Trimming the Olin college home

We went to the home that is used by the President of Olin College today to trim and weed the property because there was going to be a party on Monday. I had Fabio and Guillerme with me.

Before we even started the guy who is in charge of the Olin College campus showed up to mow the lawn. So we had to have a small break to have a chat with him. Then he was off to mow while we started to weed the beds.

I enjoy coming to this property as well, because the lady of the house loves her flower gardens. She enjoys having us come over and always brings us coffee and homemade blueberry muffins for our 10AM break. she just came back from Paris and had a lot to tell us about her trip and even brought us out some books on Notre Dam and the Louve, great pictures and great stories.

We finished up just about 5 pm, and had to work a little bit harder and faster at the end because we knew we had to be done by the end of the day.

2 days of Fertilizing, at Olin College

Guillerme and I are off to Olin College with a pallet of fertilizer ( 40 Bags ) and 3 gallons of Confront Herbicide, 2 gallons of "Sticker", and 4 bottles of DRIVE. We will not be able to finish the entire college grounds in one day.

The problem we have is that our sources of water to mix the herbicide and sticker with are a good distance from where we are working.

I will be using the Permagreen Ride On spreader which applies herbicide at the same time as I am fertilizing and Guillerme will be using the walk behind commercial spreader to put down the fertilizer on the small, hilly areas that I can not get to with the machine. Guillerme will then have to go over the same areas with a back pack sprayer and spray for broad leaf weeds. After he has done that he will have to use a different back pack sprayer and go along the edges of the walks and pavement and spray the young crabgrass that is just emerging in the hot spots of the lawn. It is better to get them when they are young as the spray is more effective.

We will finish only the upper portion of the college and return tomorrow to finish up the lower portion of the campus.

Planning for a rain day

Today the forecast, is for heavy rain, to be coming in the afternoon so we will be staying on a route that is close to the shop in Holliston. So Guillerme and I went and fertilized to 2 commercial buildings and then two homes in Holliston.

You can see in the pictures what the weather was threatening at the last property. It is a large property and it took 9 bags of fertilizer to complete. We have plastic covers, that we put over the spreaders to keep the rain off of the fertilizer but the problem is when the lawn becomes wet the tires kick the moisture "up" and this gums up the holes the allow the fertilizer to come out of the hopper. We were lucky to finish up this property before it rained.

We returned to the shop and Guillerme went home and I went up to get a pallet of fertilizer from LESCO so that we could be off early in the morning to fertilize and spray at Olin College.

"Fluff Up", the Property of the President of Olin College

We were off to "Fluff up" the property owned by Olin college and used by the President and his family. They were not home when we arrived around 7:30 AM. This property has to always look it's best because of the people visiting the property to see the President and his wife. His Wife is really into gardening and always has plants or bushes she wants planted.

Rich, Guillerme and I started right in, on the weeding, which at this time of year can get out of control. As the guy's did the weeding around the flowers and bushes by hand, I would trim back any long "flyer's" that had grown on the bushes. We hand weed around, the flowers and bushes and when we get to the larger mulched area's, we use the weed whacker. After it is raked up we spray "Round Up" in the large area's, but nothing is sprayed any where close to the flowers or bushes. We have a special attachment we use on the backpack sprayers that is shaped like a funnel to prevent the "Round Up" from drifting over onto bushes or flowers.

We were just about finished around 4PM when the President and his wife arrived home from a weekend vacation. They were happy to see us and really liked what we had done to the property. And that is all that counts as far as I am concerned. We finished up the weeding and then sprayed the lawn for broad leaf weeds with "Speed Zone", which we have found to be very effective on clover and most broad leaf weeds in the lawn.

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.

Getting Ready for Graduation Ceremonies

The college graduation ceremonies, are going to be occurring next week on the 2 college campuses we take care off. So, today we had to go and spray a herbicide at the campus at Olin College. There are to be NO dandelions visible during the graduation ceremonies as they are very proud of their campus and want to show it off to the families of the graduating students.

