Renovation, Part 1

Colleen asked how the turtle made its way to our front porch. Well, I'll tell you.

It's a long story.

You might have read about our oleanders. All of the oleanders in the area are going to die of oleander leaf scorch. Ours were showing signs of the disease. Instead of waiting until we had a lot of ugly sticks in the ground like many people in the area, we decided to take the oleanders out now and get it over with.

In my story with the time-lapse video of my cutting down a large clump of oleanders, I mentioned that a neighbor had stopped by to say that he is in the tree trimming business and could help finish the job. We got the oleanders cut down to nasty stumps and had all of the bushes lying on the ground.

We needed help finishing the job.

That was a lot more oleander debris than we could handle. And there was no way that we could take out all those stumps.

We hired our neighbor's Lumberjack Services to clean up our mess. And to clear out the row of oleanders that we hadn't yet gotten to. You can see a lot of brown leaves in these oleanders. They shouldn't look that way.

After they cut down the rest of the oleanders, they chipped them all up and hauled them away.

Finally, they brought in the big stump grinder and took out the stumps!

What's this got to do with a turtle on the porch, you ask? That's more of the story.

For another day...

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