Back to Work!

I've been slacking on the work around the house for a while now. The weather has been nice and I didn't feel like busting tail when I could be enjoying the weather.

For a while now I've been wanting to get some of the landscaping taken care of in the back yard. There were two large overgrown bushes that needed to be removed.

Removing the visible part of the bush is easy, and gave me a good excuse to break out one of the chainsaws. Removing the roots, on the other hand, sucks.

In this case, as I dug down I found that the roots weren't too large so I wrapped a chain around the roots about 8" below ground level and attached it to the lawn mower. I had my wife drive forward and I chopped at the root system until it broke free.




The root system on the other bush is a LOT heavier, so I'm planning to just dig out as much of it as I can and will then take the chainsaw to it to cut it off. As long as it's well underground I won't have to worry about ever seeing it again.




I also took care of the drain line from the sump pump. When we bought the place it was just a plastic/pvc line laid on the ground. The problem I ended up with was that the water would freeze in winter leading to the whole line getting blocked with ice. Since the sump pump runs all year long, this isn't a good option.

I re-used the line as it comes through the wall, but then immediately turned the line up so that it could gradually slope down towards the end. It's not pretty, but the line will be hidden by the planting we are going to do next spring.




Here you can see the slope along the back of the house. I'm hoping that when it's running that it acts like a siphon and pulls extra water out of the crock. In the past, anything left in the line would run back down into the crock - a couple of gallons total. Either way, the water is finally going to have a good way to get away from the house. On the ground are the remains of the old pipes used to try and get water out.

It's been so dry recently that the crock was only about 1/3 full, but it was enough to test the system to verify that it works. Tomorrow we're expecting rain, so maybe I'll know for sure.




And now for something completely different. Bacon Salt! So many things cooked these days get some salt added, from steaks on the grill to potatoes in the oven. Since bacon makes EVERYTHING better, I got these and have tried them a few times. I think I'll probably only use them on steaks and burgers. The bacon flavor comes through faintly and isn't overpowering.