Day 246: on further romping

Outside of our master bedroom there is what we call the "ventricle." It's not a full patio, but a small place of privacy outside of the bedroom door. It has a couple of hedge bushes and a bouganvillea bush which can provide further privacy. The foliage can also grow quite explosively and rapidly during seasons of significant rainfall, which we had this past spring.

Today I armed myself with clippers and tacked the jungle outside our door. Not counting breaks, I spent about an hour and a half first chopping down all the excessive growth, then using our handy wheeled trash can to haul the clippings out to the closest (and emptiest) dumpster. I took a picture when I was done and sent it to Himself.

Afterwards, I took a nice long shower, then prepared dinner. I found myself napping briefly after dinner, but I woke up to take a lap around the complex to make my activity goals for the day, along with getting the mail. I love the long warm Summer days, even when I have to tackle pruning. The temperatures are finally hitting their seasonal average - it was 81 today, and forecast to be in the high 80's at the start of the workweek - but the secret is the lower levels of humidity in the SoCal air. Comparatively speaking, it's a dry heat; anyone tired of the East Coast humidity is welcome to come and stay for awhile.

Plenty to do tomorrow, so I will stop here and assemble our second cat carrier.

Day 243: on romping in the patio

Today's focus was to trim the pepper tree in the patio away from the house. It seemed more intimidating than it actually turned out to be - you see, this tree has been cut back to the trunk several times, and within a year has grown crazy big again. With all of the Spring Rains, it grew crazier bigger than usual. It turns out, however, with the removal of a few choice branches, 90% of the work has been done. There are a few branches yet to be removed, and a bit trimmed off the top of a branch close to the unit, but we are pretty well there.

We emptied out our wheeled green trash can and put three loads' worth of foliage in it, then hauled each load out to the dumpsters. Actually, Himself did most of the cutting, I did most of the loading, and we hauled the trash can out together.

The reason we were playing out in the patio was because the fumigators need all the plants trimmed back from the unit by about a foot, otherwise they will get cranky and possibly charge us for the work they would have to do. (Yes, it's ass-backwards, but these are trying times.) The biggest challenge in trimming back the pepper tree is trying not to annoy the bees that are pollinating the current generation of flowers on said tree right now. We inadvertently came close a couple of times, but they settled down as we went about our business. I'm pretty sure this means they aren't the infamous "Killer Bees" that wreak havoc on unsuspecting humans.

There is a bigger challenge looming, though, in the form of the bouganvillea bush outside our bedroom door. Unlike the pepper tree, that plant has long nasty thorns that will gouge you if you're not careful. We will be much more careful around it.

For the record, both plants survived the fumigation that we underwent in 2001, even though the bouganvillea looked like it had given up the ghost. Hardy plants, we have!

Tomorrow we are most likely taking a breather from patio work, as I have to get a second carrier for Inkblot, and see if we can find him a harness. I also have a Union meeting I am planning to attend in the afternoon/evening, as they are going to be talking about possible changes to the IHSS program that are being considered on the Federal Level. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" seems to be lost on our Politicians these days...

Anyway, I feel like I will be investing some more time in pruning and such in the patio post-fumigation, when it might be a bit easier to tend to the plants.