Fall Cleanup Continues At The Bamboo Lagoon

45 gallon yardwaste bin, big pile

Trees are pretty much done dropping their leaves now. I have done three different pickups of the leaves from the oak on the left side of our house. It is right over the walkway on that side so I tend to attack it in waves to try to keep that walkway and the little gully we have cleared.

Walkway and gully

Today, I also skimmed a bunch of leaves off the leaf net over the pool. I need to get it all emptied so I can pull it off before we get possible snow this week. I am still not completely sure how I am going to do that without getting soaked. I have to say it has worked well to keep the majority of the leaves off the bottom of the pool.

A couple of days ago, I raked up a lot of leaves off the front lawn too but still have more to go there. Filled up the bin that is going to be picked up on Monday but might be able to squeeze a bit more in...have to go through two more beds in front with the small bucket by hand because it is small scale stuff that the rakes won't work with.

Most of the front yard leaves go into the mulch bins because there are no acorns in the front yard leaves. I was able to put three trashcans full into the mulch bins, before putting the extra into the yardwaste bin.

Tomorrow hope to finish up the pool part (and will post separately on that), those small bits in the flower beds and then maybe move over to the backyard oak tree, which I haven't even started.

Project Done At The Bamboo Lagoon

Finally, finally, finally, I managed to finished up the big electrical project. All the switches, outlets, and plate covers have been replaced in the whole house. I still need

It was supposed to be done ages ago, and I am not sure why I stalled out on it when I only had a very little bit to go...I think it happened because the office part of it didn't work out the way I planned. I also knew that doing the garage was going to require turning off the power to the office and that means no Internet if I have to look something up.

So today, I flipped the breaker and got down to it. I carried all the necessary parts downstairs so I could finish up. So I replaced 2 two-way switches, 2 three-way

switches, and three switch plate covers. For the most part, they were pretty easy. Only one was using a larger gauge wire, so I did have to wire that one.

Oh, I guess I should mention that I decided to tackle this in the early evening, so I had to eventually put on my head lamp to see what the heck I was doing.

The walls are not looking all that great, but look at those clean, bright switches and covers!!

Boxelder Buggers At The Bamboo Lagoon

Sample on flower bed rocks

Normally these little guys would not be a big deal but for some reason, everything this year has been overboard and bugs are no exception.

Starting in early October I started seeing a lot of these guys...and the numbers just kept growing. I hate to kill bugs that aren't "pests" but these guys have gotten to that point, big time. At one point, there were hundreds on both our front deck and our front porch...to the point that you couldn't get in the door without bringing them in with you. Last year, I saw a few of the fully developed adults but I have run into three different nests of them at all stages of life.

At first, I tried to just get them to go away by brute force, just sweeping or using the hose to try to deter them from hanging out on our front porches, but this didn't seem to have any affect on the population.

So my next course of action became "death to the bugs". I decided to go with a non-toxic version and just used dishsoap and water in a spray bottle and I went to town. It was surprisingly effective. Over the next few days, I was able to not only get rid of most of the porch dwellers, I also hit all three nests I found. After death, I would sweep or hose off the porch to get rid of the evidence of bugicide.

I am hoping that next year will easier. We will need a few good freezes this winter, I am sure.

Update 11/8: We cooled down quite a bit and they seemed to go completely away but now we have warmed up a bit in the last few days and it seems a few are trying to make a comeback so I got the spray bottle back out.

Fall Is Here At The Bamboo Lagoon

Landing and rocks before

Just got back from a short trip to the midwest to see much loved family and had to buckle down the today to get some yardwork knocked out. Fall is here again and if it is anything like last year was, it will be a ton of work. Getting any of it taken care of before it piles up is the way to go.

We needed to fill up the yard bin and there was just enough pinestraw on the solar panels and landing to do the job.

Solar panels and roof before

Had to bring out the ladder and climb up on to the deck cover with a deck broom to get the pinestraw off. The broom only reaches about half way across the solar panels so I did what I could from that end, and then moved the ladder to another location so I could climb up onto the house roof itself. I took up a bucket with some gloves since it seemed logical while up there to clean the gutters as well.

Landing and rocks after

Rolled the pinestraw off the roof since there was a lot on the ground that needed to be dealt with anyhow and headed down. Cleaned up three trashcans full of needles, and then moved on to the sideyard stairs.

The stairs are under an oak tree that has started dropping acorns and a few leaves. I wanted to get the stairs cleaned up of acorns because they make the stairs kind of scary. This

Solar panels and roof after

only took a bit of raking and ended up being two 5 gallon buckets full to top off the yardwaste bins.

Felt good to knock out some tasks on the first full day of Autumn this year.

Leaf Net Trial Season

With the net on

Last year, the leaf drop from all the trees planted near the pool was pretty massive. Even with my preventative trimming to limit the amount that branches reach over the deck, there was still a lot that was carried on the wind. At one point, there were so many oak leaves on the pool, the leaves came up to the edge of the deck. It took me almost two hours to skim them all off.

This year, I decided to see if a leaf net would be a better option (at least for keeping the leaves from dropping to the bottom of the pool). I got it on sale and in the mail a few days before my annual trip to the midwest this year and decided to put it over the pool before leaving just in case the leaf drop came early.

It covers the pool pretty well, but pretty much used up every bungee strap we own...LOL. The other option was to buy the water weights but those are expensive and I am only trying this out and want to try to do it as inexpensively as possible.