We used a product that we buy at LESCO called "Speed Zone". We use this because it has the "2-4-d" herbicide chemical in it. It is very effective on dandelions and clover and broad leaf weeds that are in Lawns. We are also going to be adding "sticker" to the tank mixes, which is a product that makes the Speed Zone mixture a bit sticky, and adheres better to the waxy leaf's of the weeds.

This is going to be an all day job for 2 guys and myself. It takes a long time because we are always mixing the tanks with water and sometimes the location of the water is far away from where we are working. I will be riding the Permagren, sprayer and Rich and Guillerme will be using 3 gallon backpack sprayers.

Magnolia Tree and Mulching

Rich and Rodrigo and Wagner, came with me today to mulch the property, that is used by the President of Olin College. It will take us all day to mulch, as it has a large amount of mulched beds. We used over 2 dump trucks full of "brown pine mulch"

The President's wife, had purchased a new "Virginia" Dogwood tree that she wanted us to plant. You can see Rich and Rodrigo digging the hole for it in the picture on the left.
The Healthy Start Fertilizer, is in the orange bucket and organic "blue mussel" compost is in the white bag next to it. She wants the tree to get off to a good start. She chose this particular variety because of it's late season blooming characteristic.

The President's wife is a sweetheart and always gets us coffee and something to eat from Dunkin Donuts. We reeally appreciate a treat like this on a very cool spring day. We were able to complete the whole job before it started to rain again.

I was glad to be going home a bit early today because it allowed me the time to go hame and shower, and change clothes. I had to go to a Network Marketing workshop in Marlboro, at 7 PM. It was given by Tom "Big Al" Scheiter. He is the Chairman of the Network Marketing Company, I work for.

Wellesley and Needham Fertilizing

Today, we will be in Wellesley and Needham fertilizing our customer's properties. We will be doing all of the off-campus properties of Babson College and Olin College.

Here is a pic of Rich, using the power spreader to take care of a Babson House. You can see that spring, has not yet come around and there are no leaves on the trees. But in about 3-4 weeks it will be a completely different view. May is my favorite time of year, all of the ornamental tree's are in full bloom, and the other deciduous trees have there new leaves out.

The cool spring time weather, has had my back aching a bit, good thing I had some SUNJING with me today. All I have to do is rub it on my lower back and in a few minutes the ache is gone, amazing stuff and it is so easy to carry around with me.

Tomorrow, we will be continuing on the fertilization route, in Dover, Holliston and Sherborn, Massachusetts. I will not be finished but close to it.

First Application of lawn fertilizer, for the season.

Today, I am at Olin College in Needham, Massachusetts, applying the first fertilizer application of the year. This is a large campus and I will be using forty, 50 pound bags of fertilizer to cover all of the lawn area's around the campus.

The fertilizer I am using is from LESCO and it is a Pre-Emergent herbicide, called Dimension. It contains 19% Nitrogen, 0 % Potash and 6% Sulphur along with 0.10% DIMENSION.

We use this to control new weeds from germinating, like, Dandelions, crabgrass and broad leaf weeds. This fertilizer forms a protective layer over the ground, to prevent germination, of the undesired weeds. After this application we have to wait about 10 weeks before we reseed those areas.

This will take Rich and I all day to finish. We will be fertilizing approximately 640,000 sg feet of turf. I will be using a "power spreader"made by PERMAGREEN and Rich will be doing the smaller area's with a walk behind spreader, made by LESCO.

Rainy Monday

The rain is due to come later today and when it does that will be it for the day as the storm will last overnight.

We went over to the President of Olin College's house, in Needham, Massachusetts, to do a spring cleanup. The wife of the President, always greets us with coffee from Dunkin Donuts and homemade muffins. This makes our day and we just work that much harder for her. It's a "win-win" for us both.

There were 3 other guys with me and we only had time to use back packs to blow off the lawn, and rake out a couple of beds, before the rain came. We all went home around noon time. The cool rainy weather had my joints aching and my muscles sore so I was happy to go home and put some SUNJING on it.

Going home early used to bother me, but it does not anymore, because I can now go home and work on the home based business, that I started during the winter months. I market health and nutritional products and SUNJING is one of them. About 5 minutes after applying it to my knees and leg muscles the aching and soreness is no longer noticed. I love that stuff.