House Progress Report

It took about a month for my back to heal. The only thing I decide to work on was getting the house and yard ready for winter.  My brother helped lifting up and putting in the storm windows.  He was a big help with this and cleaning up the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.  We hauled four large lawn bags to the community compost. 

After Arthur went home I worked on cleaning the gutters.  We have two large white pine trees on the south lot line.  The neighbor on that side of the house commented that he like to cut those pines down.  I could not understand why he would like to do that when I first moved in but now I do.  White pine trees are dirty trees examples are the dipping sap all over my back deck, shedding pine needles and cones all year long.  The second week in October is the worst about third to half of the needles turn yellow and fall off the tree.  The long needles continually clog up my gutters and cause the water to pour over the sides.  I will not cut those pines down because they keep my house cool and protect my house from the hot summer sun.  If you want to include white pines in your landscaping, do plant them within 30 feet of a house.  There is one good thing about them the cones make wonderful decoration.  I used them in my Christmas garland wrapped around the front porch railing.

All the gardens are cleaned up except the garden with the broccoli, red cabbage, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts.  I plan on harvesting that garden this weekend.  We had several nights this past week where the night time temperature reached the low 20’s.  The Brussels sprouts should be nice and sweet with the hard frost.

The last two weekends I have been working on getting up the outside Christmas decorations.  I brought two four foot candy cane and put one on each end of the front porch and also tied the pine cones to the garland.  This year I brought lights and a timer for the back deck and wrapped them along with the garland.  I still need to set up the deck timer which I will do this weekend.

My next big project will be to clean the house since it has been negligent all summer.