Wild Turkey Chick's

Today, was one of those days, that you just truly love and totally enjoy, as a Landscaper. We went back to the property, we were at yesterday and to start the day off, the neighbor comes over all excited, because the Wild turkeys eggs had all hatched. 8 baby turkey chicks, were safely born. So there was a lot of activity, going on next door, I don't know who was happier, the wild turkey mom or the neighbor.

I had 3 guys with me today, because I needed extra muscle, from the young guys, to pop the White Birch trees out and then transport and transplant them in their new location. I am always amazed at what those guys can do. They had them popped out and transported and in their new holes and watered in by 10AM. These are large ( 4 foot diameter ) root balls, that are composed mostly of clay and they retain the moisture, so they are very heavy.

After that, the rest of the day consists of weeding, raking out beds and planting, all of the remaining annuals. Good thing we did the hard part of the day first, it was the second day, this year it was in the 90's.

As the afternoon comes to a close, the woman who owns the property, goes out and gets us some treats, chocolate chip cookies, brownies and oatmeal raisin cookies at a bakery in town. When she comes back, she has us all sit down, for a very nice chat, with the cookies and some soda and sparkling water. This is a great way, for us to end the day.

But it is not over, the neighbor with the turkeys, is having a hard time, the baby chicks have crawled under the fence, put up to protect them, from the mother. So, we go to the rescue and help remove the fence, to get the chicks and the mom reunited. (the picture above is just after we removed the fence). Then the woman, we are working for, and Rob come over to see the new baby chicks and it becomes a very happy, social activity in the neighborhood.

These are the days I just love being a Landscaper, made one customer happy with our work, had some treats at the end of the day and then rescued some wild life. Could not be any better.

Annuals and Birch Tree's, to be moved in Wellesley

We are planting many annual flowers on this property, located in Wellesley today. We will also will be getting 4 White Birch Tree clumps, ready to be moved to a new location on the property tomorrow.

I have Rich and Guillerme, assisting me today and we first go to an area of the property, that has very old, overgrown Forsythia bushes, which are about 8 feet high and covering an area about 150 square feet. The owner wants them cut down to about 6 inches high, so that she will have new growth for next year. Also, this is an area where we will be moving 4, White Birch Tree clumps, that are about 20 feet high.

The Rhododendron's are in full bloom along with the azalea's and the perennials. We will only be planting half of the flowers today. We will also be digging out around the root balls of the 4 White Birch trees that will be moved. We want them to be loose in their holes so tomorrow we can just pop them out and move them.

The Neighbor, who is also a customer of ours, came by and told me, that she had a female wild turkey, sitting on 8 eggs and that I was to tell, all of the guys, not to disturb her, with our back pack blowers. She is very much into the animals, that visit her yard. Last year, she had a sign, telling everyone to not bother her "pet garden snake". I went over to look at the mother turkey, but it was hard to see her, as she was nestled under a Holly Tree, by her back steps. Of course there were signs and netting put up to protect her and I was not even allowed to take a picture, in case I disturbed her.

Finishing up in Southborough

We, went back to the home we started on Monday, to spray Round Up the second time and to finish up with the mulching. We finished up around 10 AM and went to a property three houses down the street to do a clean up and to mulch, with dark brown mulch.

We had cleaned this property up early in the spring and had edged all of the beds and now the annuals were in full bloom around the property. This makes mulching a bit of tricky, because you do not want to bury, any part of the flowers, in mulch.

This property is up a long winding driveway and it is surrounded by a tree forest. In the winter the deer herd, just loves to "munch" on the Rhododendron's, but they are rebounding very well at this point. Sometimes in the spring, when you look at the bushes, it looks like they will never recover from the damage, done by the deer, but nature always surprises us. I also noticed, a large brown toad, on the grass, so I helped him, by moving him into an area, next to the stone wall. We work with nature all of the time and we always respect, the animals we come across, except BUGS.

Bushes and Annuals in Wellesley

We went to Wellesley today, to work on an yearly job of planting many flats, of annual flowers and this year a new weeping red Japanese maple, as can be seen in the upper left picture. This property owner is very particular about the arrangement of the flowers, their color and variety. She goes to the nursery and pics them out and has them delivered. When we arrived I did not notice them, so I went and knocked on the door to see what was going on. The owner came out and said that all of the flowers were in the garage because of the frost warning the night before.

Wow, when she opened the garage door the entire floor area of one parking space was completely loaded with an assortment of very, very healthy flowers. Red, white and pink geraniums, white, purple and 2 shades of pink Impatient's and many, many others.

I had 3 workers with me today, because of the amount of work that had to be done, in one day. First, they weeded out the beds, then they planted the Japanese Weeper, as Rob and I went around placing the flowers, in the exact locations, the property owner wanted them. We did not finish planting the flowers until around 1:30PM. Then it was time for the guys, to mulch the entire property. I had to make a trip back to our shop in Holliston, to get another load of mulch, we ended up finishing up around 6PM, but we got it done. The owner called Rob, to thank him for the great deal of work we did and how wonderful her property looked. And that's what it is all about, making the customer happy. I will post another picture once the flowers have grown a bit more and are happy in their new home.

Soutborough Cleanup and Mulch

Today, we are doing a clean up at a property in Southborough, Massachusetts. The owner was not pleased with the work done last year, by another crew of ours and requested that I, come and do the clean up this year.

Rich and Guillerme are assisting me with this clean up. We also have to put down loam and seed the damaged lawn areas from the snowplows. The owners have us come once a year, for the cleanup and also to do the trimming/pruning of the bushes. Usually we do not do any pruning until the bushes have pushed out their new growth for the season and the flowering has stopped for the year.

Going up the very long driveway, in the picture above, you only see a small portion of it, we have to apply Round Up to the weeds in the mulch bed. We are going to apply the Round Up twice as we will not finish this project today. We only brought one truck load of mulch and this property requires two loads.

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.