Skip to main content

Yardwork

So, June was the month of in-the-house projects, what with all the painting and the rearranging and the half-finished shower (which, according to all the experts I've consulted, needs a real plumber to finish). I made an executive decision that July would be the external projects month, so I can get used to living in my new space without going crazy about the mess.

Saturday was the first big yard project, tackled by my tenants, and it went pretty well so far: the japanese maple in the front yard has been trimmed back so it looks less like it has mange; the rhododendron bushes have been trimmed back on the front and side of the house so they're no longer taking over the space, most of the bushes along the fenceline in fron have been trimmed back to reasonable levels, and the electric hedge trimmers I obtained meant this all got done in about an hour and a half (including mowing the yard and spreading some anti-moss stuff to clear off the sidewalk and side-of-the-house pathway. There's still a ton of work to do, including getting started on moving the gigantic brushpile caused by all of this work, and doing any sort of work in the back yard, but the front of the house looks much, much better than it did on Friday.

Of course, what we discovered today when it warmed up was that there was a wasp's nest (or possibly a bee's nest) in the japanese maple and that trimming back everything really stirred them up. I spent most of the day looking through the glass and wondering if they'd be able to find a way into the house, which is terrifying for me, what with being horribly allergic to stings. At dusk, when things started to cool off again and the bees went back into sleep mode, my tenant attacked the nest with some horrible chemicals and it appears to have taken care of everything. I guess we'll see when it heats up again.

I've pulled rank and am now working the early shift, so it's off to bed early for me, at least for the summer.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Organizing And You: Lessons from Labor History

    I made a joke on Twitter a while ago: Do I need to post the Thomas M Comeau Organizing Principles again? https://t.co/QQIrJ9Sd3i — Jerome Comeau says Defund The Police (@Heronymus) July 15, 2021 and it recently came back up because a member of my family got their first union job and was like "every job should be offering these sorts of benefits" and so I went ahead and wrote down what I remember of what my dad told me. My father had many jobs, but his profession was basically a labor union organizer, and he talked a lot about the bedrock foundation items needed to be serious about organizing collective action. Here's what I remember.    The Thomas M. Comeau Principles of Organizing -- a fundamental list for finding and building worker solidarity from 50 years of Union Involvement. This list is not ranked; all of the principles stated herein are coequal in their importance. Numbering is a rhetorical choice, not a valuation. 1) Be good at your job. Even in an at-will
Post a Comment
Read more

Money and Happiness as a fungible resource

Money really does buy happiness. Anyone who tells you differently has a vested interest in keeping you poor, unhappy, or both. I know this because I grew up on the ragged edge of poor, and then backed my way into a career in IT, which is where the modern world keeps all the money that isn't in Finance. So I am one of the extreme minority of Generation X that actually had an adulthood that was markedly more financially stable than my parents. And let me tell you: money really does buy happiness. To be clear: at 45 years old, I'm now in a relationship and a period of my life where our household is effectively double-income, no kids. I live in the city, but I own a house, and can only afford to do that because of our combined income. We also have two cars -- one new, one used (though neither of them is getting driven very much these days) -- and we have a small discretionary budget every month for things like videogames, books, and the like. What my brother used to call DAM -- Dic
Post a Comment
Read more

Activision, Blizzard, Game development, IT, and my personal role in all of that.

 I'm pretty sure if you spend any sort of time at all on Twitter and/or spend any sort of time playing videogames, you are by now at least aware of the lawsuit brought forth by the State of California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing versus Activision Blizzard, Inc., et al. From this point on, I'll add a Content Warning for folks who are sensitive about sexual assault, suicide, and discrimination based on sex, gender, and skin color, as well as crude humor around and about sexual assault , and what the State of California refers to as "a pervasive 'frat boy' culture" around Act/Bliz, especially in the World of Warcraft-associated departments.   Just reading the complaint is hard rowing, even with the clinical legalese in place. The complaint itself is relatively short; 29 pages laying out ten Causes of Action (basically, "these are the legs on which our lawsuit stands"). I'm not sure I have the vocabulary to properly express how a
Post a Comment
Read more