Friends, Family & Carers Forum

[Former-Member]

@Smc  how did tree surgery go?

[Former-Member]

@Adge 

With things being crossed off your "to do" list I hope that you will soon be up to getting an item or two crossed off the decluttering and home maintenance list. 😁

[Adge]

Yes, well that's the Plan @Former-Member Fingers & Toes crossed...

Adge

[Former-Member]

Gentle encouragement @Adge .

[Smc]

HI @Adge.... @Former-Member, tree removal went smoothly. The remainders of it are still all over the bottom end of the driveway. A bunch of assorted bits that will be firewood once they're dry, some large bits of trunk for the local woodworker to look over and possibly put to very productive use, and a pile of woodchips that are getting spread out on garden paths. And he also cut down a large stump in our front yard while he was here. It's a tree that was cut down years ago, but the main trunk was left in place (never got to building a cubby on it, oh well) and it was rotting out at the base. Getting dangerous.

Another bit of clear up happened as a result of us picking up a two seater couch for Younger Daughter's room. Being an old house, we've got narrow doorways and hallways. The best door to bring the couch in by is one that we literally never used, because it sticks shut most of the year. So the small entryway leading to it had been used as storage space. We moved everything out of the way, managed to get the door open, took some shelving and "stuff" out of the hallway to the bedroom, took an internal door off it's frame... and just barely managed to squeeze the couch through the assorted doorways.

There was a lot of stuff that ended up being moved, but some of it has now been stored in a more orderly manner, which is great. Next job will be going through the remaining "what do we do with this???" stuff, deciding what stays, what goes, and doing a bit more furniture re-arranging. Not today though. Maybe this week but no promises.

[Former-Member]

It's been a productive weekend for us too @Smc . With the help of my brother and SIL all the preparatory painting was finished for our porch 'renovation', the screen door from the present front door was removed as well as some odd hooks, screws & nails and the garden wicking beds were completed to a level where we feel confident to finish them ourselves. 

Even managed to find a few more items that we no longer need to send back with bro & SIL to drop off to my Sis.

[Former-Member]

We used some old carpet in our wicking beds that was taken from a room that is scheduled for renovation. We had a bit left over and I recalled a gardening acquaintance who mentioned she was after some - a quick visit confirmed this still to be the case and it was collected yesterday. Yay.

Also passed on some more jigsaws that I had finished with.

[Smc]

@Former-Member, I'll be a killjoy re. carpet. Carpets get treated with fungicides so that they don't grow mould. Some of these are very definitely persistent and not food safe.

There's a tale of woe that goes around organic farming circles about a person who set up a nut orchard in Tassie somewhere, and as a "chemical free" way of controlling weeds, put old carpet down between the trees. When the trees matured to the point where they could begin picking, he got the soil tested to get organic certification, and was told that it was so contaminated by the fungicides that the nuts not only couldn't qualify as organic, they didn't even past the benchmark for legally edible.

It's such a convenient way of supressing weeds (or providing permeable a soil/water barrier) so it keeps on being suggested, but sorry... not recommended.

[Former-Member]

Yikes @Smc I will pass that info and will have to leave it up to them as to what they do. 

[Smc]

Next stage of tree removal starts tomorrow, with the stump getting ground out. They'll be taking down the fence (which is wobbly anyway from the tree pushing against it) and coming in from the neighbours' side. But peering over their side to find out where the posts were, we realised we'd need to move some building materials, a firewood pile and some assorted stuff (some useful, some junk) to give them clear access to a section. Thankfully the builders sand bay should be OK, I hope... That would be a pest to move.

Most of it has just been moved aside for the moment and is looking very messy... but I've tried to move some of it to places where it can sit safely until we can use it. So a bunch of second hand bricks are being neatly laid out as paving and steps in place of the timber oddments I was using to keep the leading edges of the woodchip paths in place. They'll be a lot more stable and tidy, and will be easy enough to salvage when we're ready to do building work. We've managed to move a bit over half of the stack, the other half will have to be done tomorrow.

Found a cute little gecko while moving them, so that was a bonus. 🙂