I helped my friend install a new water heater in his apartment building. It was hard, but we did it. However, it ended up having a lot of problems even though it was brand new, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen to it now.

My friend Barb had me do some yard work at her place to clear up some broken tree branches and other storm debris. I had purchased a small electric chain saw just for this job, but I neglected to bring my pole saw, which would have been handy. Fortunately I at least did bring a hand saw, and Barb had some wooden poles and scraps of wood that I was able to screw together to form a pole saw. First I only used one pole and got a branch from a small oak, but after getting that branch, I saw another broken branch above it. After a moment of disbelief at what I was about to do, I went ahead and added additional length to the makeshift pole saw. With the additional weight, it actually made sawing off this second branch easier, since the weight pulled down on the blade and all I had to do was push it back up. Well, after the second branch was down, a third even higher branch was revealed and I repeated the same process as before. I stared in disbelief, and then added an entire second pole. I really struggled to get it up to the third branch, but I finally did, and it was so much easier after that.

A couple at my church hired me to help them in their backyard garden. They had a variety of containers full of compost that they had been developing over a period of time and it was now ready to use. They had me move it around to parts of the yard where it could be used, and also move some of it from one container to another for continued development. They also had a heavy infestation of spring onions that they try to remove from the yard every year or so, but they still come back, so they had me work on that, as well as pulling up other weeds.