Garden Fence

We finally finished the rental house this week (the carpets actually came clean with professional shampooing!) and now have been able to turn our attention back to our own house.

I bought the posts and supplies for the garden fence a couple weeks ago.  Last week I started hand digging the posts one by one but that was way too much work!



















My riding buddy's husband has an auger on the back of his tractor and he offered to dig out the rest of the holes for me.  This was especially handy for the very large power pole sections.  He drove the tractor over and had the remaining 12 holes dug in about a half an hour!  Here is a photo after I set the posts.


















After all of the wooden corner and brace posts were set, I drove the remaining 12 T posts by hand.

























Matthew then cut the H-brace sections to length and we mounted them.  We also wrapped and twisted brace wire around these sections to help further support the fence.

















We worked on the fence into the dark a couple of week nights and finished it tonight!


























And here is a photo of Matthew using our new weed wacker.  We finally broke down and bought a gas one that also has a hedge trimmer attachment (very handy for Gunz Rentals too!).

Last Week

Matthew and I have spent the last two weekends working on our old house to get it ready for renters again.  Since cleaning up other people's messes doesn't make for great photos, I don't have much to share this week.  We did manage to make it to a dance Saturday night (after showering at a friend's house since the rental doesn't have hot water!) and I went riding last night with my new riding buddy from across the block.

 

During the week last week I finally got back to work on the kitchen.  Here is the far wall in the middle of painting.  I still have one more large section and around the tops of the cupboards to finish.  Most of our important tools are at the rental house so we weren't able to put up the chair rail on this wall yet.

 

 

Here's just another silly photo of the cats.  They don't like to snuggle with us but they sure like to snuggle with each other!

 

 

And a photo of Sunday's garden harvest.  The egg plant was delicious and I will be making cucumber salad and pasta salad with the rest.  Like Margaret, I'm afraid that a lot of my veggies will ripen while we are in NY, especially the corn.  I've also bought all of the materials for the garden fence and am keeping my fingers crossed that we have time to put it up next weekend!

Renters

The garden fencing has been put on hold since last week the renters in our old house were evicted and they sure left us a mess! Luckily, other than cleaning there wasn't too much damage done to the house.

 

 

This is what the front yard looked like.  The city cleaned most of it up before we had possession of the house.

 

 

Some of the rooms inside looked just as bad as the front yard.  I spent an entire day cleaning up the junk and sorting it into trash, recycle, and goodwill.  I ended up taking a pickup load to goodwill (clothes, some kitchen stuff, kids toys, etc) and a heaping pickup load to the dump as well as collecting about three herbies full of recycling.

 

 

They also left some bigger items like these mattresses, a table, a chair, and some desk pieces.  We were able to get rid of the chair and table thanks to craigslist and had to come back for the mattresses.  We sure are putting our new truck to use!

 

 

Here's one of the two kids' rooms.  Thankfully all of the stickers on the walls came off cleanly but I don't think we'll be able to save the carpet in this room or possibly any of the other rooms.  We spent Saturday at the house cleaning, changing locks, and doing some small repairs.  Hopefully we will have it finished in the next week or two and back up on the market.

 

 

Slightly off topic, but here is a photo of all of the cats up on our vehicles.  For some reason, they love to sleep on top of them!  Notice that Zia (left) has found a comfy spot on the mattresses from our old house. 

One, or Two, or Maybe Three More Projects...

Another typical weekend full of projects here at the Lazy G Ranch (we're thinking of re-naming the place!).  The first project involved a light pole that was next to the barn.  The previous owners had a spotlight on a separate power line that was on all of the time.  We never connected the power when we moved in and wanted to remove the whole fixture.  Matthew talked to GA Power last week and they said that they would come and remove it for us.  The technician that came first tried to fix the light (and made a mess digging around the base of the pole) before figuring out that he was supposed to take it away.  He could only take the light itself with the equipment he brought so he told us we could cut the pole down.


















After the technician left, we got out the come along and a long rope to secure the pole so that it did not fall on anything important.  Then Matthew used the chainsaw to cut it down and it fell right where he was aiming!


















Telephone poles make great fence posts so we cut the pole into three posts to use around the garden.  Deer have been munching on my veggies so fencing the garden just got moved to the top of the to-do list for next weekend!

















The barn with the pole removed and grass planted.

























The second project for the weekend was to install fans for the horses.  Matthew brought these large metal fans home from work and wired them above the horses' stalls on a thermostat controlled switch.

























The horses don't mind the noise of the fans but it might take them a while to figure out that the fans are cooler and help to keep the bugs away.


















Our last project was to move the firewood stand to its permanent location.  We set it up along the edge of the woods when we moved in but now those woods have been turned into the garden.  The stand looked really awkward out in the open so we decided to move it next to the house where the horses used to be.  We took all of the firewood off the stand and ended up using our lawn tractor trailer (made by Matthew from Great Dane spare parts) to haul it across the yard.

















A short video of the action.

Now the stand is tucked out of sight but still easily accessible from the porch.






 

Garden Photos

I took a few photos of our gardens this weekend to show how things are looking here in GA.

 

 

The flower beds by the barn have some veggies but also a few flowering plants.  Now that I have water at the barn, they are getting better care and growing well!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I trimmed the azaleas back again so they look a little scraggly.  It took about two hours to get them back to where they were last year; I think that I will be asking for a hedge trimmer for Christmas!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the plants that Jane brought for the flower beds by the back of the house survived the winter and are looking great.  The iris are about to bloom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, an updated photo of our veggie garden.  We have been eating lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, and sugar snap peas so far.  The broccoli, cucumbers, yellow squash, and green beans are almost ready too.