The holiday maintenance and improvements began the afternoon of Wednesday, May 25, 2016. Cleaned up broken solar-powered post light at gate. 
Glass was in the driveway and a large pile of limbs was inside the fence. Shingles are blown loose on the front of the house.
Thursday, May 26th – A skunk walked in from the street, intimidated Gumbo and proceed to back into the former fox den under the front porch that we had filled in. We added old bricks and dirt to try to make him move on but doubt we succeeded.
Cut weeds along ditch from property line to property line including inside the fence. Mary trimmed crepe myrtles. Cut azaleas and camilia in the back yard down to about 5 feet. Trimmed the two small oaks up to over 6 feet. Between the pecan limbs, the oak limbs and the bush prunings we hauled three truck loads of debris to the burn pile.
Bob Caron and Lucy Barr reviewed house and David Clarkson’s plans with us and we settled many things.
Friday – Cut off about 6″ of the mid-rafter poles on the south end of barn where the corners had settled and those poles were pushing the tin roof up. Added hurricane strapping to south end of barn at those poles and removed the rotten plywood on the west side. Sprayed Erasure and weeded front beds.
Driskell’s sprayed Roundup and other stuff to kill volunteer peanuts from last year and weeds prior to planting cotton that began Sunday.
Saturday – Sprayed Erasure, weeded front beds and mulched. Hauled to landfill: old plywood and 2×4’s from barn; rusted out feed troughs from fields; Peggy’s old bike that had hung from barn rafters; and rotten fire wood. Bought 2 scoops of ground pine bark mulch but had to go back and get two more. Moved heavy steel work bench to second bent in barn and truck box to east wall next to built in wooden work bench. Mary drove MF210, Fergie, around pecan orchard until she was hot. Planted Mexican Lirope and other plants from Houston. Moved young antique roses from front bed to gate entrance west side.
Sunday
- clean up electrical at barn
Original shutters from Barn rafters - Nail hurricane strapping to tie poles to beams at barn. Now all the poles along the front are tied and the corner and next pole in the back. Also added straps to the knee braces installed to support the section where the third pole from the north had rotted. Added straps to intermediate poles in the north end to tie the rather to the poles.
- Ford tractor cranked easily with a fast spin from the newly charged battery using the new high-amp charger from TSC. It was on the charger set to 20 amps for maybe 6 hours. The last 1-2 hours the meter read 15 amps without changing so tried it even though it did not get to 10 (1/2 of the setting of 20).
- Spread second load (2 scoopes or 1/2 CY) of ground pine bark mulch. So, we need 4 scopes from Woerner to cover the beds across the front, the beds at the back door and roses in the yard.
- hedge shrubs at back door
