Quick May 2021 Island Trip – Day 3

The day was full and went something like this:

• I zipped into town first thing to buy gas for next trip’s mowing, and to find a couple of things at the lumber yard, which has a lovely plant nursery. I ended my day by adding five new plants to the slope below Stella’s pad.
• One of Stella’s skylight shades was pulling out of its housing. It was an easy fix!
• I trimmed around the trunks of three of the five fruit trees, one of which I need a serious set of wire cutters to finish…
• The grass behind the drier shed propane tank is gone.
• The nettles surrounding the wood shed are all pulled out, as are two cedar fence posts, a metal t-post, a fence board, and a large, mostly buried piece of metal siding. On the other hand, while farting around with all this stuff I stepped on a nail. My reflexes are sharp as ever. While the nail went right through my rubber boot, the nail barely pricked my foot. A quick consult with my nurse girl (and the fact that I had my tetanus booster in January) allowed me to keep going, after removing what nails I could, and bending the rest over.
• In the interest of eventually removing all failing fencing from the property, I worked on the north side of the open shed, removing weeds and shrubs. Eventually the failing fence and a bunch of pallets will be unburied, and added to a future burn pile.
• I pruned an impressive amount of dead wood from the lower limbs of two small firs at the east entrance to the property. This will both make it easier to mow around them, and let light into their interiors where I found new wee branches growing. Plus they look SO much better!
• The new door on the pump room is amazing! It closes without a fight or threat of falling apart.
• My neighbor stopped by for a visit. T’was good to see her. Our amazing neighbor came over with is new tractor (I have tractor envy!) and he used this new tractor to help us empty gas and oil out of the old mowers, and placed one of them in my truck, the other one he put in the metal recycle pile. I’ll drop the mower at the mainland metal recycle place tomorrow.

The two things on the list I didn’t get back to were easing the deer fencing out from under the big fir, and making that quilt block. They’ll wait for 4.5 weeks.