Rain again..........

Wednesday, as soon as I got up and looked out it, was raining again, this time I called Rob and asked if we were going to be working, no need to spend all that time driving and also, spending on the gas and it was his decision to not work. The reason for all of this is due to the economic condition's we are in now, in past years we would have been working.

Thursday, Guillerme and I are off to get some fungicide, at the John Deere/LESCO distributor in Marlborough. We will be applying this to a lawn latter in the day. But we start off in Southborough at Rob's house as he wanted us to spray round up on his crushed stone driveway, there is always weeds in it. The picture on the left is of Rob's pool that I did all of the brick masonry a few years ago.

We, then went to quite a few properties, to spray for different bugs, that were attacking bushes, roses and trees. The customers had noticed these and requested that they be erradicated. The place we went to around noon time to put down the fungicide on the red thread fungus, in the yard is pictured on the right. It is a tough lawn to work on as it has a very high water table and is always having some kind of problem wth the lawn. Grass just does not like growing, in those conditions and as I have been mentioning in the post's it has been raining more than usual here. the weatherman put a chart up showing that we have had 22 days of below temperatures and the last 16 have had some sort of persipitation. Very unusuall weather for this neck of the woods.

Babson project

Today, I went with Guillerme and Rich to work on a project for Babson College, by one of the dormitories. It was a large brick building and on the backside of the building was an entrance area that had just gotten old in appearance and function. This happens quite a bit in landscaping, bushes and trees outgrow the area the have been in after awhile and we have to remove the old and plant some new to freshen up the appearance of the area.

The first thing we did was to remove about 18 old Juniper bushes, that were planted in the front of some PJM's. We first cut off all of the branches, then used a chainsaw to cut the stumps down a bit, leaving about 6 inches above ground. Guillerme and Rich then dug up the stump's. We loaded all of this onto a dump truck and Rich took off to dump the brush at a place in Framingham, where we can dump stuff and he also brought back 2 yards of very wet loam. The place in Framingham, recycles brush into mulch, any composted material is turned into compost, nothing much is left for dumps, it is always recycled, even the pavement, concrete, blue stone, brick and pallets, that we return there.

Rich made 2 more trips to that place, in Framingham, for a total of 6 yards of loam, which for the most part Guillerme and I spread in the area's that will be planted with Rhody,s 40 or so Stella Dora Lilly's, some hosta's and assorted plants to fill in the new area. I thought I was going to come back the next day and would take picture's of the completed project but it rained the next day.

So I will leave you with some more pictures of flowers. A pink Mountain Laurel and a very red geranium.

More Rain, this is getting depressing.....

Well it is raining again today, so I went in to the shop first thing this morning to do some maintenance on the PERMAGREEN spreader, it was in desperate need of it, because of it being used for more than 40 hours and it was all done in moist conditions and of course Guillerme, flipped it over twice. No one was at the shop except Rob, and he made the decision that there would be no work for the day. So, it was back to my place to work on my home business. I had some CRAVE energy drink, so I would have plenty of energy. When I got home, I worked for about 8 hours straight, which is a good thing, I needed to get caught up on some Computer work.

So for my pictures for today, I am leaving you with some White Astillbe, Pink Mountain Laurel and a beautiful red/pink/yellow flower.

Rain again.....

Today the forecast is for rain, so I am going solo, to finish up the route and just put down fertilizer and not spray anything due to the weather. Guillerme is going off with the other guys to help get a lawn sodded before the rain arrives. I only had 3 houses to finish and the one I went to in Holliston, had these very interesting wild flowers, so I stopped to take a picture of the field, in front of the property, I was working on and a close up of these beautiful, wild flowers. Don't know what they are, but they caught my attention.

When I was done, it was raining so I went to Wellesley to look for Rob. When I found him he wanted me to go back to the shop and get the lareger trailor, and go to Framingham and pick up one of the mowers that was "supposed" to be repaired and bring it to another repair guy to get it worked on. Well this turned into a long afternoon. The first mechanic for some reason waas very reluctant to let me have it ( it took me over 1 1/2 hours to get out of there). I did not mention it was going to another repair place. It was then another 45 minutes to get to hte new place and another hour to get bcak to the shop. What an afternoon of driving around in the rain.

Baby Deer sighting......

Guillerme and I were off in pursuit of finishing up the fertilization route today as we had our best day of the week, a "little sunshine". We worked in Holliston, Sherborn and Wellesley. When we were in Holliston we went down the driveway to the property and a young, white tail deer, was in the field having a bite to eat. Guillerme told me to take a picture and I snapped this one before he headed over to the woods on the left. We finished up the day there as we put down 9 bags of fertilizer and about 40 gallons of weed spray. Its a very large lawn area.

