Visit to Nashville

An item on our to-do list for a while has been to go to Nashville and visit Tyler and Heather.  They moved about 9 months ago there for his new job. If that wasn't enough, we also wanted to see Mason and their recently purchased house.

This past weekend the opportunity presented itself since we were shooting a wedding in north Alabama. So rather than come home afterwards we continued north to the Music City. We got into town late Saturday night. They are remodeling their house so we got a quick tour and an updates on all the projects. They are doing all the work themselves and it is looking great. They are in the middle of getting all the hardwood floors down. Most of the house has been repainted and they are updating the bathrooms. Lots of other little projects are also going on as well. Wish we lived closer so I could help out some.  The one project I did get to help out with was putting in their new mailbox. We dug the hole, got it set, and filled it in with concrete. It was still standing the next day.

On Monday we went to Chick-fil-a and treated them to lunch with out coupons. We then fulfilled my one request for the trip and that was to stop by Financial Peace Plaza and see Dave Ramsey. He was in studio that day. Its a neat building with a big window to watch him do his show. There is also a bookstore/cafe that has free food. During one of the commercial breaks he came out into the lobby and shook hands with everyone who wanted.  I tried to contain my giddiness.

That afternoon we went hiking in the woods behind their house.  It is a nature preserve, so it should always stay woods behind them. We found a good vine and cut it so we could swing on it. It was on the side of a hill so just a little swing and you got pretty high off the ground. It was a ton of fun and brought back some memories of woods behind of the Sycamore House.

It was a great visit and hope we can have more of them.

Winter Work

The lack of regular maintenance work on the winter opens me up for some other projects. This one has been on the docket for a while, waiting for the go ahead from the homeowner. We got the word just before Christmas to go ahead. Matt was still in town, so that was a huge help having an extra hand.

This family lost a bunch of trees in the tornadoes last April. He went from a pretty wooded lot, to primarily turf. He wanted to get some new trees going to add some shade to his yard and house, mainly to reduce the power bill. In order to reach that goal more quickly, he wanted bigger specimens of the trees than you typically get from nurseries. So I called my friend Jesse at Hunter Trees to get some bigger trees. I had to find out how big I could go and still handle them without any heavy equipment. He told me the ones I were looking at had about 300lbs root balls. Trees are also like diamonds in the sense that the bigger you get the trees get exponentially more expensive. So double in tree size means, more than double in cost most of the time.

Matt took on the laborious task of digging most of the holes while I picked up the plants. He made good use of our new augers which helped with the task. The yard was flat and the hole locations close to the trailer, which made for fairly easy install once the holes were dug. It ended up being a fun project and took just over a day to complete.

The trees on the trailer.

A finished hole, ready for a tree.

One ginkgo in the front yard to eventually provide shade for most of the house.

One 'Degroots Spire' Arborvitae to accent the corner of the house.

Three 'Steeplechase' Arborvitaes to create a screen between driveways.

Three crepe myrtles to shade the sidewalk and the house.

Two Burfordi hollies to fill in between existing hollies. These were not that large of a specimen.