Weekend Maintenance Blog

Tobias and Nicole

October 19-21, 2018

As October comes closer and closer to an end we’re getting in the chillier weather; with that comes winter prepping. Now the campus is huge, so of course we need to come in with a plan of action to make sure our gardens are cleaned up and cleared from former seasonal interests if need be within a tight timeframe. Let's be honest, winter comes and goes when it wants here, so earlier preparation is a must.  It gave us the possibility to work with more power tools and the RTV and trailer, allowing us to practice how to organize and prioritize our work, but also estimate time frame and costs that such areas take. 

           

We started off our weekend with having a run down of our areas to start working on, as well as the procedures with Jeff.  However we were quickly left to our own devices, allowing us work and start off our weekend duties, but only being a radio call away from Jeff if we had an trouble in our duties.  Starting off with prepping what tools we needed and circle checking the power ones and RTV and trailer; a small point to add, with the recent temperature drop tire pressure dropped quite a bit too when we check in both RTV and trailer wheels, so make sure to keep an eye on yours, especially if you’re driving with heavier loads!  Starting off with helping unload some new plant additions for our interiorscape for T building.  However, continuing,  we’ve added a handful of some new plants here and there, in the Conifer/ Woodland garden and on the hill by Second Street, along with a few other tasks to finish up the day and headed back to the greenhouse and tool room for clean up.

            Now, Saturday and Sunday…. boy were they busy days for us! As part of our weekend, Jeff gave us a run down of where the winter prep was to start; the Fanshawe Community Gate area; along the E, F, and H buildings, along with M building.

We started off our days with circle checking and of course prepping for what we needed for tools and going by C compound to pick up the trailer to start our day.  We did walk the site once again to see where we were going to start our task (from the E building side) and prioritize the order, what problems that we could have, possibly how much time this would take for us to accomplish, and what kind of work had to be done, besides the weeding, edging and cutting back.  This all gave us more time for either working with the power tools, learning what methods worked better for what (i.e the edging or useing the trimer to get rid of the grasses growing between the pavers) and of course getting the trailer properly hitched to he RTV, reversing with it.  Now we went through the beds, weeding, cutting back the grasses and daylilies as their season has passed, but left some other critical seasonal interests that have come back to their spotlight now that things have been cleaned up. Finishing up our day with final touches by edging the beds, line trimming the the little weeds, using the blower to clean up the beds as well as pathways from the Honeylocust trees’ leaves.

After all was said and done the weekend gave us a great experience in multitasking, problem solving (especially when the power tools didn’t want to start), and experience in using the basic needed equipment for landscape maintenance, definitely a very helpful and practical aspect of our program.