Early rise this morning at 6:30, made the coffee and then got Jo up and going. We have a ton of things to get done and breakfast is high on my list of must-do things. We went to Anette's on Edgewater and had a scrumptious meal. I had the German sausage with eggs and home fries and rye toast. Jo had a half-order of biscuits and gravy with an egg.
I get to eat however much as I want on a heavy work day like today. Normally I'd have a little cereal and a piece of toast but today I hogged out cuz' I was going to need the energy.
After breakfast I made my first trip over to Bark Boys on Cherry Ave. to get a load of Hemlock bark dust. I use this kind because it has less splinters. Then we took it to the house and waited for the kids to show up. They were there in short order and the work could begin in earnest.
We needed to pull up the old fabric I had put under the original bark dust a few years ago because it was constantly being exposed as the bark dust was raked up or blown away by the gardeners. Anyway, it was looking pretty ratty and it just needed to go. Glad to have some younger backs there to help pull it out from under the old bark dust. Then we needed to do some leveling around the perimeter of the house because the soil had settled and created a hump near the foundation that caused the bark dust to slide away leaving the dirt showing next to the house. That and getting the rest of the old bark dust leveled back out before applying a fresh layer on top.
Maybe I should explain. We purchased the two houses to replace the income from a single home my Mom owned in California for years. No one lived anywhere near the place so it was not getting the attention needed to see to it that it was maintained properly. So we sold it. We rolled the profits into two homes that were being built side by side. We used them for rentals for a few years and when Mom's sight started to go and she needed more help, we move her into one of them and us into the other so we would have separate homes but be close enough to see her anytime she needed help.
We pulled all of the old bark dust out of the planter strips in the back yards and replaced it with cinders. We felt it would be a better choice than the bark dust because it would stop the dogs from digging in the planters. We'll see if that was wisdom or folly as time goes on.
Many thanks to Sab, James and Craig. We couldn't have done it without you.
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