Busy weekend! . . .

It WAS supposed to rain this weekend, but as it turned out, it wasn't after all.  (Well, it is today, but we had Friday and Saturday to do all kinds of things.)  So Mark and David and Jerry have been doing all kinds of things outside!  Jerry cut down the trees in front of the porch so they wouldn't shadow the solars on the garage roof.  Then I got him to cut off all the bottom branches on all the big trees.  That way Mark wouldn't have them hit his head when he's mowing, and in the matter of the Magnolias in the front yard, the horses won't be able to eat the bottom branches any more!

Nice lower trees there in front now -- and we sure will be adding a raised bed in that area there in front of the porch. 

When we put plants and bushes there in frontof the porch, they invariable got covered with weeds, so we're going to put a RAISED bed in there in front because that raised bed over there in front of the barn (there on the right in the photo above) is very easy to keep weeds away.  We've ordered an edging item, but we haven't received them yet so we're waiting to get that raised bed set up.  Guess it's going to take a LOT of special dirt since it's going to be about 70 feet by 4 feet.  Whew!  And when we do that, I think we can also put in nice handrails along those steps up onto the porch as well.  

Now Mark can mow there in that dog yard without having to worry about running into branches.  AND we can see the horses from the back porch now, regardless of where they are since those tree branches have been raised.

All those branches on those Magnolia trees are higher than the horses now too.  Good!

This is that specific Magnolia that the horses hang out underneath most of the time,
so its branches are high enough that I HOPE they won't be able to eat them anymore!

See - they do love hanging out under that Magnolia.  But as you can see here,
they've eaten all the leaves on those lower branches.  Sure glad those bottom
branches have been removed so (I hope) they can't eat more of those leaves! 

Then Jerry hauled all those cut-off branches out to the road so they can be
picked up for us this week.  Whew!   We sure got rid of LOTS of branches, huh!

Then David and Mark spent both days trying to get that front door on the horse trailer fixed.  When we had to haul one over to LSU, that door had to be fastened closed with a rope. NOT good.  But it was such as mess that as it turned out, they just had to remove that door entirely and just make a new one.  

See that rope hanging down there left of that open door? . . . we had to use that to fasten across the door to keep it closed because it wasn't working right.  But we sure won't be needing that anymore once that new door gets installed - soon.  

See - there's that old door that wasn't working there on the right -- and the new one being painted there on the left.  Once that's complete, a new metal edge will go around it and then it can be installed.  Nice!  

Well, this morning it IS raining so it's a good thing all that stuff got done over the last couple days.  I guess we can just kick back and relax while it pours today.  And the horses have lots of hay and are hanging out on their porch out at the barn, too.  Nice quiet day, huh?