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.

Medfield Condominium, Seeding

Today, I am off to repair the plow damage to a Condominium over in Medfield. I have to use a pick up truck today as the dump trucks are needed for other projects. This creates a problem because the pick up can only handle one yard of loam at a time, good thing Lovell's Nursery is just down the road.

There was quite a bit of damage to the property last winter and it was due to the fact that the ground, had not really frozen hard, before the snow came, so the plows dug up the lawns easily. We ended up using 3 1/2 yards of loam and 50 pounds of seed. this was quite a bit more than last years repair. This was 4 trips to Lovell's for the day, to get loam and some other supplies.

The lady, in who is in charge of the landscape activities at the property, spoke with me about getting a quote, to completely redo 2 of the front lawns, as the owners were in the process of selling them and wanted them to look nice, to attract buyers. This, will be a project for another day.

Repairing Winter Plow Damage

I am going to be repairing, more properties, that have had damage done to them by the snowplows during the winter. Two of the properties belong to Babson College, they are homes owned by the college, and we are hired to do the landscape maintenance on them. Rich, will be helping me with this chore today.

We do this early in the season to take advantage of the spring rains, and of course to make the properties look better. However, the ground is not warm enough for the seed to germinate quickly and this year we are having a very cool spring. The seed will not germinate until the ground temperature is around 55 degrees, so we have a few weeks to go before we will see any growth. We are using Lovell's New England seed, (34.3% Creeping Red Fescue, 29.4% Laredo Perenial Rye, 24.5% AllaireII Perenial Rye and 9.8% Ken-Blue Kentucky Bluegrass) which is a very good seed and we have a lot of success using it.

Plow damage repair

Rich is off to get a couple yards of loam, today, so we can go around and repair the snow plow damage from last winter, on a few of the properties, that we have cleaned up. This is a yearly ritual, where we first rake out the damaged area, then put down some new loam and then seed the area. We then use the bake of a spring rake to "plant" the seed in the loam before we roll it, with a push roller.

The first property is in Needham, where a retired Doctor and his wife live. He had quite a bit of snowplow damage on his front lawn. He had also removed an old wooden deck, that was surrounding a Red Maple Tree, out in the backyard. This used up all of the loam we had brought with us so we had to go to a local nursery and get 2 more yards of loam. I love going to Lovell's Nursery in Medfield, Massachusetts, the guys that work there, are all great guys and very helpful.

Next, we were off to the Olin College President's house, to repair the damage done to both sides of the driveway. This took about 2 yards of loam to reapir.

Next we went to a hose in Wellesley that had not been cleaned up yet and it was decided by Rob, (the boss), to skip it until it had been cleaned up. This propperty has a circular driveway made of crushed stone and the stone was all over the yard and it would have taken to long to cleanup. It was our mission to just be putting down loam and seed.

We finished up the day at the very first we cleaned up this spring. the property is in Needham, Massachusets. This took another 2 yards of loam to repair. We finished up around 6:30 PM.

During this week I had started to take a "CRAVE" energy drink, at noontime. Ususally I get a bit tired during the afternoon, but I can't have a coffee, after 10 AM or I will not get a good night's sleep. I market this energy drink and it is great, you just add it to 20 ounces of bottled water, shake it up, drink it and you are good to go for 6-7 hours. No "jitters or crash" like with coffee or the other energy drinks on the market. I gave one to Rich and he was going strong after 12 hours of hard work.