Battle of the bees

I have been battling bees the past couple days. I had to hit one with my little trenching shovel three times before it either had enough or I knocked it out for good... the last hit was quite solid and made a ping sound. I don't know if they like my white shirt, my sweat, or my deodorant (since it is the only fragrance on me). I keep walking away but for some reason they keep showing back up as soon as I start working again. I am sure the lady walking down the street when I was sweeping the layer of dirt off the end of the driveway where I was going to be working got quite a laugh with me swatting at the bees and briskly walking away every couple minutes. 

That aside, this Saturday, I got the trench cut in the asphalt at the end of the driveway so that I can put a driveway drain and connect up the downspout on that side of the garage to the dry well. I got to use a new power tool too, a concrete saw. I started by putting one of the pieces of plywood down and measuring my cut width from the cement driveway and using spray paint along the edge of the plywood to make a line for me to follow.

When I first started sawing, I didn't have the water hooked up right and it wasn't flowing to the saw, so the saw was putting up this massive cloud of dust. With the water working right, it was relatively dustless and probably overkill for me to have the dust mask on; don't I look menacing.

I had to rent the saw for 4 hours even though it only took like a half hour to cut the driveway and another 10 to cut the slab of sidewalk in the back that I had to break to be able to lift. The slabs came out good and I will be able to use them as a transition through the gate on the east side of the house once I get the fence redone on that side. Here they are laid out end to end, cut ends to the outside since they didn't end up exactly square.



This is one of the pieces after I broke it, before cutting it off



Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4

I tried to borrow a sledge from the neighbor directly across the street from me, but he didn't have one. So when his next door neighbor, the guy who helped me shovel gravel for a little bit during the week, was out getting his mail, I borrowed one from him. It took forever to break and pry up that 6 inch section of asphalt. I finally got it all up and realized there was a lot of digging to make room for the drainage pipe and culvert I was putting in, not to mention the trench needing to be dug in the gravel on the west side of the driveway to the west garage downspout. I dug out all the asphalt and loaded it in the trailer, but left the rest of it since it was really getting hot.

I really didn't do much on Sunday, cuz I was mighty sore and needed a little break.  I think I ended up digging in the trench a little bit out front Sunday night when it got cool, but for the most part, I took it easy.

Here is a video of me cutting the trench, in case you wanted to see it in action: