Thursday, June 18, 2009

Rain again.....



















Today the forecast is for rain, so I am going solo, to finish up the route and just put down fertilizer and not spray anything due to the weather. Guillerme is going off with the other guys to help get a lawn sodded before the rain arrives. I only had 3 houses to finish and the one I went to in Holliston, had these very interesting wild flowers, so I stopped to take a picture of the field, in front of the property, I was working on and a close up of these beautiful, wild flowers. Don't know what they are, but they caught my attention.

When I was done, it was raining so I went to Wellesley to look for Rob. When I found him he wanted me to go back to the shop and get the lareger trailor, and go to Framingham and pick up one of the mowers that was "supposed" to be repaired and bring it to another repair guy to get it worked on. Well this turned into a long afternoon. The first mechanic for some reason waas very reluctant to let me have it ( it took me over 1 1/2 hours to get out of there). I did not mention it was going to another repair place. It was then another 45 minutes to get to hte new place and another hour to get bcak to the shop. What an afternoon of driving around in the rain.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Baby Deer sighting......
















Guillerme and I were off in pursuit of finishing up the fertilization route today as we had our best day of the week, a "little sunshine". We worked in Holliston, Sherborn and Wellesley. When we were in Holliston we went down the driveway to the property and a young, white tail deer, was in the field having a bite to eat. Guillerme told me to take a picture and I snapped this one before he headed over to the woods on the left. We finished up the day there as we put down 9 bags of fertilizer and about 40 gallons of weed spray. Its a very large lawn area.

At one of the properties I was able to take the other picture which is a Stella Dora day Lilly, which are my favorite flowers this time of year. This one is a light yellow, but my favorite is the ones that have some orange in them, hopefully I will get a chance to take a picture of that variety this coming week.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Dumping the PERMAGREEN spreader......ouch

Today, Guillerme and I continued on with the fertilization route, which is taking a long time to complete due to bad weather and also because Rob, keeps giving us side projects to work on.

I had to call Rob, who was working with another crew in Wellesley to ask about this one property he had left off of the fertilizing list. When I got ahold of him he told me that he was at a house, where the lady who owned the property came out and told him her daughter had the Swine Flu and was being quarintined in the house. Rob, laughed because the lady was trying to be nice and brought out some drinks for the guys, but they would not go near them. hopefully no one contacted anything form that job.

We were going along smoothly when we came to the property picture here and as you can see on the left side there is a steep hill. Before Guillerme, started I walked him over to the hill and explained how to use the machine on it. But as we all know, young guys just don't listen. So, as I was watching him, with the spreader, all of a sudden he flipped it over and over, spilling all of the fertilizer onto the lawn. I walked over to check on Guillerme, a bit shaken to say the least, and to get the machine up righted. I then had him clean up all of the fertilizer and use a back pack blower to blow off the area before it killed the lawn. I started up the machine and smoke just billowed out of it, for about 10 minutes but everything else seemed to be working, so I completed the job.

We went to the next property a condo complex in Millis and when I went to use the machine it was hard to start and the engine would conk out after a few minutes. So I had to call the guy who does the maintenance on it and he walked me through how to repair it. That save Rob, quite a bit of money. What a day......

Monday, June 15, 2009

Clouds, Rain, Mist all week



Here in New England we have been in a very cloudy, misty, foggy, rainy period for the last 3 weeks and it looks like it is going o continue this week as well. So my picture for the post's this week will reflect the weather conditions. The weather pattern's usually last for about 6 weeks, hope it is wrong because as I write this it is the first day of Summer.

Our first task of the day, is to go over to a very long time customer and transplant some bushes and weed out a large perennial flower bed. This was a request from the wife, as a gift, for her husbands 88th birthday. Guillerme and I started with the transplanting first and as we dug the first hole we found some 10 turtle eggs, we were very careful and did not break any of them. We showed them to the lady who lived there and she took them to show to her grandchildren who were coming over and to her daughter who is a veternarian. (You can see them in the photo on the right) We went through one rain shower, where we had to wait it out, by sitting in the truck until it was over. this seems to be a daily activity lately.

We finished up around 2 pm and then went back to the shop to load up the trailor and what fertilizer we had along with some broadleaf pray as we were still on out fertilization route. Our first stop was at the John Deere/LESCO store to get another pallet (40 bags) of 24-5-11, fertilizer and some more boadleaf weed spray and a bottle of SYTHE. I had not seen the SYTHE for a few years so I bought some. We were only able to finish 5 properties before we finished up at around 6:30pm. One of the properties in Southborough is pictured on the left.