1074 Citrus Ave Renovations: August 2016

Alex, Truck John and I put in a vegetable garden today. The spot we were working with is on the North side of the house, and used to be home to an ugly bush and some weeds. To start, I dug the bush and weeds up, sprayed weed killer, and laid down weed fabric. Then we thought about how it should be done. The spot we were putting the garden in is right next to the pool pump, so I wanted to segment off the pool pump itself and put rocks on that part. This way there isn't a garden overflowing into the pool pump. We decided to do a two tier structure, and it backs up to a outside porch area. I bought 50 pavers from Home Depot, along with tons of soil, manure, and some seeds. I'm growing some tomatoes and peppers inside until they're ready, and I planted a eggplant today.

There was also a house emergency earlier, when the lights in the guest side of the house went out. The outlets in the bathroom still worked, just the lights in the bathroom and hallway were out. We tried all the breakers, reset all the GFCI, but still no luck. I was worried that it was going to be a cut wire from when we were digging in the garden. The lights went out while I was digging outside, so I was worried I hit a wire. I found an earth ground wire in the garden outside, which ended up not being the culprit. Truck John thought it might be an outlet, so we plugged in a lamp to the outlet outside the guest bathroom, and sure enough, all the lights came back on. We swapped the outlet with a new one and it works now.

Then Truck John fixed the lights on the fan in the living room, which had been unplugged for a few months.

We also moved three banana trees from a side of the house with 0 sunlight to the North side of the house, which is very sunny. I need to get some more pavers to finish the decorative barrier, but I'm excited to grow some bananas soon. I think the banana tree will be successful there.

Then Truck John and Alex routed some new pipe at the end of the downspouts for the gutters so that it flows away from the house and down into the creek. It was a very productive day!