First Day Back to Work

So, we started with the hedge today.  If you don't stay ahead of it, you'll pay for it in the end.  So Crissie drove the truck and I stood on the platform in the back with the hedge trimmer and cut away.  Our hedge is called Podocarupus and it can grow like a tree, but we don't want that.  As long as it's small enough, it's feathery and easy to cut.   Since we live next to the highway the hedge provides privacy and sound mitigation.  We are trying to keep it about 8 feet or more tall so you can't see any pickups or cars.  The big semis we still can see, but not the driver's cab.

If you do look out from our Lanai or porch, you get a direct shot of the highway.  See the picture.  So we bought more Podocarpus to plant and let it grow tall, so no part of the highway is visible.  We also have a back hedge but that is called Olive Vine.  It doesn't have olives but the leaves look like the olive tree.  It can grow huge as well, but we're keeping it the same as the podocarpus. So basically, three sides are or will be hedge.

The only other side is between us and our neighbor, Anthony.  It's just grass between his property and ours.  So we've decided to plant 3 avocado trees - the kind that grow wide and have plenty of fruit.  That should give us free avocados (and you know how expensive they can get) and a certain degree of privacy as they grow out.  Remember Robert Frost - good fences make good neighbors.

Tomorrow we're building a work bench in the garage and starting the painting.

This is our highway podocarpus hedge.  We're going to extend it to the end of the fence.

You can see we've already started killing the grass to extend the hedge.

With the hedge growing higher than the fence, we won't see the cars on the highway.  The downside is that we won't be able to see the flowering Hibiscus.