Weekend Projects

As Amy had to cancel our weekend of girlie giggles due to Grandma’s gallstones, Aaron and I opted to make use of the weekend to take care of some much-needed home improvement projects. More maintenance than improvement, actually.

First on the list: fertilize the lawn. It was very necessary. Our yard looks like poo, due to a.) the lack of proper lawn care by the previous homeowner, and b.) the giant field of weeds across the street from our house. The back yard also has vast bare patches, but that is a problem to address another day—say, in the Fall.

We went to Wal*Mart and bought a cheap spreader and a small bag of Turf Builder with Halts Crabgrass Preventer, along with some other odds and ends (including bug spray for the outside of our house). Once we got home, our plan was to assemble the spreader, fill it up, and away we go. However, before that could happen, we had to pick up all the sticks we’d failed to pick up last Fall after the last raking, and rake the random leaves that blew into our yard, and rake up some thatch (hi, nasty dead yard), and pick up pieces of garbage that blow through the ‘hood and land on our fence at the dead end. Whew. The preparation took twice as long as the actual spreading did.

One project down. We still have to water the lawn in the next day or two, to activate the happy fertilizer crap.

Next: spraying the foundation for bugs. This was all Aaron. While I sat by a tree and filled up a planter with potting soil, he walked around the perimeter of the house, pumping the bug spray hand-pump and spraying the foundation of the house. Hopefully, this’ll nip those freakin’ ants and spiders in the bud.

Then, on Sunday evening, Aaron decided to go out and take a look at our mailbox.

See, last summer, we’d gotten a nice note from the mail carrier lady saying that we needed to spray our mailbox for wasps. OK. So, Aaron did as she asked and, as he puts it, “it was like freaking Auschwitz for wasps.” Droves of them just kept spitting out of the damn mailbox—which, for reference, was a metal mailbox housed inside a wooden replica of our house. Very cute… back in the 80’s.

So, on Sunday evening, Aaron and I headed outside, armed with a hammer and a screwdriver, intent on removing the roof from our little mailbox house and evicting the wasps and being done with it. However… once we saw how disgusting the inside of our mailbox house was, we opted to go buy a new damn mailbox.

Off to Lowe’s. We purchased a standard 1 ½ size black metal rural mailbox and a black metal post.

A word to the wise: If you ever purchase a mailbox post, and it claims “easy installation,” don’t fucking believe it for a second. Once we finally managed to uproot the old box (which was a feat involving a shovel *and* a handsaw), we attempted for at least a half hour, if not longer, to pound that pointy metal post into the ground. Aaron finally just had to cheat by digging a hole, sticking the post in, and packing the dirt back down around it *really* hard.

So, we now have a fancy-looking yet stylishly simple black mailbox, with reflective numbers applied by Yours Truly.

We were productive. Now Aaron’s home from work with a sore back. 😉