60F and sunny @ 11:00, heading up to around 65F for the day's high. Overnight low was 40F.
Occasional showers this afternoon gives way to a more steady rain into the night.
We're several inches to the good on rainfall year-to-day ...
Coffee made and tasting mighty good if I do say so myself, Woman still in the sack (as of an hour ago)
Redbud seedlings made it through the frost yesterday unscathed.
Got a batch of peppermint extract/water juice mixed up and put in the 1 gallon sprayer.
Relocated cedar log to short saw horses and quite a bit of whittling done on it. Need to get out the chainsaw and trim off the spots where the branches were.
Outer layers seem to be getting eaten by lots of tiny black ants and pill bugs. Heartwood looks pretty nice though.
Thinking about ordering a curved draw knife so I can get into the concave areas that the straight draw knife can't reach.
Woman went over and got Cub out of the barn.
Got live trap baited and deployed.
Finally dried up enough that I was able to mow down the 2 strips out front where it had been too wet. Grass was so tall I had to mow it with the deck set @ 4" height. Still need to go over that again to get it down with the rest of the front lawn.
After that I pulled the MoJack out and put the Cub up on it, thinking that I'd clean the underside of the deck off and change out the blades for the set I just sharpened. Turns out deck wasn't as bad as I had feared, but that still took better than an hour to do. Hard on my neck laying under there and holding my head up.
Blades also weren't all that bad and it seemed to be cutting fine so I left those alone for now.
Hopper feeder refilled, plus scattered some for ground feeders. Also refilled the two suet feeders.
Woman worked loading cedar shavings into the dump cart and gathering up the grass I was scraping off while I was cleaning underside of deck that and then started on working on some of Her plants.
Her ornamental blue grass, which was in a pot out front, made it through winter and She worked on getting that repotted, along with this vining plant which had somehow taken hold in the bed next to the front steps.
After I got the deck cleaned off I mowed down the rest of the front lawn (85%) with the deck set at 2.75". That substantially reduced the dandelion flower population ... and will hopefully keep the grass at bay for at least a little while ...
Woman ran down to the corner and grabbed another 3 1/2 gallons of gas for the Cub, I refueled when She got back.
Once mowing was done I grabbed that sprayer with the peppermint extract/water mixture and headed around back and sprayed a small portion of strawberries that we had covered with weed block fabric (because with were short on netting) to keep the deer off of them. Also sprayed one redbud, some hosta, the Stella D'Oro's and day lilies on the east side ... just to see how effective this mixture might be on keep the deer off them.
Woman commented though that She hasn't really seen the deer since I took those couple of pot shots at them a little while back.
After spraying I headed back up to the house and started putting thing away, was only around 19:00 but it had really started to cool off and I was tired.
Ten Day looking pretty good at this point: after the cold front comes through tonight we'll have a day of cooler weather with a high of only 50, then mostly highs in the 60's and 70's and even one day where they are calling for a high of 81F.
Agenda for today:
Get the glyphosate spraying done this morning before rain comes in later this afternoon.
Unload wire remesh panels and mulch from van.
Mow down those two strips of tall grass in front.
Maybe some mowing down here around the house where the grass is getting tall.
Gather up straw from the strawberries.
Then probably back up to the shop once the rain arrives.
Some photos of the blossoms here. A few volunteers, dogwood on the left, not sure what the pink in the middle is, white one on the right is probably an apple of some variety:
Around back:
Japanese Ornamental Cherry even made it through winter ... despite being gnawed on and picked at by the deer:
Looking like the tulip tree didn't fare quite as well however ...
Hope everyone is having a decent Tuesday ...
