Finally

This past week the painters and the carpenter FINALLY all showed up and finished the work on the house. Nice improvements, plus now the landscape installers can do their thing. I'm so glad this stage is complete.


Above, is the side door to the garage. I cleaned the mildew/alga off it. Now I just need to finish cleaning the siding.

Below are the shutters and the front porch. I've planted a couple of ornamental sweet potato vines in the container, 'Margarita', which hopefully will climb the trellis.
And the wrens FINALLY returned from their winter digs. A male started building a nest in the wren house right outside the den window, to be joined the next day by a female. The nest appears to be complete now.


My SO helped me continue to prep the yard for the landscapers. There were a lot of bits and bobs of poultry netting and hardware cloth that I used to protect shrubs; I want to keep them just in case, but need them to be out of the way. It was a bigger job than we anticipated, resulting in sore and stiff muscles, but we got it done.

Otherwise, I have been mowing, three times this week. It was supposed to storm all this weekend, but the weather warning turned out to be a false alarm. Instead it is hot and sunny, very summerlike, although the next week is supposed to be cooler. And I just saw the first grackle of the year.