Slowly but Surely

Well, the yard is coming along, little by little. I hired my cousin to come over and do some work around the house and yard for me. Remember behind my shed? That picture in the banner at the top of this blog? Well, this is it today...

And to the right of the shed has been so overgrown you couldn't see that there was an entrance there to go behind the shed. This is a shot from a couple of years ago, and the areas still looked like this, or worse...

While the bougainvillea is beautiful, it is nothing but thorns and a nightmare to work around, and makes entering that area behind the shed impossible. So we are working to get rid of it. This is what this area looked like after my cousin finished with it today...

And now my guava tree can finally see daylight...

My Bismark Palm can now be walked under, which will make it much easier for mowing...

And the garbage guys have their work cut out for them tomorrow.

I'm hoping that they pick up the horticulture. I didn't expect my workers to leave a huge pile of stuff like that!

The sink from behind the shed was quickly picked up, but there is still a gardening table waiting for someone to snag it up.

The deck has been cleaned up and looks like a deck again. One of these days, I need to grill out again.

So a lot has been done around here in the last week or two. And I'm exhausted, even though I'm paying someone else to do the majority of the work! What I can't figure out is what this was doing laying on my bathroom floor after they left.

How did a wasp wind up dead on the floor? All I can figure is it came in on my cousin without him even realizing it.

 I'll be interested to see what happens with the yard over time...

UPDATE: I still live in a jungle

I've been trying to work on the yard a little, after much neglect for far too long, and have barely made a dent. Today I decided to try and pull a few weeds, and found it much easier than usual, given all of the rain we've been getting. NOTE TO SELF: After heavy rains is the best time to weed! The saturated ground doesn't hold onto the weeds as hard as it usually does.

I quickly filled my large horticulture bin (55? 65 gallons? Something like that...) with weeds, and it didn't even make a noticeable difference.

I also found that over the last couple of months, my swing cushion has literally disintegrated...

So I need to haul that out for garbage pickup this week, and then look into getting a new one.

Last I saw it not so long ago, it had some tears, but didn't look like this. So either the sun and rain has really taken its toll over the last few weeks, or the raccoons have-- or both!

Unfortunately I moved an old pot sitting on the deck in front of my shed, and found the wood rotted beneath.

I am finding that my deck is not holding up well. I have to wonder whether the wood they used was pressure-treated, or maybe it is simply because it wasn't sealed. In any event, I'm trying to think of plan B in anticipation of the deck needing to go in the upcoming years. At that point, I will probably switch to a brick or paver patio instead.

Then next to this I noticed what looked like strange little rocks or seed pods. Upon closer investigation I realized they were snake eggs!

And good-sized eggs at that! I don't think my little black snake Black Ivy could have laid these. I would say that the snake that laid these would have to be at least 3 1/2 to 4 foot long, wouldn't you?

I found the hole dug into a little bed in front of my shed, next to a tree. I counted at least 18 eggs. Unfortunately I am guessing that the raccoons got to them before they were ready to hatch, due to the way they were scattered around and the hole that seemed dug DOWN instead of up and out.

And then next to the nest, I spotted this little guy. He was dead.

Poor little guy.

I just have to wonder just how big Momma snake is to have eggs this big?