The first buds of Spring...

Things are slowly coming to life. The blossoms are almost gone from the cherry tree and the vinca is beginning to pop up.

The large shrub at the foot of the parking pad is beginning to get it's leaves.

A Harbinger of Spring

I just saw a male American Robin grooming himself in the cedar tree outside my kitchen window.



The daffodils have blossomed in the planters, and my iris are beginning to peek out of the vinca. I found out from my garden web site that you can mow vinca down in the fall, and it will come back in the spring with a lot of new blossoms. I think this year I should do that since mine hardly blooms at all anymore and it is getting a bit unruly. It's still to early to plant though, last night it was 29F.

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish...

The Ortega’s finally came back, and hauled off the last of the rocks from the spa they busted out in October. I’ve been living with those eyesores in our dog run since BEFORE Halloween. After the snow hit I was concerned that the dogs might jump the fence because the rocks under the snow made the snow bank a lot higher that it would have normally been. We called them several times about coming back over to finish the job, but got no response, so we thought they were going to stiff us. We were really shocked at their behavior because we have hired them for several jobs before, and they always showed up on time, and did the job efficiently.

We ran into a slight disagreement over two of the pieces, which were large concrete footings, they tried to tell me that they weren’t part of the job (ha!), and that they shouldn’t have to haul them off, that and they were too heavy for them to lift. They were part of the job because they were within the rock they were busting out. As a solution we could both live with I asked them to bury them over where we stack the wood, so now they are out of sight, and won’t be in the way of any future planting projects, or the new location of our patio set.

It just goes to prove that you shouldn't pay somebody before the work gets done. They bid the job very reasonably, so when we agreed on the amount (under $150) we expected to have the work done in a week. We even felt sorry for them because they had to make so many runs to the dump that we gave them an extra $70. I later found out that they just pocketed the money, and dumped the rocks in the river bed!