A few outdoor projects

I've been trying to address a few long-neglected projects around the house recently. The bushes had not been trimmed in a few years, the playground equipment needed some love, new lighting over the back patio, and some lawn edging.

There is still plenty more that needs done (gutters cleaned and new gutter-guard, trees trimmed, garage cleaned, weeds pulled, etc., etc., etc.). Here's the rundown so far:

BUSHES

These bushes actually need torn out and replaced. I have no idea how old they are, but I think they're beyond the trimming stage. My fear with tearing them out is we have a drainage channel around our foundation and I don't want to inadvertently damage that. I do want some kind of bushes though, because they drink a lot of water out of the ground and help keep it from our basement. Until then, though, this will have to do.

PLAYGROUND

These two pieces were here when we moved in... and we haven't really done any upkeep on them since then. We have had to remove the monkey bars because, since they were also wooden, they'd started to rot and weren't safe. I also took the slide off... because it's a pain to mow around and the grandkids rarely come to visit, much less play outside when they do. But, I did put two coats of red stain on all the wood parts, as well as put a tarp over the top on the one piece. Long ago it had a canvas roof. This $10 tarp isn't as sturdy, but so far it's held up. I do have to say the whole thing looks much nicer now even if no one uses it still.

PATIO LIGHTING

A couple summers ago we bought some lights to string over our back patio. We spend a weekend rigging up some large flower pots with concrete and tall poles to place around the perimeter. It worked "okay," but always looked kind of clunk-ish to me, and took up a lot of patio space. So I bought these light kits and ran them out to an eye-hook screwed into the tree out back. Not only does it look nicer, and cleaner, but we can also easily take them down if a storm is coming or someone wants to throw a frisbee or something. I much prefer this.

LAWN EDGING

I think I wrote about getting a Black & Decker electric lawn edger not too long ago. I finally put it to use and edged along all the sidewalks and patio. Wow, I couldn't believe how much space it added to our sidewalk width. It was a chore to do, and doing it on 90-degree days maybe wasn't the best time, but it's another job that I'm really glad to have done.

 

So, that along with reading, writing, meditating, and running has been keeping me pretty busy so far. There's plenty more to do, but I think I may need to let this stupid poison ivy rash clear up a little before I tackle too much. I'm also feeling about ready to start on an e-book (maybe). I'm thinking of finally writing that holy week devotional based on the music of David Gilmour/Pink Floyd. We'll see...