Mondays–V4E29–Sanford No More

The Great Hunter has been very busy these last two weeks. He began by first taking down a landscape timber wall he’d put up…sometime in the past…10 years?…15 years? I’m not sure when or even why we put it up, but it had been up there long enough it had started to rot.

I tried making it a flower garden. The first mistake I made was planting some ivy and before I knew it, the ivy was taking over everything. After several years, I dug that out and I tried some flowers, iris (which worked fairly well), mums (which didn’t work that well) and I even tried some pumpkins and watermelons, (which didn’t work well either.)

When the Great Hunter began cutting up the landscape timbers, I decided to burn some of them in our fire pit. I spent a couple of hours burning the timbers and smelling the acrid smoke. I just thought the smoke smelled bad; what I didn’t know was that it was toxic. Apparently, I breathed enough of it through my nose that I developed sinusitis. For several days I kept smelling the acrid smoke, in my chair and in the car, so I thought it was just residual smoke from my clothes. I tried Febreeze, but I could still smell it. It wasn’t until I was standing in the library at the school where I volunteer and I realized I could still smell the acrid smoke that I knew the smell was in my head or my nose or my brain. And now a week later, I can still smell it, but not as much.

After The Great Hunter dug out and cut up all the timbers, he had to shovel all the dirt to even out the hill. That was a real chore. He tends to get started on a project and then not wanting to stop. I had to keep reminding him that if he had a heart attack from working too hard I’d have to finish the job myself and then he would really be in trouble. (Just kidding.)

Now it’s done and it looks great. I’ve sown some grass seed, not that I’m expecting much of anything to happen with it, after all, it’s almost November. Next up…

The next project was a win for both of us. It’s illegal in our city to put any type of vehicle on the side of your house unless it is on a permanent pad. We’ve always had a problem with what to do with our trailer and four-wheeler. I had an “ah hah” moment a couple of years ago and suggested we enclose the side yard with a privacy fence with a gate in front of the house. It’s worked out really well and now The Great Hunter has a place to put his trailer and whatever else he might want to put over there and I don’t have to see them (and neither can anyone else.)

Recently he’s been talking about bringing our camper home from our camping lot so he could work on it. The problem again is, what would we do with it? His solution? Just push the trailer into the backyard. Wrong. Not gonna happen. I have to keep reminding him that he’s not Sanford and we aren’t going to live in a junk yard.

Walking around the backyard the other day I had an “ah hah” moment. I came up with the idea of extending the privacy fence along the house 8′ into the backyard and enclosing the back of the side yard. The Great Hunter would have ample space for his “things” and also out of sight!