Good morning!!!!

   / Good morning!!!! #189,021  
Morning all, 47 going to 64 and calling for rain.
Picked up tree and it's home safe.

Got one of the side lawns mowed, but ran put of sunlight.
Did manage to get tangled up in a old powercord.
While I had the deck off to unwind it, I greased up the spindles and did the front end too.
Mower needs an oil/filter change, another item on the list.

Rip - estate stuff is a pain, one day at a time and one piece at a time and it will get done.

BEF - looks really nice, and half the travel time. Hope it works out great.

Be well,

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   / Good morning!!!! #189,022  
Good morning.
44° and the sun is shining. Supposed to rain late in the day with a high near 70.

Yesterday’s breakfast and conversation was good, wife came along as well. After breakfast I made some progress with Autocad Fusion, I figure if I put in some time everyday, I’ll eventually get there.

I did take the Makita pole saw and chainsaw down the lane and cleaned up the fallen limbs that were on the ground, and removed all the limbs from the tree top that was stuck in the ground like a lawn dart. But I left the that part for another day when I have some help.

Zoe and I loaded grain into the barn, she still thinks that the alpacas want to play with her.
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I got out the Lazer Z to trim around things and to test the waters to see how wet the ground was before getting out the big guns. Took the loader off the tractor and hooked up the Progressive and got most everything mowed. There were a few spots with standing water that I went around, and I kept it in 4WD to preemptively avoid wheel spin.

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It’s easy to see why the rear deck had holes rotted through it, all the decks are rear discharge, and the cover the rear one with clippings.

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You can’t even see my stainless repair plates under that mess. I’m religious about blowing it off clean after mower, I doubt that happened much in its former life on the sod farm. The great news is that it ran smooth, and the cut quality was good. I’ll say the repairs were a success.

Got all the machinery cleaned up and put away, when I came out of the shop, my DIL and grandson were here. He wanted to know why I mowed without him. :(

When they went to leave, they came back and said that a tree had fallen across the path home. They went around the other way, I put the loader back on the tractor, swapped the bucket for the grapple, and went down and lifted the tree off the fence, and cut it up with the Stihl chainsaw this time. I gathered up the big pieces and hauled them to the wood pile, then put the bucket back on the loader and parked the tractor. Went back with the carryall to load up the brush and dump it on the brush pile.
Finally it was time to put my feet up and have some dinner.
 
   / Good morning!!!! #189,024  
Good morning! 72˚F, cloudy heading to the upper 80s with a S wind.
12 people at FireWise yesterday and then PT. My wife is still amazed I can do FireWise in the morning and PT in the afternoon. It all has to do with which joints are uses.

My reciprocal saw blade finally broke on a hidden rock after 2 years of use it was the best and quickest blade for cutting limbs and small cedars off at ground level. I went to Home Depot and got another exactly like it and highly recommend it - https://www.amazon.com/Freud-DS0903...g+blade+for+limbs+903A&qid=1713291269&sr=8-48
 
   / Good morning!!!! #189,025  
that's a great idea Don so you don't wreck the normal chain saw chain in the dirt.

Popgadget, your azaleas are going to pop soon, should be gorgeous, mine are just starting but much thinner than yours.

great pics Ken, your TLB is like a swiss army knife.

time to get moving
time to suck up some pollen
 
   / Good morning!!!! #189,026  
having trouble again, with windows photo app won't download pictures from the Iphone. I use that app as when working, it does an import, not a copy of the pictures. copy changes the date to the current date. Found you you can go to the phone directory when attached to windows, do a right click and select an import, and it imported every photo again. It retains the proper date, but it took hours. You can only do the import from the Iphone root directory, going to a month folder does not have the import option.
removed 3 pieces of landscape fabric from the garden and used it under my stone behind the barn. Got it covered with stone, so half done. Came out 12 ft from barn. Used big tractor to move the stone, and the BX to level it out. Also leveled out the dirt I put in the low spot out near the road, and also hauled a few more buckets of dirt. it's not perfect smooth but close. Should have dragged it.
also clipped a few more forsythia with the chainsaw. The battery saw is so nice.
took BH off the BX. Had to beef up the BH dolly a little with a bolt, but need one more.
While typing this, had the import utility running again. It takes awhile to go thru and figure out how many pictures, but in the end it said there were only 12 new pictures since this morning, and only had to import the 12. This looks like the new way I will import from the Iphone, only down side is I need to keep all the photos in one large directory or else it will probably download them all again. The plus side, I had already ran the script to date the pictures, and it still only got the 12 new. Also, I'm doing the import on my 2nd SS drive, so on a 2nd physical drive. .View attachment 862778
Looks like some good material. You just need to do a little handwork to finish it up
 
   / Good morning!!!! #189,027  
never got outside. Just got off phone with guy who owns the farm I grew up on.
He bought it four years ago and is just now moving from Colorado to here, having spent millions more
on renovating the outbuildings. Primary house is 12,000 sf Tara built by prior owner built swimming pool used to be.
considering the area, grandiose and crass come to mind. I posted pics of this a while back when it was for sale and showed the inside.
Big dual curving staircases. Sigh. This is not Atlanta. Might as well have built a japanese teahouse there, just overwhelmed the property.
Worse, somehow he got through the ability to tear down the main house, the historic one, leave just enough foundation and then built a fancy garage there. So the house in this brochure is no longer.

