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.

More "Odds and Ends"

Friday, Rich, Guillerme and I went back to the property in Needham, where we had started the large cleanup and trim job before it rained. We finished the cleanup and trimming and finally got around to edging the beds and putting down 10 yards of brown mulch. It was not enough to finish the yard so we will be back on Saturday to finish up and then next week, we will "slice seed the entire front lawn.

Saturday, my plans changed and I had to go with Guillerme, to mow the lawn at the property that is in the above picture. (Those are the wolf tree's, I spoke about in a prior post, you can see how their size, just dwarfs the Dogwood that is in full bloom.) Rich and another guy went back to finish the mulch job.

Guillerme and I, then headed over to the home that is used by the President of Babson College. We had to mow the lawn and go through all of the beds and weed and trim so everything looked very nice for this week's activities. This is a big week at Babson, and there is going to be a large tent, in the area of the blue stone patio, which is in the first picture on the left.

Odds and Ends Day

Today it is very overcast and misting out. A lot of the guys did not show up for work today so I am off doing "odds and ends" project solo.

The first thing, I did was go to a property and remove the Deer Fence, we installed last year at a property in Holliston. We had put this up around a lot of Canadian Hemlocks, that the deer just love to munch on during the winter.

Next, I to the President of Olin College's home to reset some bricks in the side walk. They had fallen into a hole, a mouse had made over the winter.

After that, I went to a home in Holliston to remove the mold that was growing between the blue stone walkway and put in some new stone dust. You can see the picture above and you can also see the weeping cherry in the background, that I had posted pictures of earlier, but now the flowers have fallen off of it.

I called Rich at noontime and he and I went and finished up the day by starting to mulch a condominium complex in Medfield.

Trip to renew my Driver's License

Well, today it was raining in the morning, so I decided to come to work a bit late because I had to renew my drivers license. Not a fun thing to do here in Massachusetts's, but I needed to get it done before my birthday this month. I tried to do it online, but I received a message, from the RMV, that my pic was taken more than 9 years ago and needed to have a new one taken at their office.

The Registry of Motor Vehicle's used to send out a letter informing you that it was time to renew but the state no longer does this. Why? So they can charge you a fine, for not doing so. The also do not notify you any longer when your plate registration is in need of renewing.

I am finding out more and more about how the state of Massachusetts is taxing it's residents to death, raising taxes, not notifying you, going after small businesses (like landscapers) every day. I guess we are back to being TAXACHUSETTS, but now they are being very sneaky about it. The police are out in force stopping everyone, so that they can have more money for the cities and towns in Massachusetts.

The trip to the RMV, was a lot more enjoyable than my last trip. New technology has sped up the process and I was in and out in 20 minutes. I also was able to sign up to Vote, what a great trip.

Landscape update of New Customer Property

We are redo the landscape at a new property today in Needham. It is also going to be raining soon, so we will not finish today. Rich and Guillerme are assisting me on this project. The property is next to the home the President of Olin College occupies.

The new owners moved in at the end of last year and we very busy getting settled in and put off this project until now. It is a big redo of the landscape, which the previous owners had let go for a few years.

Before it rains we are going to start the job by blowing off the lawn of winter debris as we are going to be "slice seeding" the entire front yard next week. Next, I started to trim back the ornamental bushes at the front of the house. Once Rich and Guillerme caught up with me they followed behind me and raked out the beds, cut down 3 trees that had fallen over due to the snow and lack of proper maintenance. We only have time to do the front bed and part of the side beds when the rain comes. The guys will only work for so long and then it is time to call it quits for the day. We will be back soon to continue.

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.