Xiaoniu 小妞

I had great plans of going home yesterday afternoon and getting a jump start on preparing the two bedrooms for painting. Something came over me and I felt a strong desire to go into the backyard and start removing the vines growing on the chimney. What a chore that ended up being.

I’m not sure exactly what kind of plant or vine this thing was (past tense), but it seemed to be glued to the wall. I made a few choice cuts and started to yank on the thing. I discovered that if you can get enough of it free to get your hands onto it you might be able to pull it off the brick. Quite a few times the thing just broke.

It’s quite disgusting stuff. I pulled most of the stuff at the bottom off. Then I started pulling off the parts at the top only to find that the damn vine started to grow into the vinyl siding! It found its way into the small channel at the end of the wall and some of it actually made it behind the siding. After making my way up the rickety ladder I was able to get about 95% of it all off.

There is still one small piece (8 inches) stuck in the siding and it was too cold to take down. Another piece maybe 7 feet long stuck to the chimney itself. I couldn’t get that off without damaging the brick so, I’ll just let time pass and wait for it to rot a bit. I wish I took a picture of the pile. There was actually quite a lot of stuff there.

After that I made my way over to the big bush.

(Not great pictures, but at least you can see the beast.) It had to come down. It is damaging not only the roof, but the side of the garage. This thing was formidable. I ended up using a pruning saw and cutting each piece close to the ground. Sue even got into cutting it down, but got worn out after a while. I can’t wait to see what fun it’ll be to take out the stump.

After that I moved onto cutting down a large dead branch off the tree in the corner of the yard. I discovered this after cutting down a vine that seemed to be growing all over the tree and the pine right next to it. I was able to pull it down without any trouble, but it was close to 40 feet long!

If that wasn’t enough I started pulling out those aluminum inserts from the fence. The fence is in rough shape, but there is need for these things. They were there because there was a pool in the yard originally. After doing some cleanup (still have to chop up a few pieces of “The Bush”) we called it quits outside.

Dinner, a quick rest and we were back to work in the house. Sue attacked the bathrooms and I started work on the bedrooms. She was very happy after she had gotten all the gunk and dirt out of the bathroom. I was satisfied by having all the stuff out of the rooms, closets disassembled and things taken off the walls.

Tonight I start work on patching holes and the girls will start papering the floors for me. I might even be able to start putting on a coat of primer or ceiling paint.

Most people say don’t try to do too much at first. It sound like we did a lot and we did, but it wasn’t too bad. We slept well afterwards. And if I don’t get this stuff done now it’ll keep bothering me. Eating me up inside. Damn work ethic.