I hope to go over this Saturday and walk the farm with him. I am utterly delighted to do it, he said he wanted to return the farm to a more natural look.
The first guy tried to make a country club out of it. Tennis courts in the orchard, plus a house that was only made to impress.
So needless to say, should be an interesting tour.

I wonder if I can get a job maintaining it. Wouldn't that be a hoot.
 

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   / Good morning!!!! #189,028  
Came out to drag my dirt spot to seed it, but since I had to move the ZT, started mowing instead. got front done when light rain started.
Used my foot to smooth out the dirt and threw some seed down. Under pine trees so not much will grow.

Sitting on porch, snagglepuss jumped on me to lay.
Real estate agent in VA just called. He agreed not much land for sale down there right now and should make a nice profit. He mentioned a way to transfer money from that sale to WV land to avoid capital gains tax so definitely want to look at that.
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   / Good morning!!!! #189,030  
72F and cloudy @ 10:00, which is supposed to be the day's high.

Cold front headed in later, with it's approach comes thunderstorms, some possibly severe.

Woman is over feeding Her neighbor lady friend's cat while she is away on vacation.

Got hopper and tube feeders refilled yesterday, also scattered some for the ground feeders. Tube feeders are still the garage as I took the pole they go on down to relocate it.

Got second Roundup sprayer filled up and ready to go.

Woman got the sprayer She had been using for vinegar as a weed killer cleaned out so it can be repurposed for fungicide/insecticide.

Had Her go collect the broken monofilament "fencing wire" from around the northwest planting bed after that.

Moved a bunch of junk out of the garage in order to clean up near the overhead door.

Ran over to the barn with the Kubota and got a pallet that had about 8 - 10 bags of lawn fertilizer on it and brought that over to the house.

Then unloaded van which was a bit of a PITA. Had a 4 x 8 sheet of 1/2 plywood on top of 8 PT 2 x 4 x 8's sitting on the load bars with a pallet containing the rest of the order, end of one load bar came unhooked while coming home.

Loaded all the lumber on pallet forks then onto the saw horses that I moved out of the garage.

Filled dump cart up with some stuff (mostly cardboard) going up to the shop and ran that up and dropped it. Woman came up in the car and moved all of that in while I went and started mowing the front.

After She finished I dispatched Her to BellStores down in Canal Fulton to get 1 gallon of non-ethanol fuel for the Stihl equipment and 3 1/2 gallons of regular for the Cub.

Portions of the front lawn had dried up considerably and I was able to get a lot more mowed that I hadn't been able to get to yet this year.

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Probably 70% - 75% had been mowed at the point I finished.

Refueled the left tank on the Cub when Woman got back.

Woman came out later and started picking up sticks and branches on the east side while I was finishing that up. I brought the Kubota over which still have the forks on it and loaded the long branches that wouldn't fit in the dump cart and took those up.

Then I started mowing parts of the compost/woodlot that were dry enough to get to. Lowers parts south of the compost pile tends to stay pretty moist so I avoided that area.

I did run over most of the pumpkin patch food plot area with the deck all the way up and got it beat back.

After that I came down and mowed the area around the northwest planting bed.

Then headed over to the east side to start mowing over there. Woman was finished doing pick up so I hooked up the dump cart and hauled it to the back and emptied it.

Got most the east side mowed.

Consolidated 2 bales of peat moss and a bag of pothole patch from the Menards order onto the pallet with the fertilizer, along with another bag of fertilizer that I grabbed from the garage and hauled the pallet back over to the barn.

Moved the original pallet that the order was on over closer to the garage door, only thing left on that was a bag of bird seed which I moved into the garage later.

At some point The Woman had snuck out and removed the 2 boxes of cat litter off the pallet while I wasn't looking and taken them into the house with the two wheeler ... ;)

Took the 1 gallon can of non-ethanol gas and added the Stihl oil to it and fueled up the Stihl pole saw. Adjusted the chain on that and then cut down a bunch of branches off the oak that had been previously topped that was growing up in the rhododendron on the north side of the garage.

Also cut down 1 slippery elm and 2 ash saplings that were growing out in the 1st circle.

While I was doing that Woman ran down to the local pizza joint to pick up some dinner for me and then Dominos for dinner for her.

Finished up with the pruning before She got back so I went ahead put the Craftsman MoJack back together for this season.

Then loaded up the dump cart with 4 pump sprayers that need cleaned out/repaired, the 3 t-posts and post pounder from the Menards order and hauled those around back.

Got everything that was out that needed to be put away, put away in the garage ... and then took a little personal relaxation time and just sat out there in warm evening air in a lawn chair watching the bats fly around before I came in for dinner.

As of this morning the count on redbud seed that have germinated is up to 20.

Not all is good news however.

Had a disaster with the tomato seedlings - apparently I got confused on when I had last watered (and/or fertilized) and I croaked a whole bunch of them:

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Got seeds replanted last night for all the ones that I managed to kill off.

Fortunately, there is still plenty of time to start another batch ... probably wouldn't even be setting them out until around Memorial Day.

Just heard the call that breakfast is ready ... ;)

Hope everyone is having a decent Wednesday ...(y)
 
 
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