I didn't really have any plans for major home improvements this year. Sure, we upgraded the internet, but that was more of an attack of opportunity, and it didn't involve capital outlay. Naturally, it's the last day of April and we've already bought ourselves most of a new driveway ( Read more... )

Our daffodils have been in bloom for several weeks. Some of these are in neat lines in a flower bed outside the fence. Those daffodils were planted by M a few years ago and are the variant featuring a white flower with a yellow core. We also have some bright solid yellow daffodils that are randomly in the middle of our yard. These have been coming ( Read more... )

We returned from my sabbatical on Friday. On Sunday afternoon, we were returning from our neighborhood's block party via the sidewalk in the front of our house. We found that in the 40 plus days since we'd last walked in front of our house, a very large hornet's nest had been built in the tree out front. It was roughly 6.5 feet off the ground over ( Read more... )

So one other thing that happened this year is that M started putting up holiday lights. Last year, M did a lot of decorating inside the house, with the lights on our chuppah supplemented by her Christmas Tree and assorted window lights ( Read more... )

Three weekends ago, I pulled a lot of weeds from the thin little strip of land that lies between the back wall of our house and the fence that separates us from an equally thin strip of land abutting the back wall of my neighbor's house. This is a job I do two or three times a summer to make sure we can easily get out that back door and to ensure ( Read more... )

Ever since the great squirrel invasion of 2017 and 2018, we've kept a wary eye on the house to make sure more squirrels don't take up residence. The new roof in 2019 firmly sealed everything up, but there's no shortage of squirrels in our neighborhood and constant vigilance is the order of the day ( Read more... )

My second piece of recent bug news this is much less painful. For the second summer in a row, M has a butterfly farm. A butterfly farm is basically a big mesh box that is large enough to hold some plants. When M finds caterpillars or caterpillar eggs, she transfers them to a plan inside the mesh box, which protects said caterpillars from predators ( Read more... )

Two Sundays ago I was mowing the lawn when I discovered that there was a hornet nest in said lawn. Now, we had seen an occasional hornet hanging out around M's flowers this summer, but never very many or with enough movement to pinpoint a nest location. That didn't happen until my foot kicked a hole underneath a root after I had run the lawn mower ( Read more... )

Last January there was a hole in my house that allowed squirrels to enter the covered porch. One exterminator later five squirrels had been removed and the whole was closed ( Read more... )

Or it will be. So the one of the big maples in front of my house has been dying since I moved in. Last year it lost a substantial branch when the remnants of Hurricane Sandy blew through. Fortunately, it missed everything on the way to the ground so no damage was done, but the writing was on the wall. In addition to my own house, several of my ( Read more... )