![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Monday durdge and I started cutting down the big, overgrown, unprunable bushes in front of the inoperable hot tub. D. was making dinner. We did 5/6 bushes. As one was falling an egg fell into my cleavage, down, and through my shirt and hit the ground. Then we realized that there was a bird's nest in the bushes. The mother bird spent the entire evening tweeting and hopping around the deck and the roof, looking for her neighborhood, her home, and her eggs. You guys, it was heartbreaking. I felt SO BAD, like the evil farmer in the rats of Nimh.
The bigger issue was the stumps. durdge worked on two of them not getting either one out. I spent another hour and a half on one Thursday and it didn't wiggle at all. D. comes home from work and gets it out in 30 minutes. It was pretty hot. It's annoying to me that I can't work as productively as the guys, I just don't have the brute strength or stamina. I collect branches, fetch water, maybe dig a little if the roots aren't too dense. Work I do in a half hour takes them 10 minutes. It's ridiculous.
Good thing we bought all those tools. Various things we're using to remove the stumps:
-spade
-pick axe
-axe
-trowel (the bushes are all up against a concrete pad and have ridiculously thick root systems, you can't get a spade between them and the pad)
-clippers
-handsaw (this is mostly me as I am lame and can't use an axe or splitter effectively)
Note one important tool that's missing: a root grinder thingy. drudge and D. got 2.5/6 out so far, so it can be done. We're feeling stubborn so I think the plan is to take the rest out by hand. We'll see how it goes this week.
Saturday the plan was to remove the hot tub. hahahha, we haven't touched it yet. Instead we rented a truck, but not for the times we really wanted, we had it from 7am to 12:30pm. So we got up at 6am on Saturday. Yeeeeah.
We got 2 out of 3 loads of cut-down-bushes brush to the dump, as well as the annoying blue tarp that had been under the sand pile. I wish we had time for the final load, but it was $50/hour in overages so we had to return the truck. :p Guess we will cut up and bundle the remaining brush for recycling pickup. Not sure what we're doing with the stumps.
We also went and bought a linden tree! This was the real reason for renting the truck. Now we have two trees, a redbud in the front yard for me (purple flowers!), and a linden in the backyard for Denis (where the sandpile used to be).
Lindens are a really important tree for Denis. There are lots of lindens in Croatia; the croatian name is lipa. In the currency Croatian "cents" are lipa, and the coins have images of the tree on them. The month of June is named lipanj, because that's the month the lipa bloom. They're actually important all over eastern Europe, check out the wikipedia entry, it's pretty interesting.
Last Monday while D. was cooking dinner he also clogged the kitchen sink. It's been clogged all week, and that's annoying. We weren't home a lot in the evenings so didn't start aggressively dealing with it until Friday. Tried draino, didn't work. Rented a big motorized snake from Home Depot (that we had to return Sat. morning), didn't reach because it couldn't get around all the corners.
D. is a little obsessed with unclogging the drain. Especially since we've already spent money on it. He went back to Home Depot and bought a (smaller) snake and has been messing with it all afternoon while I napped. Drain is still clogged, although now there are some air bubbles *sigh*. My kitchen is a mess, it smells like sewer, and I am ready to call the plumber. He gets points for persistence though :) (He's watching me type this.) OMG now he says he has located the clog and wants to *cut the pipe*. This seems like a really really BAD idea. Not that he can't cut the pipe,* it's putting it back together that concerns me.
*We also bought a sawzall this weekend. To help us take apart the hot tub. Sawzall is the brand name of a small reciprocating saw, isn't it fun to say? sawzall sawzall sawzall Unfortunately now D. has a tool he could use to cut open the pipe. Really, just, no. Hopefully the sawzall will be up to disassembling the hot tub. Which we will get to tomorrow, or some time this week before my dad comes to help us rebuild, patch, something the hole in the deck where the hot tub is currently sitting. Oh and detaching the hot tub means we have to deal with the electricity because it's hardwired. And none of our circuit breakers are labeled. And because the hot tub is broken you can't tell if power is going to it or not. Yeeeah, that's going to go well.
The bigger issue was the stumps. durdge worked on two of them not getting either one out. I spent another hour and a half on one Thursday and it didn't wiggle at all. D. comes home from work and gets it out in 30 minutes. It was pretty hot. It's annoying to me that I can't work as productively as the guys, I just don't have the brute strength or stamina. I collect branches, fetch water, maybe dig a little if the roots aren't too dense. Work I do in a half hour takes them 10 minutes. It's ridiculous.
Good thing we bought all those tools. Various things we're using to remove the stumps:
-spade
-pick axe
-axe
-trowel (the bushes are all up against a concrete pad and have ridiculously thick root systems, you can't get a spade between them and the pad)
-clippers
-handsaw (this is mostly me as I am lame and can't use an axe or splitter effectively)
Note one important tool that's missing: a root grinder thingy. drudge and D. got 2.5/6 out so far, so it can be done. We're feeling stubborn so I think the plan is to take the rest out by hand. We'll see how it goes this week.
Saturday the plan was to remove the hot tub. hahahha, we haven't touched it yet. Instead we rented a truck, but not for the times we really wanted, we had it from 7am to 12:30pm. So we got up at 6am on Saturday. Yeeeeah.
We got 2 out of 3 loads of cut-down-bushes brush to the dump, as well as the annoying blue tarp that had been under the sand pile. I wish we had time for the final load, but it was $50/hour in overages so we had to return the truck. :p Guess we will cut up and bundle the remaining brush for recycling pickup. Not sure what we're doing with the stumps.
We also went and bought a linden tree! This was the real reason for renting the truck. Now we have two trees, a redbud in the front yard for me (purple flowers!), and a linden in the backyard for Denis (where the sandpile used to be).
Lindens are a really important tree for Denis. There are lots of lindens in Croatia; the croatian name is lipa. In the currency Croatian "cents" are lipa, and the coins have images of the tree on them. The month of June is named lipanj, because that's the month the lipa bloom. They're actually important all over eastern Europe, check out the wikipedia entry, it's pretty interesting.
Last Monday while D. was cooking dinner he also clogged the kitchen sink. It's been clogged all week, and that's annoying. We weren't home a lot in the evenings so didn't start aggressively dealing with it until Friday. Tried draino, didn't work. Rented a big motorized snake from Home Depot (that we had to return Sat. morning), didn't reach because it couldn't get around all the corners.
D. is a little obsessed with unclogging the drain. Especially since we've already spent money on it. He went back to Home Depot and bought a (smaller) snake and has been messing with it all afternoon while I napped. Drain is still clogged, although now there are some air bubbles *sigh*. My kitchen is a mess, it smells like sewer, and I am ready to call the plumber. He gets points for persistence though :) (He's watching me type this.) OMG now he says he has located the clog and wants to *cut the pipe*. This seems like a really really BAD idea. Not that he can't cut the pipe,* it's putting it back together that concerns me.
*We also bought a sawzall this weekend. To help us take apart the hot tub. Sawzall is the brand name of a small reciprocating saw, isn't it fun to say? sawzall sawzall sawzall Unfortunately now D. has a tool he could use to cut open the pipe. Really, just, no. Hopefully the sawzall will be up to disassembling the hot tub. Which we will get to tomorrow, or some time this week before my dad comes to help us rebuild, patch, something the hole in the deck where the hot tub is currently sitting. Oh and detaching the hot tub means we have to deal with the electricity because it's hardwired. And none of our circuit breakers are labeled. And because the hot tub is broken you can't tell if power is going to it or not. Yeeeah, that's going to go well.
