Buying Grass with Oceana

Oceana and I got up to the house on Friday night just in time to have a short evening and head to bed. Saturday morning we were up early drinking our cowboy coffee and getting ready for the day. We were planning on clearing out the remainder of the driveway and then clearing out the overgrowth down by the lake. Fortunately I purchased replacement gas caps for the chainsaw so I was all set. Unfortunately, I left them at home. Doh!

Our neighbor has stopped by to chat a few times and offered us the use of his dump trailer. He’s got some agricultural land that he goes to regularly and he could dump it there no problem. We took him up on his offer and cleared out the rest of the broken down pile of debris at the end of the driveway. We also cleared out much of the remaining debris that wouldn’t fit in the chipper. It was really nice of him to let us use the dump trailer.

After getting the driveway cleared out, we decided to prep the front yard for grass. This should have been easy. But, of course, it wasn’t. We pulled all of the weeds before going out to buy some grass. What we thought were weeds were actually small trees connected to roots connected to larger roots intertwined with larger roots. Oh joy. Well, it is what it is. I grabbed and pulled and grabbed and pulled and hacked with the machete (no chainsaw, ya know) and fought up most of the roots. There was an old banyan tree that was cut down and the roots were coming from it. The biggest root I ripped up was about 6″ diameter. I ended up using a high lift jack and a sling and I ripped that thing out of the ground.

• 

I ended up chasing the roots to the driveway to where they’d caused the driveway to heave. I hacked some of them off at the driveways edge and others I just pulled right up through the blacktop. It’ll have to get patched eventually but the driveway can’t get patched with the roots still there. The banyan roots drip a whitish, sticky sap when cut. It’s nasty stuff. If I lived in Florida way back when, I think I’d use this sap to seal up the bottom of my wood boat. Before heading into town, I took a gasoline bath to get all of the sticky sap off of my arms, legs, face, and neck. I kind of like the smell of Rec90 fuel.

We ran out and picked up a few hoses, sprinklers, and of course, some grass seed. None of the box stores or local nurseries had any straw so we just followed the directions on the seed bag which said to just rake the grass seed into the soil (sand). So we did. We then got the sprinklers set up. Unfortunately there isn’t quite enough water pressure for both sprinklers to function properly at the same time. Since we only got one timer, we set up the main sprinkler in the front yard on the timer and called it good for the night.

The next morning we had our cowboy coffee and duck eggs and we lamented over our loss of an hour of sleep. Today is epoxy day. In some side projects, I’ve been experimenting with various types of epoxy and casting resins. Fortunately, with that experience I’ve been able to locate an epoxy that is slightly more suitable for filling the termite damage than the boat epoxy that I had been using. The boat epoxy is so thin that any gap or crack in the floor and it all drains out. That’s no good. I found some epoxy online that’s much less expensive, is still a similar amber color, it kicks off fast, and it’s much thicker than the boat epoxy. I did my first test mix and test pour and I’m sold. It still soaks in and fills up the termite holes like the thinner stuff, but it starts kicking after about 8 minutes and thickens up to the point where it won’t run anymore in about 15 minutes. I wasted much less epoxy this go round.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Evidently the shop is a great place to live if you’re a honey bee. Looks like we’ve got a new nest. We’ve talked about trying to raise bees before, so it looks like this may just be the kickstart we’ve been waiting for. I’ll do some research and get some supplies to see if we can get the bees to relocate into a bee box instead of the shop.

Sunday night we get a call from our neighbor. He asked if the sprinkler was supposed to have been on for the last 5 hours? Nope, whoops. Guess we got something mixed up with the timer. He was kind enough to shut it off for us. One more thing to take a look at next time.

If you’d like to subscribe to our regular updates on the blog, just click on the link here. It will send you a confirmation email that has a link that will need confirmed before it will subscribe you. If you don’t get the confirmation email, please let me know, I’ll see if I can resend it.