Spraying Nutsedge

Guillerme and I went to a property in Needham, ( pic on bottom ) because the owner wanted us to get ride of the Nut sedge growing in his lawn. This happens every year and the owner just loves having a beautiful lawn. The week before I went over by myself to spray the broad leaf weeds. This lawn is usually the best one we take care off. It is because the owner is very much involved in the maintenance of it.

After we took care of the Nut sedge, we went over to another home in Wellesley, ( pic on top ) to finish up some work I had started a few weeks ago. Guillerme weeded a rubble rock hill and then sprayed Round Up on what was left over. I finished trimming the trees that were overgrown by the tennis court, finished trimming a weeping cherry, that I did not finish when we came to trim this year, because a mother cardinal had a nest in it. Guillerme also used the weed whacker to clear out an area that had become overgrown with weeds.

Replace Bushes - Weed & Mulch

Today I went with Guillerme to a property in Holliston to remove a Magnolia tree that had been devastated by Scale and replace it with a new yellow Cyprus.

When we got there and looked at the tree which we had sprayed in the spring, the branches were all black. The surrounding bushes, flowers and even the air conditioning unit all had the same black stuff on them. I did not even want to touch the branches with bare hands.

After we removed and planted that one we went into the back yard and removed 2 hydrangea trees that just did not fit in the small area that they were planted in. We replaced them with 2 small cone shaped Ilex.

After that Guillerme and I weeded the entire property. I went to Framingham to dump the material we had collected from the tree removal and then went back to the shop where we had enough red pine bark mulch to use around the new plantings, about one yard. We have a skid steer that we use for construction projects and it was available that day for me to load the truck.
We finished up around 5 PM and headed back to the shop.

Fluff up a home in Needham

Today I went with Guillerme to a property over in Needham, to weed, do some hand trimming and as we would find out later trim up a few Yews. This is a very large property, you can see part of the back yard in the picture on the above left. It is around 7 acres and had not had any attention to it since the spring and needed a little fluff up to look nice. This is also the home of the grandmother of the boy who is getting married that I posted about last week.

When we got there I noticed that the large yews in the front of the property for some reason had not been trimmed this year. I called Rob, who was at a property close by and he brought over the power shears for Guillerme top trim them up. I went around hand clipping the smaller bushes and continued with the weeding of all of the beds going around the house and a few more in the back yard.

We finished up a bit early and headed back to the shop. It was a good idea as now that the kids are back in school the traffic has increased dramatically, which just makes for a longer day. Oh well its the weekend.

Bluestone Stepping Stone Path

Today, I went with Guillerme, to a property in Wellesley to do a quick trim job. The owner did not want us spending a lot of time there, so along with Rob, we did what we could do in 2 hours.

Next Guilleme and I went over to a property in Wellesley and removed a dogwood tree, that was planted in the spring but had the leaves on the bottom half of the tree wilt and turn brown. This was due to a lack of water, as we dug out the tree roots, the loam was like talcum powder, very, very dry. When the upper part of the tree was cut, we could see that the branches still had life in them. After removing the tree we planted the new dogwood in the same location.

Next we had to go to the side of the house and install (20) 18 inch by 24 inch Blue Stone paver's to create a pathway from the front yard to the back. When we had finished I went and dumped all of the trimmings from the first job and the old dogwood at the re-cycling facility in Framingham and returned with 2 yards of loam to fill in the low spots around the Blue Stone. I had to then go back to the shop and get 1 1/2 yards of matching pine bark mulch to finish up the job. You can see the birthday boy, Guillerme washing down the stones, in the picture above.

Solo - Odds and Ends Work

It is the beginning of the month so it is time for me to do some "odds and ends" solo work. These are all relatively small projects that customers call and request help with. The first job I did, was to go over to a property in Framingham and re-trim the bushes because the customer wanted more of his bushes trimmed away that had been done earlier.

Next, I went to a property in Holliston to weed the beds, weed whack the front walk and back patio. I then had to spray "round up" on the patio and walkway to hopefully take care of the weeds for this year. the customer is also hoping that it is the last time we have to come over and weed his beds. We are getting close to the end of the season, in fact it looks like we are going to have an early fall. The leaves on the trees are already turning yellowish and appear to be life less.

Next, I went to a property in Sherborn to finish trimming one bush along the side of the house. We had encountered a very large hornets nest and Guillerme got stung, when we were there working on the property earlier in the season. Even after we had sprayed the nest and physically removed it, the very unhappy returning bees were not happy to find there home gone.

I ended up both Tuesday and Wednesday at a property in Wellesley, to finish up what had been requested by the owner earlier in the season. He also requested that I come over after 10 AM so as not to disturb the guys playing tennis on the courts in the back yard. The 2 pictures above, are of the gardens at the back of the house and around the indoor pool. the courts are behind the gardens.

