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Mostly warm and dry here in Central Missouri this past week. We got quite a few things knocked out over the weekend.

I retrieved the Red Menace from the body shop Friday morning. The radiator grille piece is on 2-3 week backorder so they put the broken one back on for now. I’ll have to take the truck back to have that swapped out, but that’s a minor inconvenience at this point.

I started off Saturday swapping the OEM wheels/tires that I run during the winter for the high fashion Fuel ten spoke wheels and meaty Yokohama tires that I run the rest of the year. The truck looks nicer and performs much better with the Yokos on compared to the Firestones that it came with. I tweaked my back a bit working on that task, which slowed me down some for the rest of the weekend, but it didn’t stop me.

I got Nanner out and cleaned up one of the winter’s bale butt/horse poo piles and put all of that on the compost heap in the new garden patch, and put a fresh bale on the other pile. Now that decent weather is here there’s no need to keep two bales out at once.

Mrs. Augie and #1 Marine daughter spent quite a bit of time Saturday and Sunday picking up deadfall and patching fence around the horse pasture. One section of temporary fence that is due for replacement had grown up in wild blackberries/multiflora rose and was quite a mess. I used the loader bucket on the tractor to slice the canes off at the ground then pushed them across the pasture and dumped the mess over the fence into the woods. Made short work of what would have been half a day’s worth of really nasty hand-to-briars combat.

I cut down another half dozen or so dead trees around the pasture fence and made bonfire wood out of quite a bit of that. The scrappy bits were shoved to the edge and heaved over the fence into the woods. There are a few more dead ones that I need to cut before they decay to the point they aren’t safe to work on - probably another half day’s worth of work. Once that’s done the fencelines should be good until next spring.

The big win for the weekend... I got the last cattle panel arch installed on the hoop house frame and got them all tied together, and installed the last two panel sections on the side walls. Now I need to frame the end walls and then it will be time to install the plastic sheeting. I doubt I’ll get all of that done in time to get much use out of the hoop house this spring, but come fall it will be in shape to provide green salad etc. well into the winter.

I’d intended to pick up a couple bags of potting soil and get some lettuce going in the greenhouse but I never made it to the store for that. With Daylight Savings Time now in effect I should be able to get that done one evening this week.

Looks like a good start to a busy year for you! I think you and pollard will be getting some unsettled weather Friday-Saturday.

So, for my 70+ weather I took daughter's cat out for awhile and later Sprayed the lawn (Mostly Zoysia) for Creeping Charlie and Chickweed. I am starting to see what I can throw out when our large item pickup day comes.

I have not ordered any new seeds this year other than some Hybrid Prospera Basils, Cilantro, and, Hera Dill from Johnnies seed. I have a 20' x 30' garden plot and enough tomato and other seed for a couple of acres. I am cutting back on gardening this year and will avoid the intensive (and successful) rotation and interplanting of the last few years.

Did some major pruning on my 2 plum trees. Need to pull some weeds along the fences in the "Floral Borders".