Ryan Fields

Spring cleanup

I had the afternoon off of work today, so I spent most of the afternoon doing spring cleanup chores around the yard.  Picked up the branches and twigs, swept up the sand, raked up the leaves, repaired the snow plow damage to the lawn, straightened up the mailbox that was leaning precariously to one side. 

Went into the gardens and raked out the old growth and put down new mulch.  I’m going to be fertilizing the yard and garden soon. 

Took the power washer to the siding of the house, it sure looks good now!  Boy no wonder I’m tired - I’m beat!

Bees

Working outside every day, I’ve developed a healthy respect for bees. I leave the big bumblebees alone, but the little yellowjackets and the wasps and hornets have no redeeming purpose other than to annoy and threaten us good people who have to be outside making a living.

Around here you will also find big red wasps. They make nests in the eaves of your house, under your deck and in trees. If you are going after wasps, buy the spray cans that shoot 10 feet away - because these suckers come after you if you don’t kill them on the first shot. I’ve seen it.

From what I’ve been reading in the papers, the little bees that pollenate our flowers and fruit trees are having a hard time of it. They have been dying off and no one knows why. With all the science at our fingertips, we MUST find a way to cure the bees - our farmers desperately need them to pollenate the crops and the orchards.

Power outage

Well, CMP has goofed up again!  There was widespread power outages in Belgrade and Rome earlier today.  Seems that they were scheduled at midnight to swap out a transformer; a process that should have only taken 5 or 6 hours.  The new transformer blew and they had to find a new one, which took several hours.  All in all, 11,000 people were without electricity from midnight Friday night until around noon on Saturday.

I’m really glad that we have an auto-start back-up generator for when we lose electricity!  I would be very ugly to be without power that long!  I love my electricity!

Flowers are popping up!

I just started seeing some crocuses and hyacinths peeking up out of the ground.  This is incredible!  It seems like just yesterday (although it was three weeks ago) there was over six feet of snow on my front lawn - not counting the snow banks where we piled the snow to get it out of the driveway!

Now actually, there are little patches of green grass, pretty soon there will be bigger patches and bigger still.  And I’ll have to get ready to fertilize, and eventually mow the lawn.  But for today I’ll be happy and content just to look at the little flowers coming out of the ground by the house!

I love my generator!

Boy, I love my generator!  Ha Ha!  This is the second time we’ve lost the power this month, but my generator kicks in and all is well.  I’m laughing while I type this because my generator gives me power for the whole house.  I can cook, clean, wash dishes, take a hot shower, get ready for work tomorrow, and I don’t have to worry about a thing as far as power!  Life is great!