Father's Day Gift

My favorite daughter sent me a gift certificate from Golfsmith for father's day. I thought about what I needed and what I wanted (mutually exclusive things). What I needed were mundane things like golf balls, tees, gloves. What I wanted was a new set of Texas Tech head covers for my woods. Because you get free shipping with orders of $75.00, I got both.

The mundane need list of stuff arrived Monday, but I got the head cover today. I already have four Tech head covers, but I have 5 woods. So I ordered this cool Raider Red bad boy for my driver.

I love it. Especially since it was paid for by a ut grad.

Bubba, however, is not so sure he likes it.



Thanks, H.

Stump Removal

My favorite daughter called yesterday to ask if I have a "saws-all" because her bamboo is crowding her wooden fence and she wants to cut back the clumps. Well, I do have a reciprocating saw and I needed to finish removing two wax leaf ligustrums that had grown to about four feet tall on the property line next to our neighbor's driveway. Sweety requested this and I didn't want to do it, but once I cut them down to stumps, I saw that she was right.

This seemed like a good time to get the stumps out and take some pictures so H could see what I did. So here is the first stump already out of the ground. I just ran the saw around the stump about 10 inches from it's center and pretty much at 90 degrees to the ground. This only took a minute. Then I took the grubbing pick and working around the perimeter of the stump, I pried from under the center of the stump until it came loose. Took about 4 or 5 minutes of work.

Here is the first stump out of the ground.


Here is a better picture of the tools.

The second stump required another trip around the base of the stump with the saw as it had some extra roots underneath it. On the second round, I tilted the saw at about a 45 degree angle to try to get those lower roots. You can see how much deeper the hole is on the second stump due to it's deeper roots.



Finally, I used a spading fork to break up the soil, added some peat moss, and worked it into the clay soil with the fork. Meanwhile, Sweety went out to get some centipede grass to cover up the bare spot. Unfortunately, there is none available right now, so we'll work on that later.

H, here is the blade I was telling you about. It is a Piranha Wood/Pruning blade from Black and Decker. It is fairly flexable, but it cut really nicely and did not break.

Rain!

The drought will take the weekend off, it looks like. It is officially raining in Longview, TX. You can see the puddles on the flagstone patio.


It has rained once since we got home from Alaska, and that only a brief, hard thunderstorm that lasted 10 minutes. We got a quarter inch and were very lucky. My golf buddies in the eastern part of the county and western Harrison County didn't get enough to wet the sidewalks.

I took the day off from golf today after shooting a mediocre, but improving, 82 yesterday. Had a flat on the golf cart when we got home from lunch with PawPaw at Buckner's. I jacked up the cart, wiggled the tire back into place on the rim, and filled it with air. Managed to catch up with Eddie and Don on hole #3. We don't usually play in the afternoon due to the heat, but it was a few degrees cooler than normal the last couple of days. It was nice to play without dew on the grass to rob me of what little distance I can get from the roll.

Tomatoes are coming in. I am quite proud that the plants are so successful. The areas where they are planted were just grass when we moved in last October.





In the picture above, you can see a tomato plant in a white pot. It was planted at the same time as the ones planted in the flower bed. They were stunted due to a lack of water while we were gone to Alaska. I think I will try to nurse them along through the summer and hope for a fall crop.

Probably Getting Hit by a Truck

I went to Dr. Smith for the annual checkup today, and I am in such good health, I'm probably going to get run over by a truck. I hope for Sweety's sake it's a Exxon/Mobil truck.

My doc is the greatest. He said my good cholesterol was a tiny bit low, and the best way to raise it is to drink one ounce of alcohol at bedtime or have a glass of wine with supper. Red wine would be best, but grape juice will take care of the red part if I don't like red wine.

How good is that? The only thing better would be if he had said follow that drink with a french fry chaser.

Oh, yeah. He said getting more exercise would help also.

Guess I'll park across the street from the liquor store. That'll take care of the alcohol, the exercise, and give the Exxon truck one more shot at me.