In an ideal world, the majority of our outside work would be done by say…June. To make the summer that much more fun and not as tedious. But our yard did not get that memo this year. So we are still tweaking it even in October. We updated you on our tree removal on Monday, and Dain was back at it again today after a run to our home away from home, the Home Depot. But thanks to our procrastination, we scored a great deal on two new trees and a shrub to “spruce” up our side yard that leaves a lot to be desired in the aftermath of the big tree incident. And Dain had time to tackle two other small projects that have been on the back burner.
The first small project that has been looking at Dain every time he is in the yard was a big dead tree branch on the maple tree in our front yard, along with a couple smaller ones that needed to be trimmed. So he tackled that project first.
Earlier this summer, we purchased a saw with this project in mind, but we obviously never got around to it. Until today. Dain finally took off the plastic guard on our new saw and went to town on the dead branch.
It turned out to be a lot bigger than anticipated, which is kind of the theme of all of our tree experiences with our house so far. It seems like everything is smaller and easier than it actually is when it comes to trees.
The next project Dain marked off the list was finishing the railing on our side deck that we built last fall. Yes, almost exactly one year later we finally got around to staining the hand railing. What happened? Well, aside from a spring and summer of ignoring this, the real story is that Dain installed the hand rail the night before our final inspection late last fall. The very next day, it snowed about 8 inches making it a little hard to stain the railing. Excuses excuses. But we hear there is no time like the present.
Dain pulled out the leftover stain and a brush out of the basement closet that doubles as our paint/paint supply hoard.
And literally 8 minutes later, the railing was matching the rest of the deck and stairs, which makes it even funnier that it took so long to do.
Oh well. It was on to the next thing. Earlier this week, Dain installed the landscaping edging in our yard and our neighbor’s yard, and today we hit the Home Depot in search of a few good trees. The pickings were slim as the garden center is obviously winding down for the year, but the good news was that all of the trees and shrubs were 25% off. We settled on two Colorado Blue Spruce trees (for $26 each thanks to the sale price and a 10% off coupon). They will replace the ones that were annihilated by the gigantic maple tree that fell on them earlier this summer. Eventually that is. After 10-15 years or so.
We also found a clearance shrub that we are going to use to fill in between the new pine trees. Our goal is to make it a little more private by adding bushes and shrubs that will block the view from our driveway right into our neighbor’s backyard.
We set the trees out approximately where we are thinking of planting them along with all the plants that our neighbor purchased (that you can see in the background).
And after Dain takes out the remnants of our neighbor’s tree that he took down, he will replace it with one of the new spruce trees.
Before we plant the new trees, Dain and his dad will be cutting down this final wounded beast of a tree. See why? U-G-L-Y. And won’t that make for a fun Saturday along with running to the city mulch pile a few times.
It’s funny how many small projects there are that you seem to never really get around to, and when you finally do they were not really all that bad. How about you? Do you have any projects that have slipped away from you? Or any that you procrastinated about forever only to realize they were really easy?
I finally made a list yesterday of all the projects inside and outside that I want done. Of course, Eric has a different list. There’s something so satisfying about crossing off those projects!