I had to "tip back" the white pines that grow in a row, along the tennis court fence, on one side, and then remove the top spire that had some evidence of the "Pine borer" in it. I then
"up-limbed" the trees that are growing along the fence, in back of the courts. The tree branches are growing over the courts and needed to be cut back.

As I was working the owner came home and added some more work to my project list so I will not finish today and will have to return next week. More weed whacking, hand weeding and spraying Round up in those areas. Oh well back next week with some of the guys for some help.

Clean up and Mulch for a Wedding Reception

We had to go over to this home in Dover Massachusetts because one of the son's is getting married and the property needed to be cleaned up for the wedding reception that is going to be held there. the work was a lot more than Rob anticipated for some reason. He thought it could all be weeded, re-edged and mulched all in one day with a 3 man crew. I explained to Rob, that it was a 2 day job for a 3 man crew and that it was going to be about 20 yards of mulch.

It is a beautiful property, that is kinda like a peninsula and is surrounded by the infamous Charles River. (you all remember that song) It is large about 6 acres and it has some large beds that needed to be weeded before we could start mulching.

Here again, we had to dead head flowers, cut off the flower shoots on the hosta's and remove yellow leaves from the Lilly's. Guillerme and I worked on just weeding from 8 AM to 5:15 PM. Rich who came with us went and got some mulch after lunch and mulched some of the beds for the afternoon by himself. We are using a brown pine mulch and it will look very nice around all of the flowers and shrubs when we are done on Tuesday. I will have to get some better pictures to show the size of the property. I will do another post next week when we have finished this up.

What a wicked "web"

Fabio, Guillerme and I went to this home in Wellesley to continue weeding and fluffing up properties. We all were working on the rock garden in the front of the house and I noticed this beautiful, very symmetrical spiders web. I had to hide under one bush to take the picture because the sun was shinning in the wrong direction to get a head on shot.

Another sign that fall is quickly coming, was the apple tree's out back had nice red Macintosh apples ready to pick and eat. I think the guys had an apple each time they passed the tree. They left quite a few on the ground for the deer that frequent the back yard. If the guys did not eat them they would have gone to waste and that would have been a shame.

Some of the bushes that had been planted early in the spring had died and rob went to Lovell's nursery to get replacements. It appears that the irrigation system has been shut off for some reason. the owner was not home so we did not have access to the control panel for the irrigation system to check out what was going on. We finished up at 5 PM and headed back to the shop.

Fluffing up a few properties

Guillerme and I started to work on this property yesterday, but we were only there for a few hours. Today I have Guillerme and Fabio to help me out. Fabio is another guy who is turning out to be a very good "detail" worker, again they are hard to find.

As we were about 2 hours into the job of wedding and fluffing up the beds, the mowing crew showed up and mowed the property. They also mow 5 other properties that are off campus but used by Babson higher ups.

Here as in the other properties we are starting the process of dead heading the flowers and removing the yellow leaves, especially from the Lilly's and Iris's. Some of the annuals here needed to be completely removed, especially from the planters.

The Presidents wife wanted new Chrysanthemums, planted for some upcoming gatherings, that are going to be held at the property. This part of the project was handed over to Rob, who seems to be the pot planter this season.

Late Season Trim Job

The season is starting to wind down. The leaves on the Chestnut Trees are curling up, the Swamp Maples are starting to turn red and orange. I think we are in for a early fall this season.

We went to this property to trim the bushes and weed and make it look nice. The property had nothing done to it since the beginning of the season when it was cleaned up and mulched.

Guillerme helped me out on this and he is turning into a very good "detail" worker which is hard to find.

As we went along doing our work, we started the process of dead heading all of the flower blooms and removing the yellow branches from the flowers. The season is coming to an end and the flowers and tress are telling us that. Most everything, lawns, bushes, trees and flowers are starting to look lifeless and a bit yellow.

We finished this up around 2:30 PM and then headed over to to the same type of work at the property used by the President of Babson College

Mowing before storm

A hurricane named Danny is predicted to come close enough to Massachusetts that we will be experiencing heavy rain on Saturday and Sunday.
So Rob, has decided that he wants a second mowing crew to go out and finish up all of the mowing for the week by Friday.

I have not gone on a mowing route in many many years and it was like being in a time warp all day.
I used this day to train Guillerme on using both of the mowing machines we had with us. A walk behind hydro 36 inch mower and a hydro 52 inch stand on mower. Fabio, who was also with us was already familiar with both machines.

It ended up being a fun day, where I could share stories with the guys about how it was when I first started and all of the mowing machines were walk behind and were belt driven. We were finished around 4:40 and went back to the shop and the guys washed the trucks and mowers
before the rain came in.

The picture above is of what the sky looked like at 4:00 pm from the last house we mowed.