing, probably fell out from the vibration. that's the third part that's gone missing (kickstand foot, lcd screen bracket screw). whoever assembled this bike didn't do a very good job.
i started a load of laundry before taking a shower. once that was finished, i started a second load. around 6pm i ate some leftover cafe dumplings, which essentially became my dinner. i had some defrosted cream puffs for dessert, then had diarrhea a few hours later (that always happens when i eat cream puffs).
tomorrow should be a free day - the first day this week where i don't have any obligations - but i still need to return to belmont to bring in all the garden refuse bins. my sister also asked me to babysit esmei around 2pm (she'll get dropped off in belmont). maybe i can get some takeout from what da chick before arriving in belmont.