Monday, October 1, 2012

Fall Projects

Fall is a busy time of the year. Most people do their major cleaning in the Spring but for me it's the Fall. Spring is all about planting. Planting a vegetable garden, flowers, trees and grass. Every year I tell myself to stop over seeding grass in the Spring and do it in the Fall (you know, when you're supposed to). But by the end of the summer I want nothing to do with landscaping. But this year is different. This year is the year I renovate the lawn.

The poor yard has taken a beating over the years. When we moved in it was beautiful, manicured almost. You could tell the last owners fertilized and applied weed killer regularly. With all the animals nibbling here and there I told myself there would be no more weed and feed applied. But I think I'm about to change that. The back few acres are the only areas that get fed to animals (the tortoises in particular). So this weekend I went to the local rental store and rented a Vertislicer. Cool name for an oversized, extremely heavy lawn mower that has blades. Those blades slice into the ground creating a nice home for grass seed. I pushed that thing all over the lawn Saturday morning and deposited 100 pounds of grass seed. It didn't go nearly as far as I was hoping so I'm off today to get another 50 pounds. I must add that my arms and shoulders can hardly function after the workout I got with that piece of equipment. I sure hope it was worth the time, money and energy involved in renting it. In two weeks I'll be applying a general weed and feed to the front yard in the hopes that it takes care of the weeds. Here's hoping.

I'm excited about my other project too. We were at the hardware store yesterday and I ran across a display for renovating old hardwood floors. Our cypress hardwood floors were so pretty when we moved in but now after four dogs and two youngins they are in a sad sad state. They should be refinished but I'm not willing to put the time or money into that. So, back to that display I saw at the hardware store. It's a product called Bona and they have a whole line of wood floor products. I came home and researched them (mainly Amazon) reading every review. The Bona Hardwood Refresher was rated wonderfully and supposedly will turn old floors into somewhat new looking floors (and it says it works on cabinets too). I bought some and thanks to our Prime account (which we forgot to cancel after the trial period) we will have a bottle here on Wednesday. I can't wait to try it out! I'll let you know how it works.