Our Olde House: April 2025
The list is long and illustrious of postponed tasks from the ladder incident, but we decided it was time for me to get back on the small step ladder and put away some stuff. I started with the small herd of plastic Santas that needed to go back into a closet before December comes around again. This worked well, so I retrieved the remaining extension cords and Christmas decorations from the front porch and put those away too.
It was fixin to rain a lot again so I wanted to finish cleaning the last foot of the back gutters. I put our large step ladder up so I could reach the gutter, and both Miss Sherry and I tested it for steadiness and sturdiness. The gutter is not high above our back deck so I went up only three steps. I cleared the last clump of leaves from the gutter and came down the ladder, one rung at a time, and still standing at the bottom. Success, but enough ladders for now.
The front gutters are another problem altogether. I did not start to clean these gutters before the rogue ladder incident in the backyard, so they are still full of leaves. And, they are also much higher from the ground with lousy access to the gutters and the roof. Since I cannot fly, or hover actually, I bought a hose attachment thingy to flush out the gutters.
It has a bendable portion of the hose so you can send the water to the left or right, depending upon the direction of the downspout, and is long enough to almost reach my gutters while standing on the ground. I needed to stand on the second rung of the ladder to reach the gutter, with only partial success. The water pressure is insufficient to actually clean out the gutter, but rather can only move the clump of leaves clogging the gutter a few feet before it gets entangled in the gutter hangers and will not move any further.
I was feeling pretty good about cleaning out the back gutters, and decided that cleaning the front gutters could wait a little longer. Before, when I thought that once all of the leaves had fallen from the oak tree in February, that I could clean the gutters and they would stay unclogged for several months, I was wrong. I forgot about tassel season, the rather long tassel things that fall from the pecan and walnut trees in the Spring which clog the gutters worse than the leaves.
Since my drone can fly and hover over the roof, I used it to take a picture of the gutters without climbing on a ladder again. I thought it would be easy to figure out how to take a picture with the drone, but since I am not ten years old it took awhile. After a few attempts I found the correct button to push and got my picture. Not surprisingly, the back gutters stayed clean for only two weeks and are now completely clogged with tassels. The front gutters are still full of leaves with a heaping pile of tassels on top. Great.
My Cat5 leaf blower works really well to clean the gutters, but it does require that I be on the roof or be standing on a ladder to reach the gutters. I was thinking about flying, and hovering so I could clean the gutters without being thrown off a ladder, and I thought of maybe using a cherry picker. While I do not yet own one of these, they are available to rent and should work, but the cost/benefit analysis is still fuzzy.
Miss Sherry mentioned that if I thought I was going to climb up a ladder and get on the roof to clean gutters that I had another think coming, so I took my other think. If I could attach something to my leaf blower that would allow me to clean the gutters with it while standing on the ground that would be an essentially perfect solution to my problem. I am still thinking about exactly how to do this. I always try to remember that whenever I have another think coming, that I should take it; it can’t hurt, and for sure has to hurt a lot less than being thrown off a ladder.
