I can’t remember… What did I do yesterday? It was Saturday… I remember spending a good amount of time down at the deck. But gosh, what did I do? Morning Gospel study, I think I slept in a little bit? But I woke up in time for family study, oh no! I think I got up at 6:00! Yeah, that’s right! I got up at 6:00 and went down and did my exercise at the deck area pulling weeds and shoveling stuff and using the pickaxe to break stuff up and all that other good stuff.
So I did that, and then I came in and I’m fortunately reacted poorly to something that my mother said, and ended up with her in tears and a little bit of a painful conversation before we both ended up turning the conversation into something beautiful.
My mom’s patience and forgiveness and how we’re able to work through things when it’s hard.
I think I actually spent pretty much most of the day down there by the deck. As I’m thinking about the day and everything that I did, I think that’s pretty much what happened. I brought a bunch of cinder blocks down from up by our house where they’ve been stacked for years now, and I actually did that during my morning exercise.
The conversation with Mom and little bits of breakfast and whatnot, I went down to the deck again to start working on all that stuff again. I’ve spent so much time down there. It’s starting to get to the point where instead of being something that’s a labor of love for the hill family, it’s starting to be a really drawn out huge project. I feel that way mostly because of how challenging it’s been to deal with all the vines.
I also realized yesterday that many of the vines are actually roots of the nearby trees.
😬
I think those are the ones that I thought were the poison ivy vines? 😅
And unfortunately, in an effort to try and speed up the process and progress, my skid steer accidentally latched underneath one of the larger roots coming out one of the trees and tort completely out of the ground, snapped in half. 😕
Not that that’s going to be a tree killer, but it certainly doesn’t help when tree roots get cut. It reduces their strength, and it allows a more open opportunity for disease and pest to get in, I think.
Anyway, so I spent a long time down by the deck pulling weeds, using the pickaxe to kind of tear things up to make the weeds, or the vines and whatnot, easier to find and pull out.
I spent some time rebuilding sort of a retaining wall that was previously built with a board going across the ground. It was still doing remarkably well, but I noticed that there were some cinder blocks that were holding up the dirt as well, so I figured I might as well just replace the board with a handful more cinder blocks and have it be a permanent solution instead of one that would rot away in the coming decade.
So I did all that, and I got almost all the weeds and roots taken care of. I should be able to get their last of them the next time I go down there. Then all that’s left after that is just to spread the dirt around a little bit more, compact it down a bit, and then to spread the mulch over the top. It’ll look really good after that, I think.
So I spend a long time working down there doing that, and I was chatting a little bit with my friend Miguel, and we decided to go to a late lunch/ early dinner, so once he was done at his shop for the day, I drove into Rogers and Bentonville, and we met up at one of the all you can eat Chinese buffets.
Being vegan, it’s a lot safer going to an all you can eat buffet where I can be absolutely certain that I’m going to have enough food to be full and not leave hungry because it was all vegetables and not a big enough portion to fill the little belly of mine.
Conversation with Miguel during dinner. We are both looking for real estate right now, and he’s suggesting that maybe we buy some land next to each other or buy some real estate together. I definitely don’t want to co-own anything with anybody right now, because I don’t want the hassles that go with having to have someone else with a claim on something if my life changes and we have to figure out what to do with stuff, but it would be cool to have land next to each other .
There’s a fantastically cheap 12 acres for sale in a little town in Missouri not too far across the border that’s actually in a neighborhood. I’m not sure why it’s so cheap, so I need to figure that out, but it looks like it would be ridiculous not to buy it, so I need to learn more, and if it looks like as good of a deal as it seems at first blush, then I may well plunk down some money to buy it. Even if all I do is hold on to it for the future for appreciation’s sake, it would likely net quite a bit of profit. But we’ll see. Lots to figure out.
After I got home, I don’t remember much of what I did. I think I may be did some online shopping and whatnot, and then I went down to the deck to grab the pressure washer because it was going to be a hard freeze overnight, and I didn’t want the pressure washer to get damaged.
And then it was just bad. Or dinner in bed. No, it wasn’t dinner because I stuffed myself so full of food at the all you can eat place that I was bursting at the seams, so no, there wasn’t another dinner.
Thankfully, I was able to get to bed relatively on time. I think I was actually lights out at 9:30, which is 30 minutes late, because I was shopping for shoes because my shoes are getting torn up with all the work that I’m doing, but it was still relatively on time. 🙂
I think that’s all for now, folks. Work has been pretty slow, actually, which I’m not sad about, but they’re usually is a slow down this time of year. Everybody has spent their money on Christmas gifts, and there’s not much left over for a lot of people to be putting into their cars. At least, that’s what I’m guessing is the cause for the seasonal slow down.
Anyway! Love and hugs to all y’all.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 