Cleaning the grass

First - apologies for the lack of postings - we have been busy doing things at our lots in Venture Out, but either we haven't gotten pictures or we just haven't done many interesting things each day.

You may remember that we had artificial grass put down at our lot last year (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2024/02/continued-work-on-lot.html, https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2024/03/more-about-grass.html). We had the opinion that this would reduce the requirements for maintenance on our yard... and, for sure, we did not have any weeds grow in our grass over the summer.

However, our grass was dirty... We called our sweet neighbor, Barb, who had gotten the fake grass before we did and asked her what was recommended to get it clean -- she let us know that she had a carpet rake in her house and invited us to borrow it. We headed out to see what we could do.

Once again, we did not get a "before" picture of our yard...

...this was after Carl had used the leaf blower to get the big stuff off our grass -- you can see what looks like browned-out grass at the edge -- that's various stuff pollen and dust and stuff collected in the edge of the grass.

Carl changed the blower to a vacuum and worked on vacuuming up the stuff that he had blown from the yard into the street...

He then came back and used the vacuum on the grass too. I had used Barb's rake to loosen up the stuff on the edges so it would be easier to pick up.

This is the "grass" in front of our park model - "before"...

... another view of "before"...

On this yard, Carl used an upright vacuum and beater-bar to try cleaning it -- he totally filled the container in the vacuum and it cut out. He also thought that it may have overheated.

Meanwhile, I was working on the edges... with a broom...

... and with Barb's carpet rake. You can see all the "stuff" that is coming out of the "grass".

This was after we were finished -- a lot better!

Now, we're only working outside about 2 hours each morning, until we get so hot and sweaty and the heat gets beyond what we are willing to work in... so we only get so much done each day...

This morning, we worked on Barb's yard -- I remembered to get a "before" picture...

... and then this is the "after". We just used the rake and a broom on her yard.

We also have worked on getting our outside spaces set up. We had all our outside patio furniture stored in the Casa next door, or on the covered patio of the Casa. We moved the appropriate furniture the each patio, and got the chair pads out of the sheds where they were stored.

Patio furniture out and patio carpet next to Gracie. We also have the awning out to keep the side of Gracie a little cooler.

The forecasts indicate that we should have cooler temperatures (90s today, 80s tomorrow, 70s Friday -Sunday). Maybe we will be able to work on outside projects even more than 2 hours in the morning!

Note that we have also been working on making the Casa ready for guests, as our first guest for the season will be arriving on Sunday! We have not yet turned on the air conditioning in the Casa, so it gets warmer as the day goes by too.