Rust ~ Post No. 10 (And A Few More Things)

Rusty yard art found at my friends' house.

I have a fair amount of stuff to decorate my yard with as well, but first I want to clean up the place as best I can. The tractor guy was here yesterday, grading my front and backyards. I'm not sure it's called grading, he got rid of the weeds he cut last month, using that part of the tractor. What do I know about tractors? City woman moving to the country, that's me. There used to be a TV show about that, Green Acres, I think it was called. A long, long time ago. What I do know is that my front and backyards are now just dirt. I'm so glad I don't have to rake weeds like I did last summer. 

 How I spent my summer in 2016.

While it was good for me to be out there, for weeks on end, raking and building up my strength, this year, I have other things on my mind. There's still a lot of junk and other stuff out on the land. Most of it from previous owners. But some that I'm responsible for as well.

Closeup of last summer's weeds.

The tractor guy asked if he could take some of my scrap metal in payment for his help. I was really happy at the prospect of getting rid of some more stuff, so I said OK, take whatever you want. Except, I said, for these, and showed him the items I want to keep for yard ornaments. While he liked the idea of rusty yard art, he thought his wife would not be too happy about all the stuff he was bringing home. I told him I knew the feeling, having had a husband who couldn't say no to anything either. 

I am happily discovering how many people there are in this world who cannot say NO to stuff! 

Finally, fluffmonster Samson went to the groomers yesterday. It took over three hours because he hasn't been there for a long while. I visited my BIL Glenn and his wife, while I waited. And I stopped by Jiffy Lube to ask them to get rid of a lot of corrosion from my battery. Which they did, so that's good. 

White as the driven snow, I tell my boy. Wish it would snow some, says he. At least he has his tummy shaved now and most of the undercoat gone, and his pants, or whatever the fur on his legs is called, cut way back. 

He couldn't jump in the jeep, so the tractor guy helped. I notice a weakness in his legs, much like mine, getting up is becoming harder. So we will walk more and eat less. And tomorrow his Prednisone will be reduced from two pills to one pill per day, half in the morning, half in the evening. I hope that will make him feel better. 

Home from our walk, we lie down on the cool tile and take a long, long snooze. Ah, it's a dog's life, after all.

Bragging Alert!

I've been on a mission for the past week: To cut back the, by now, ridiculously high weeds and grass on the southwest side of the house. When Rachael was here, she did most of the front yard and a section by the road before the lawnmower ran out of juice. I don't know what I would have done without her help. My husband will be here this weekend and I hope he can do some weed whacking at the back of the house while he is here. He has no idea of what I have accomplished this week, but I'll tell him before he comes up. It was one of those things where I thought he wouldn't want me to do anything for fear I would hurt my shoulder or ruin the healing process. Or he would worry.

Last week, I saw a reminder in the local paper:

This said that on June 9, the county fire department would begin their checks of rural properties for compliance with fire safety standards. It also said that altitudes above 4,000 feet were not critical on June 9, so they would start checking at the lower elevations. (We are at 4,141 feet per Google Earth)

(California fire safety standards require that rural lots are mowed to stubble within 30 feet of a home and that fuel matter is reduced for the next 70 feet. Tree limbs should be cut to four to six feet from the ground.)

Looking at my yard on June 9, this is a small portion of what I saw. The grass definitely had started to turn yellow.

No stubble here. With no help in sight, I decided to charge up my electric lawnmower and see what I could do.

This good old Craftsman and I worked for about half an hour most mornings this past week, cutting back the tall weeds, something I had thought I perhaps couldn't/shouldn't do with my broken shoulder. But I love to mow and had been itching to get out there. So I thought I would try…doing a little and resting a lot. I used my right arm and my stomach to push and it went OK.

By June 15, I had cleared 30 feet and more, maybe 50 feet of the very tall weeds on the southwest side of the house and mowed the shorter grass in the front yard that Rachael mowed when she was up here.

                             

I took these pictures in the evening because the shadows were so strong in the morning. Looking at all that I did, made me feel both satisfied and proud…hence the bragging alert of the post title. Yeah! I did all that, kind of thing! It hasn't hurt me physically and it certainly has given me peace of mind. I'm not afraid of anything here, except fires. (And, of course, my new fear of tripping over dogs.)

This area of the front yard still needs to be mowed. Then it's on to the back, where, thankfully, the grass and weeds are not as bad and thick as these.

What's Going On In My Yard?

I read that rain is coming this weekend, so I took the lawnmower out for the first time and cut a little bit of grass. Then I walked around the yard with my camera, looking for buds, weeds, wildflowers, and things that need to be done around the place.

This tree has some strong and healthy-looking buds.

My baby cottonwood is growing, but I didn't see any large buds. This seems to happen every year. I'll wonder if it's still alive, then before I know it, both cottonwoods are full of green leaves. So I won't worry this year, just wait for it to take its time.

I see the beginning of flowers inside the buds on my lilac bush. Unfortunately, it has never bloomed since the first year we lived here. I don't know if it's the late frost we always seem to get or if there is another reason. Our town is famous for its lilacs, so at least I get to see and smell them there.

These are my daffodils that may go the way of the lilacs. But they look really healthy, so I hope there will be some flowers. I count both lilacs and daffodils among my most favorite flowers, so I would be thrilled if some appeared this spring.  Then I wonder if there will be a blogger feature soon where you can rotate clockwise to avoid this upside down photo?

My front yard will soon be covered with these pretty lavender flowers.

This is wild fire country and a dead branch on the ground, close to the house is not a good idea. And this reminds me that I started to trim this juniper tree a while ago and maybe it's time to finish the job.

   

When I first moved here, I got two wonderful books from friends, Weeds of the West and National Audubon Society Field Guide to California. I use them a lot in the spring because I really, really want to know what all these wildflowers are called. I'm not always successful in finding the weeds/wildflowers in these books and it seems to me that you need to know the name first. Or you flip through a lot of pages and sometimes you're lucky, other times not. The same goes for Google...at least as far as I know. If you don't have a name, you can't look it up or easily find it. Any suggestions will be much appreciated by me.                             

Maybe I have a secret dream to be like Edith Holden, the Edwardian lady, who wrote such a wonderful diary of her observations of plant and wildlife. Edith painted all the flowers and animals she encountered on her walks around the English countryside and wrote about them in her diary. She knew the name of every single flower, of course. Love this book!

As far as wildlife goes, the ground squirrels are busy; I've seen a few rabbits, but not much else. Today, I saw two small coveys of quail again – I haven't seen them for a while. I'm waiting for my favorite bird to come back, the Road Runner. I just love to watch them run around the yard, catching insects and snakes. Today I also saw the first white butterfly – there are so many of them here in the summer and they appear to be following us when I walk the dogs. Of course, that couldn't be true, but they fly next to us as we walk down the road in the summer.