Backyard trimmed, ready for electrician

Relatively small cluster of weeds in front yard whacked first weekend; I forgot to take picture of back yard which was completely covered with weeds.

On the second weekend of April 2012 I managed to get the back yard completely trimmed.  Trimmed so completely it almost looks as though it was mowed.  Also finished the mowing and trimming in the front, got the workshop electrical box sealing done, and filled a ground hole created by erosion.

On the first weekend, I had put away the canopy (after 6 months!), mostly weedwhacked the front and the lawn got mowed, but I had only trimmed a couple dozen square feet of densely packed weeds 4-8 feet tall (!) in the back.  The string trimmer had great difficulty cutting some of them, so I also used the tree branch cutter.  Many of these weeds were so woody they weren't easy to cut even with the 2 foot handles of my branch cutter.  But I had constant problem with the string in the trimmer which I just bought last year.  It kept either getting stuck, or, at the end, it just all reeled out for the last few weeds I did that day, so I quit.  I figured I'd buy some more trimmer string during the week, no point in wasting 3 hours on a weekend to do that.  When I go to Home Depot to get something, it often takes 3 hours, counting the time to get cleaned up and dressed first.

So I did get new string, but I had the same trouble, even worse, with the string on Saturday April 7.  Finally I decided to look at the instructions on the package.  It was only then I realized I had purchased the distinctive double line spools for the GH700, and my machine is the GH1000.

OK, it was now getting too dark to do much outside (because I had gotten started so late) but this time I decided to head off to Home Depot.  That way, at least I would be able to get the job done on Sunday.  I did, and as usual it was about 3 hours before I got back home, this time because I also stopped at the grocery store and got enough to fill my empty cupboards and refrigerator for $110.

I was able to resume, this time very early for me around noon on Sunday (Easter Sunday).  With the new correct string, the GH1000 trimmer worked very well, I was able to cut almost all of the weeds except a few of the most woody ones.  I charged through about 250 sq ft of solid tall weeds along the back of the yard and wrapping around the back and side of Lyndenhurst.  I was feeling a bit like the terminator, wearing a full face protecting respirator, and watching the weeds being torn apart by the string.  The weeds seemed like a threatening enemy until they got cut down.  Then, cut down, they almost seem invisible, as if there hadn't really been anything there at all.

I also cut through the tall mint or whatever it is that has displaced most of the actual grass in my back yard.  While that can be mowed just like grass, it was averaging about 3 feet high over most of my yard, and the mower wouldn't like that.  So I whacked it all down to about 3 inches.  Then I trimmed all around the front (with my old trimmer, I'd require a whole weekend just for that) and finished the mowing on the side of the front yard.

I also managed to finish the sealing of the electrical box for the ceiling fan.  I got out the new Duct Seal I had managed to find at Lowes a few weeks earlier and plugged up the holes in the top of the electrical box.  All but one of those holes were backed by framing, but not making a perfect seal.  I pressed in as much of the clay like product as I could, then cleaned it off flush to the plastic.  One of the holes just kept taking more and more clay.  THAT must have been the hole that most of the leakage was coming from.  At some point, I just stopped pushing in clay and just cleaned it off.  It's a small hole, and the sticky Duct Seal seems to be holding.  Then I  put some more acoustical caulk around the shrunken (but gapless) previous caulking.  I didn't bother to do that in the tight areas near screws, those are a big hassle and looked good enough anyway.  Finally the sealing is done!  Now I need to call the electrician.

During the previous week, I washed off three of the small fan parts that seemed to have the most oily smell, including the attachment bracket with small vinyl feet.  I then put them outside in the sun for a couple days.  When I checked them on Saturday afternoon before putting these parts back in the house and out of the way of the trimming operations, they seemed to have much less smell.

I also filled in some of the erosion in the back yard.  Way back, one of the contractors had removed the last RainHandler quasi-gutter on the back fascia board of my house.  His ladder had gotten stuck in it, so he just took it off.  With that Rain Handler removed, the erosion by the south west corner of my house was definitely noticeable. I filled it in somewhat with a bag of topsoil and raked it into the grass.

I was planning to get some aluminum screws to reattach the one Rainhandler that I have, but today I just ordered a whole new rainhandler and a couple extra sets of brackets from the Rainhandler company.

This does do what they say it does, and since I originally installed the Rainhandlers in the back in 2002 the erosion in back was stopped.  But I have one issue with it.  It basically converts the water falling off the edge of the roof into mist.  That mist, unfortunately, doesn't water the ground quite as well as the water.  So the grass hasn't grown quite as well under the rainhandlers as it did before.  (Not really possible to do a controlled experiment, we also had terrible drought last year that killed a lot of lawns here anyway.)  So with the grass not growing quite as well, if you then remove a rainhandler, and you start getting some heavy rains as we did this year in February and March, things go from bad to worse quickly.  But I hope I've caught it early enough.

Right now in the southwest corner of my house the soil is very low around the beam of my foundation.  In fact, at the very corner, there appeared to be no soil underneath it (this has happenened before) so I pushed some dirt down there.  Possibly it needs to have gravel packed in again.  But the worst thing of all is to have an open hole that simply feeds rainwater under the house.