Stump Master B

We worked our behinds off over Memorial Weekend. It felt good, but we've got a long way to go.


We stripped the deck. Yikes, it needed it so bad. It looks like a brand new deck already, sans stain. We did find out that we need to hold off on staining until the helicopters (whirlie gigs?) have all fallen from the tress. Wow are those things bad this year. I think if I would've awoke to find our deck covered in helicopter remains like I did on Monday morning, the day after we applied stain, I'd cry. It would be so awful for those things to get stuck on there or leave imprints. So, we have to sit back and wait until the seeds have stopped falling. Until then, I'm kind of on timeout with plants around the deck too. I don't want to plant anything, and then have it power washed out of the ground. I'm getting antsy. Oh well, we got hopefully our last frost this week anyway, so maybe it's a good thing I haven't planted.


Our neighbor seems to be a bit of a landscape guru, and we've teamed up with him to go halfsies on a bed liner, so we can lay some landscape bricks around the front. We still need to pick those out though! We also got in on the stump grinder rental. Yes, I finally got rid of the nasty stumps hanging around our yard, one of which was sporting another tree practically out of the top. I can't even tell you what a nightmare that stump was. It wasn't the stump itself that was the problem. It was all of the garbage that the previous owner put around it. Once we did a little digging, we found cut up plastic bags (like that top soil and mulch would come in) laid beneath the soil, then rocks on top of the bags, then dirt and mulch. These rocks, like what someone would put down if they didn't have a paved driveway, were everywhere. OK, I get the concept of putting that crap down to prevent weeds, but seriously, WHY? It took us a couple of hours to rake all of the plastic out and the rocks. So after we got that done, we were on our way to Stump City. I snapped some shots of the Husband grinding away, but the memory card is acting up, so when I went to import the photos onto the computer they weren't there. Doh! I'm hoping the Stump Master can put his computer tech skills to work and recover the lost photos. I also had some before shots of our yard on there too. If the photos are found, I will post some for your viewing pleasure.


Combine the stripping, bed making, and grinding (wow, this story is taking on a weird twist) with ripping out patio bricks and digging out clay from all of the flower beds, and that was our weekend in a nutshell. I'm so excited about the end results. I hope everything comes together nicely...fingers crossed.


Soooo, how does one know they've been working hard in the yard you ask?

You'll have achy muscles and black boogers.