At one of the properties I was able to take the other picture which is a Stella Dora day Lilly, which are my favorite flowers this time of year. This one is a light yellow, but my favorite is the ones that have some orange in them, hopefully I will get a chance to take a picture of that variety this coming week.

Dumping the PERMAGREEN spreader......ouch

Today, Guillerme and I continued on with the fertilization route, which is taking a long time to complete due to bad weather and also because Rob, keeps giving us side projects to work on.

I had to call Rob, who was working with another crew in Wellesley to ask about this one property he had left off of the fertilizing list. When I got ahold of him he told me that he was at a house, where the lady who owned the property came out and told him her daughter had the Swine Flu and was being quarintined in the house. Rob, laughed because the lady was trying to be nice and brought out some drinks for the guys, but they would not go near them. hopefully no one contacted anything form that job.

We were going along smoothly when we came to the property picture here and as you can see on the left side there is a steep hill. Before Guillerme, started I walked him over to the hill and explained how to use the machine on it. But as we all know, young guys just don't listen. So, as I was watching him, with the spreader, all of a sudden he flipped it over and over, spilling all of the fertilizer onto the lawn. I walked over to check on Guillerme, a bit shaken to say the least, and to get the machine up righted. I then had him clean up all of the fertilizer and use a back pack blower to blow off the area before it killed the lawn. I started up the machine and smoke just billowed out of it, for about 10 minutes but everything else seemed to be working, so I completed the job.

We went to the next property a condo complex in Millis and when I went to use the machine it was hard to start and the engine would conk out after a few minutes. So I had to call the guy who does the maintenance on it and he walked me through how to repair it. That save Rob, quite a bit of money. What a day......

Clouds, Rain, Mist all week

Here in New England we have been in a very cloudy, misty, foggy, rainy period for the last 3 weeks and it looks like it is going o continue this week as well. So my picture for the post's this week will reflect the weather conditions. The weather pattern's usually last for about 6 weeks, hope it is wrong because as I write this it is the first day of Summer.

Our first task of the day, is to go over to a very long time customer and transplant some bushes and weed out a large perennial flower bed. This was a request from the wife, as a gift, for her husbands 88th birthday. Guillerme and I started with the transplanting first and as we dug the first hole we found some 10 turtle eggs, we were very careful and did not break any of them. We showed them to the lady who lived there and she took them to show to her grandchildren who were coming over and to her daughter who is a veternarian. (You can see them in the photo on the right) We went through one rain shower, where we had to wait it out, by sitting in the truck until it was over. this seems to be a daily activity lately.

We finished up around 2 pm and then went back to the shop to load up the trailor and what fertilizer we had along with some broadleaf pray as we were still on out fertilization route. Our first stop was at the John Deere/LESCO store to get another pallet (40 bags) of 24-5-11, fertilizer and some more boadleaf weed spray and a bottle of SYTHE. I had not seen the SYTHE for a few years so I bought some. We were only able to finish 5 properties before we finished up at around 6:30pm. One of the properties in Southborough is pictured on the left.

Quick Trim for a graduation party in Southborough

It was raining to hard in the morning to go out and do fertilizing and spraying of the broad leaf weeds, so I slept in and went into the shop around 10:30 AM. I went in because, the Permagreen power Spreader needed some maintenance done to it and also because I was out of fertilizer and needed to make a trip up to LESCO in Marlboro to get more.

But when I called Rob, he told me that a property owner in Southborough, was having a graduation party, for their daughter on Saturday and it needed to be trimmed up and weeded to look nice for the occassion. So he was happy that I came in and he called Guillerme and Fabio to come in and help me out.

This property takes a full day with 3 guys to trim and weed. So I explained this to the owner and he just wanted us to work out in the backyard, because that is where they had a tent set up, for the occasion and that was where everyone would be hanging out during the party. Good thing I had some of my CRAVE energy drink, to give me the energy for the afternoon workload. It just keeps me going all afternoon and there is no "crash or jitters" like I would have with coffee.

So we spent about 5 hours "fluffing up" the back beds, by weeding and trimming the bushes and then raking out the mulch so it looked like it was just ut down. Fabio did a little shearing of some bushes and I did the majority of the hand clipping that is required on the other ornamental bushes. The owners were very happy that we came and did a great job for them and they asked that we return as soon as we could to finish the job.

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.