Yesterday was not a calm holiday, though at least I only worked a little bit blogging for all those companies I seem to be working with.
It wasn’t calm, because my friend Mike and I got a wild hair and cleaned our entire back patio. The original goal was to get our gas grill up and running. We’d been waiting to use it to attach it to the gas outlet, but that has not happened, so Mike said, hey, let’s just go get a bottle of propane. Duh. That started us cleaning with our mighty power washer.
While he cleaned out the grill (including bird nest, of course, birds love grills), I power washed the “outdoor room” area, which is secretly a vortex for dog hair and dead bugs. Luckily I’d swept it out recently, so it wasn’t too bad.
When he took over power washing, I got the outdoor fireplace cleaned off. There had been three boxes of stuff sitting on the hearth for a couple of years, so I came to the conclusion Lee was not going to move them. So, I did, first cleaning off the mud dauber nests from the fancy guitar hanging system components. No idea why they were on the fireplace. But they are in the garage office now.
We cleaned every single chair or seat on the porch, too. Birds like to sit on them. After a few random chains and things were removed, and after two more outdoor chairs were located, we had enough stuff for three sitting areas. And no one was stung by a wasp, even though many mud dauber nests were turned back into mud while we were working.
While we were at it, we got our little water fountain up and running, too (it had a rusted out tiki torch in it, which was yucky). By the time all that was over, I was a tad over-heated, but I made it, and am really proud of the hard work (and Lee did the worst part, the corner where all the birds nests and June bugs combined to make an ugly mess. I am glad I didn’t take “before” pictures. Ranches have a lot of things that like to make porches look disgusting.
The actual reason we did all this was that we were going to cook fancy Mike Burgers on the grill (the secret ingredient is pretzels…hmm). So, we also had to go get the ingredients for that. While shopping, I found cushions in red and tan, the theme colors of our house! I had to snap those up.
Now, we do have a white dog named Carlton, who has been known to destroy cushions when bored. So, I also purchased bungee cords to help secure cushions to their designated chairs or benches. And I tied them down REALLY well, once I got home.
The power washing miracle succeeded, and we ended up having a nice meal, joined by my sister, Tyler the sharpshooter, and Mandi. We’d hoped Anita would come, but her burger makes a nice meal for one of us later! It cooled off enough to really enjoy the porch, too. so it was a successful holiday. Looking forward to more guests tonight, perhaps!
