Friday, March 4, 2016

Catching up on the to-do list.

Clyda went back up to Lynden, WA 2 days after we came home from our winter trip. Her sister is not doing well and Clyda wanted to be there for her.

I in the mean time have a long list of to-do items. The most pressing was to get control of the weeds in the garden area and the flower beds. The rains that we did have while we were gone greened up the local hills but also made the weeds grow. The garden area was tackled with the lawn mower which made short work of them. The tree areas and the flower beds took much longer. Basically I did it on my knees using my gloved hands to do the pulling. This works fine except we have lots of cactus which require fineness and the use of forceps to get around the sharp thorns. Over the last week I have filled 3 of the large green waste barrels. They were emptied yesterday so that was good.

We are expecting rain over the next few days and hopefully it will amount to something. The hills are still nice and green and rain would help keep them that way. Anticipating rain, I bought a 6 foot length of tubing to direct rain water from a shed roof into garbage cans to be used to water plants later. We are still under a severe drought restriction by the water district so every gallon counts. I also direct our wash machine water into 2 plastic barrels and from there it flows through a hose onto the side yard. It isn't much, but it does keep the grass green.

The other things on my list involve the RV. I have several major things that need doing none of which would prevent me from using it if I needed to but they do need to be done. I need to replace the kitchen faucet and I need to work on the pump switch.

I did get the rig vacuumed today and the floor scrubbed so that is done. I need to run the two Honda generators as it has been more than a month since I last used them. They need to be run periodically so they will start when needed. When I don't plan to use them for some time I drain the gas from the carburetors. This is recommended by the local Honda dealer.

I had a long list of people to call after I got home. Some of that is done with more to call next week.

While we were in Willcox I took a photo of an old building on a back road. It just caught my eye.