Six Hours At The Bamboo Lagoon

Storm warnings on the horizon and only a few hours in between waves of rain and wind....what to do? Well, get dressed up in "yard" clothes and battle out the piles of leaves, full gutters, and clutter trenches...what else?

This was only one of three piles of leaves I raked up on these stairs today. I would get them to the bottom and then go up into the ground cover and find even more. I also cleaned out the trench that runs down the side of these stairs for drainage from the backyard and the neighbor's house. Fortunately other than evergreens, all trees in the yard and in the neighbor's yards seem to be naked now...whew!

 Nicely cleaned up if I don't say so myself.

We have two pines in the backyard that drop needles year around. Mix that in with a ton of oak leaves and you have yourself a little bit of work. Between the rock wall and the slab, is the beginning of the trench that runs down that side of the house to keep water away from the house. It was completely filled with leaves and needles as well.

After raking leaves off the rock wall and out of the trench all along the back deck and along this slab.

Second bin made and in use now. Amazingly enough, these two bins probably contain about ten 32 gallon trashcans of leaves. I just keep pushing them down. This saves me having to put them in the yardwaste bins and I will be able to use them as mulch in the spring.

The trench that leads down the other side of the house, and I found that it has a drain in it that was blocked up and wasn't draining properly. The leaves from this trench were soaked and made for much heavier loads to the yardwaste container.

After cleaning up this trench. Looks nice doesn't it? Won't last though, since there are still lots of leaves on the ground on this side of the house that I haven't gotten to yet, I am sure it will fill back up shortly.

On top of this, I also cleaned the front and back gutters (the front ones requiring me to get on the roof), and cleaned up some leaves that had gotten wedged in the space between the roof and our back deck covering. Then I skimmed the pool, removed a shelf from the pumphouse that some nasty animal seems to think is a litter box, and dumped out both pool skimmer baskets before calling it a day.

Overall, it was a fantastic workout and feeling of accomplishment.