Archives June 2022

In a previous post I mentioned plans for a pool in the summer of 2022. Now that the summer of 2022 is here, I’ve been hard at work coordinating the pool project. In addition to working with the pool builders, electricians, gas company, and concrete company, I had to have the land where the pool is going to go graded, so that rainwater will run around the pool and down the hill, and not cause problems. This ended up being a pretty dramatic amount of earth movement. The first step was to carve an entrance through the trees onto the property from Range Trail, which allowed the backhoes and other equipment to get to the pool area.

Once that was done, the workers were able to quickly remove trees and brush, and create a level space for the pool.

After the land was leveled, I needed to have the area surveyed and the property lines marked, obviously to make sure that the concrete around the pool and the railing were all on my side of the property line.

Once that was done, I was able to finalize plans for the pool and get permits in place with Dane County and the Town of Verona.

I worked with my concrete contractor (the same person who did the concrete for the three season room project last summer), and also got railing ordered and delivered to be installed around the pool.

Excavation for the pool itself starts on July 1st, and the majority of the construction will be done by the end of the following week!

Just like in previous years, an important part of my spring is opening up the lake house, getting the boat lift in the water and the boat on the lift, restocking the bar, and getting the lake house yard in gear for summer. The first thing I did was work on clearing the yard of weeds, and clearing bramble from the path down to the water.

I then shoveled sand and dirt that accumulated over the winter down around the dock deck and stairs, and made sure the dock was good to go for summer.

After that, I did some painting touch ups on the outside of the house, most notably the window frame from the window that was broken when the new roof was put on last fall.

After that, I restocked bar and tidied up the interior of the house.

Once the house was all set, I got the boat in the water and onto the boat lift, and with some help from my friend Bret got the lift awning in place.

After that, it was time to hit the tiki bar and party cove, and enjoy the summer on the water!

Once my spring landscaping tasks were done, there was a final bit of work I needed to do outside at the Verona house. Over time, a section of the wall had sagged a little bit, and needed to be fixed. To address this, I dug holes around the concrete footings for the posts, and then was able to tilt the posts forward back to a straight position. After this, I poured additional concrete around the footings to lock them into place.

It was a relatively simple fix, but it worked very well and, along with replacing a few post caps, brought the wall back into tip-top shape.

After finishing my spring cleaning tasks in March and early April, I returned from the Masters ready to start landscaping and getting the lawn back in shape. As usual, the first thing I did was haul several palettes of mulch, and replace all of the old mulch from last year in the various beds around the house.

After the mulch, I tore out the overgrown shrubs and bushes near the gate, since they had reached a point where they were becoming an eyesore. Eventually, I’ll replace them with new bushes, but for now it is nice just to have the gate and wall more visible.

Next, I installed a panel with my address number on one of the posts, which had been needed for years to help delivery and Uber drivers figure out which house was which on the private drive.

As the weather warmed up and felt more like spring, I planted new arbor vidae to replace a couple that had died over the winter, and I planted flowers in the platers on the front porch.

All that was left was the lawn, which proved relatively easy this year since there hadn’t been any major construction projects that tore it apart last year. I fertilized and mowed, and with a little bit of watering and a lot of spring rain, it came to life very nicely!

One of the first tasks I did this spring as the weather started to warm up was to pull all of the cars out of the garage and vacuum and sweep the floors. It’s something I do every spring, and I’m usually able to keep the garage floors clean enough through the fall that I only have to do it once a year.

After the garages were clean, and before it was warm enough to really start doing any landscaping work, I took out the ATV and did some cleanup work across the my land. Given how large my property is, it’s inevitable that trash will accumulate, either along the side of the road or in more remote corners where I suspect the local teenagers sometimes sneak in for a clandestine place to party. Something about finding 29 vape cartridges and a bunch of empty bottles of cheap liquor makes me thing that my suspicious were correct:

I’m also still, after nine years of owning the house, finding golf balls that the previous owner chipped into the woods. Every year I think I’ve found them all, and every year more turn up.

In any case, it felt good to get everything cleaned up and ready for spring before the undergrowth and leaves came in, which make it much more difficult to find and retrieve the trash.