when we were young and just buying our first house, a recommendation from someone I trusted was “Buy the most house you can barely afford.”
The reason was inflation, which was just normal 40 years ago… The thinkng was 1 You’d probably make more $ down the road and 2 The interest rates would keep going up and 3 If you bought too small & had a kid, you might need to either extensively rennovate or buy another house, at higher interest.
We never did that as much as our peers, but… sometimes I think thats a good thing and sometimes I really regret it.
we used orange oil around the area the raccoons were making a mess, as well as bone meal. They stopped after a couple of weeks. We also cut back some of the plant growth in that area so that it was less protected.
Any advice on how to shop for/renew an internet service? My discounted internet is running out and it looks like it might cost me at least $20 more for my download speeds to take twice as long.
I cancelled mine, used mobile data only for a few months (traveling a lot and not working at home so I could do this) and then my ISP sent a “have we got a deal for you” offer that was better than I’d had before.
ETA: my plan had been to go without for 3 months so I could be considered a new customer again and get a deal, but it only took two months to get the offer I used.
I am cutting down two bushes and snipping back a slep of weird thorny vines to clear an area out for a paver patio.
Do I need to dig everything out below the roots or can I cut level and pour some boiling water or something to kill the little stumps?
For reference the bushes are 4’ and 2.5’ tall. Pretty unhealthy/barely hanging in.
I refuse to dig things out and just put something heavy on top of them for a couple of years. I found some old concrete paving stones that I use for this.
Hmmmm.
My plan would, in theory, be to put several layers of weed barrier down, a lot of paver sand, and then a layer of crush and run as well as two or 3 inch depth flagstone pavers connected as tightly as I can.
I’m just not sure all of that would suppress any growth.
I’m not the most thorough or fastidious person so I would do that and hope for the best. If the plants were in rough shape they probably don’t have tons of energy stored in the roots, and it would take a lot to get past all of that.
If you’re doing a paver base all the way with the weed barrier and sand you need to dig out about 6-12” anyway (at least I did when I did something similar). So you’ll have dug out a lot of the roots already.
However if that doesn’t kill them and it comes up through the paver stones and wrecks them after all that work I’d be really mad, so maybe it a better safe than sorry situation.
I think a more likely issue than regrowth through all that is that once the stumps rot away, your pavers may slump. But you can likely remedy that on a paver-by-paver basis by lifting, digging out the sand, and adding a bit more gravel.
If you want to know for sure, just give it five years or so and I can provide a thorough report on the paver patio we put in this summer.
