Planting Impatients at the President's house

I had to go to the home that is used by the President of Olin College today to plant Inmpatient,s and about 8 new ornamental bushes. The wife of the President just loves her flowers and gardens and we go on a regular basis to do plantings for her. We enjoy doing this very much because she gets us coffee from Dunkin donuts and makes us homemade blueberry muffins for our morning break. Of course we totally enjoy this and just work that much harder for her.

First we had to remove 4 old very tired looking Yews and replace them with new bushes. One of the ornamental bushes we planted is the one, in the picture at the left. A rhododendron, with yellow blossom's, which I had never seen before. I will have to find out from her what the name
is. We also planted 6 flats of pure white Impatients all around her house. In a few weeks we will be back to weed all of her beds and I will be able to post a picture of how it all looks for you.

Finishing up the Olin Campus

We returned to the Olin College campus to continue weeding the beds, a new guy, worked with me today, his name is Ceilo, and he is a very good worker.

The head grounds keeper at the college wanted us to go through a bed that contained blue rug juniper bushes, and trim out any of the brown dead branches that are in there. The junipers had some plow damage and some normal winter die back. This took us a good part of the morning to finish, but it looked much more presentable when we were finished.

Next Ceilo and I spent the rest of the day weeding every tree bed along the road that leads to the campus itself. Very high visibility area's, that everyone would be traveling by on Sunday and Monday and they had to be looking their best. It's all in the presentation.

Getting Ready for Graduation Ceremonies at Olin College

Today it is very cold for this time of year with a good steady wind blowing and it is going to start raining this afternoon.

We are at Olin college where we have been asked to come and assist the grounds crew there to weed out all of the beds that are in the high visibility areas. There will be a lot of foot traffic passing by during the graduation ceremonies this weekend.

The picture is of one, of the 2 tents set up on campus for the graduation activities. Guillerme and I had to go through, all of the mulched beds along the walkways by this tent area and by the other one, which is located at the entrance to the campus itself. We quit a bit early because the rain came along with a good stiff wind. The rain was coming down horizontally, not a good condition to weed in.

Loam and seeding

Rich and I are at a condo complex in Medfield, Massachusetts today. We have to repair a damaged lawn area in front of 2 of the units because they are selling the condo's and want to have the front look better.

Rich had to make 2 trips over to Lovell's nursery in Medfield for the loam. We used 3 yards and our truck will only hold 2 at a time.

After we finished, we were off to Wellesley to Babson College, to put down some loam in areas that had been washed away by rain. These were in areas where there were going to be a lot of traffic later in the week at the graduation ceremonies.

More lawn renovations

We are continuing our lawn renovation activities at a property I posted about earlier. This is the one where we spent a few days cleaning it up and trimming the bushes because the property was recently purchased by new owners.

The front yard, as you can see has some weak lawn areas. Rich will be aerating the entire yard and I will slice seed the front half of the yard.

We did not get here until around noontime, because we started at another property in Wellesley where we had to put loam down on some weak area's and then over seed that one.
I had problems with the slice seeder machine, the pull cord to start the engine would not recoil so I had to pack it up on the trailer and go back to the shop to get the right tools to fix it.

Rich and I finished up the job late, around 6:30PM, but we finished it. We used about 50 pounds of starter fertilizer and 50 pounds of sun seed. Rich used a bit too much on one area of the lawn, so I will have to return tomorrow and finish up fertilizing the slice seeded area. This property does have an irrigation system, and the homeowner called her company to come and make sure it is functioning correctly. Because it has just been seeded and is out in the sun it needs to be watered twice a day.

Slice Seeding

I am going to a property in Dover, Massachusetts today with Rich and Guillerme, to aerate and "slice seed" the yard and to spread some loam down, on some weaker area's and then over seed it. This property has a large lawn area that is mostly out in the sun on one half, mostly shady on the other half and has no irrigation. There will be a large social event at the property in the fall when one of the son's gets married.

Rich will aerate the area first and then Guillerme will follow with the slice seeder. The slice seeder is a special machine that dethatches the lawn, slices the lawn with steel knives and drops seed down all in one operation. The slice seededing is done twice, in two different directions. We used 100 pounds of Sun seed and 100 pounds os shade seed. After that we used 75 pounds of starter fertilizer and used 200 pounds of regular fertilizer over the entire yard. Hopefully we will have conditions suitable to get the seed up and going before the big event. Like I said there is no irrigation system so the owners will have to water and also hope for rain.