Our Olde House: April 2026
One morning the house was still too warm from the day before even though the air conditioner had been running all night. This A/C unit has run flawlessly for several years, so I figured it just needed more Freon, or whatever gas they use now. Miss Sherry called the air conditioning guy and made an appointment for him to check it out a few days later. I had another think coming, and I took it by looking at the air conditioning unit. The unit looked ok, but the condenser fan was not turning. I poked it with a twig and it turned freely in both directions so this definitely was not a Freon issue, but rather a ‘something is broken’ problem.
With this new information, Miss Sherry called the air conditioning guy again and asked if he could check our unit sooner; he showed up in less than one hour. He found that a circuit board had failed which was keeping the compressor and condenser fan from running to prevent any damage to the unit. He did a workaround to get the unit running again, and ordered another circuit board which hopefully will arrive before we forget we ordered it.
A small rainstorm dumped the last of the pin oak leaves into the gutters and clogged the front gutter during a downpour. Since the last of the leaves had fallen I was thinking about running the gutter snoot around to clean out the gutter, but before I got around to this the pin oak ‘tassels’ let loose. No point in cleaning the gutters now until all of the tassels have fallen, in a week or two.
I know it is Spring when I sneeze before I wake up. Actually, I suppose I simultaneously sneeze and wake up, but either way is unpleasant, especially since this usually happens around 3:00 am. Since I also cannot breathe through my nose at this point, I have to get up, get some allergy nose spray and accept the fact that I will not go back to sleep before dawn.
My allergies have been very light since the Black Walnut tree was removed, so I mistakenly thought there was a single cause and effect relationship there; but no. This year for some reason our pin oak tree thinks it is springageddon, and is dumping at least five times as many pollen tassels than it has ever produced before, and apparently I am also allergic to this species of tassel.
After all of the tassels had fallen, I blew out the front gutters with the gutter snoot just fine, but unfortunately the Cat5 wind from the snoot dislodged one of my upper gutter connectors and it fell onto the ground. This left an open downspout from the upper gutter pointing directly at one of the porch pillars so I needed to reattach the connector right away. This of course will require me to stand on a ladder to reach it, something that neither Miss Sherry nor I wanted to do. After I got the ladder in position, with its feet pressed into the grass I went up the ladder, and Miss Sherry stood on the bottom rung so the ladder could not move.
The connector disconnected because it was a little too short, and I did not use screws to attach the pieces. I found the right sized connector pipe and attached the other pipe with screws while on the ground. I took my drill up the ladder to make the hole for the screw, and put all of the pieces back together. I was back on the ground without a hitch, and without any help from the ladder, and both of us were grateful that task was completed.
The ants in my bathroom did manage to find the kitchen after I removed the ant bait from my bathroom, but their time was short lived and limited to one small area on the counter. I put another ant bomb under the house, actually right under where the ants were coming into the kitchen so it worked great. The next day the ants were no longer coming into the kitchen, and I was able to remove the remaining stragglers easily.
We had enough of a storm to break one branch on a tree, which bent over until the power line to our apartment stopped it. I am guessing that the combination of a bazillion blossoms and some rain was too much weight for the branch. It did not disconnect the power, and five years ago I would have climbed up my aluminum ladder with my chainsaw on a stick and cut the branch that was touching the power line. That sounds really stupid when I say it out loud.
This time I called the professionals to cut the limb. This was wonderful, the branch was removed without any sparks or calls to 911. Sometimes older and wiser works out better.
