GREAT weather down here!

It's been absolutely GORGEOUS over the last week or so down here.  It's around 60 to 70 degrees at night and around 78 to 80 during the day.  Perfect!  And all the trees are coming out and the Azaleas and Knockout Roses and a lot of other things are blooming and lovely.

And this year instead of trying to remove all the weeds in our garden area in front of our porch (more than 70 feet across!), Mark had Jerry remove EVERYTHING out of there except the three crepe myrtle trees and maybe two or three azalea bushes. Then he sprayed all the ground to kill all the weeds. Then that will be done one more time next weekend and then we're going to add LOTS of new dirt and put in a number of new azaleas and other bushes that bloom most of the time, and maybe even some knockout roses up there like we have in those raised beds over around the barn.  Those roses bloomed all winter! . . . wonderful!

Then I'm hoping we can add some louvers to the corner of the porch near the barn.  That way Mark can park his golf cart on the porch and it won't be visible from the road.  And all the other things we store out there (LOTS of boots and such) will also not be visible.  And then I'll be able to go sit out there unseen -- MUCH better in my opinion.  And from that end of the porch I'll be able to see the horses hanging out around the barn as well.  Sure hope we can get that done!

These look like they probably can be rolled open and closed -
but we probably don't need that at all.  The rest of the
open porch will be more than large enough.  And I don't
really like those very small pieces either -- big boards like
in the photo below would be better.  Very safe in rain storms.

Here's the one I REALLY like.  This is the way I'd most like to have it done -
using those fiber cement siding boards so they can't rot for the rest of our lives!

Well, we'll see what it takes to get that made up for us eventually.  Hope it isn't a fortune! 

We also need to get someone to come remove a water line that's sticking out in one of the upstairs bedrooms because there USED to be a sink countertop in there but we removed that.  But now there are pipes sticking out of the wall more than half a foot!  Yuk!

Oh - and we also want to get yet ANOTHER roof on the back wall of the barn.  We love that new roof over on the side so much that we want it to go all the way around the barn.  So we're getting Blaze Zuvich, the guy who did that side roof last summer, to come by later today and give us a bid on that back one AND on something we might also want to get done inside the garage.  

Then once we get concrete poured under Duke's roof on the side of the barn toward the house I hope we can also get someone to get the water to run off the roof into a gutter so that it will all end up in the drain area around that new concrete flooring outside Duke's room where we plan to bathe all the horses. It'll be VERY nice if Blaze can deal with that gutter as well!

And Mark wants us to get automatic gate openers for the front double gate.  We need to find an opener with remotes that we can keep in our cars and that has another remote inside the house so we can open it when company comes.  It would probably be REALLY good to have a way for someone to speak to us inside if they want in and we're not away of them coming, but I haven't found that kind yet.   

Gees! . . . always SOMETHING that needs done, huh?  Well, I guess that keeps us from just sitting around all the time anyway -- even if someone else is actually doing things for us!