Homestead outting, a tool fix and a bee swarm.

Hi yall! Hope everyone's weekend went well. Mine went too quick.

Today I made my journey to that lil place-o-mine. I'm overdue bout two weeks so I hadda check on stuff. I should have left yesterday(Sat.) but I honestly admit that I wasn't in the mood to go and opted to stay home and take some much needed rest.

I've also been needing a tool "fix". For those of ya'll that know me know that I use to work in the industrial field, I & E to be exact. Then times changed and I lost my job due to layoffs/lack of jobs in the area. I have a job now but its not what I want to do and nowhere near what I use to do fer a living. So, I get in my moods where I feel the need to work with hand tools, often. That's when I was all pumped up to take the small engine repair class and it got cancelled. I really really need to take that class to learn how to troubleshoot and properly service my own stuff and thought it the perfect opportunity to get use of my hand tools :) whenever I felt like it.

About a year ago I went to a garage sale and got two weedeaters one gas and one electric. The gas one was like 5 or 10bucks and she threw in the electric one. She said that the gas one stopped working and they didnt wanna mess with it. I thought it would be a good project weedeater and didnt care if i messed something up in it as I didn't spend an arm and a leg fer it. Today seemed like a good day to examine it. The primer bulb was brittle and fell off, the fuel lines are rotted, gas tank varnisized, fouled up spark plug and a dirty carbonized piston head. I was mostly just tinkering using my tools :) as I didn't have the replacement parts for the weedeater. A coupla weeks ago I went to Harbor Freight and bought a compression tester and did a compression test on it. I got it to 90psi and it held there for a long time until I released the air.

Here's the pic of the compression test. All you do is hand tighten the hose to the spark plug hole. To release the air all you do is push in the silver pin.

This pic shows the dirty piston head through the spark plug hole.

I will take the cylinder block off sometime later and clean and examine it.

This little red wire was detached/cut off from the clip.

Its a whole other story.

Doesn't it look like I know what I'm doing with all this? lol

Then a break from the tools.

These Texas Lantanas are one of my favorite wildflowers. Its like two flowers in one.

Then like 10ft from my lil house something dug these holes.

What's up with that?

Greenery.

I always like when the mesquite get their new leaves in the Spring.

Oh yeah..I had a bit of drama today. After I had put everything away tools etc, I got my machete and went to the fence line to try and get some of the nasty weeds cut. While there I kept hearing a humming/buzzing of bees like honey bees. I would look in all directions and at times I even thought that they must be above my head but I never did see them. After I got tired of the weeds, I walked away and it seemed like surround sound as I kept hearing them as if I never moved away from the other spot. I didnt dwell on it. There's always some kinda bees out there especially now since the spring flowers are blooming. So I went inside to take note of what all I had in there..the front door was shut but the window open. The noise got louder and louder that I seriously thought it was my neighbor from down the road comin' over in her Kawasaki Mule, they'll do that sometimes. But then the sound was different so I opened the door and low and behold....there was a freakin' huge big ol' swarm of bees flying all over!!! The view I had of the sky was covered with these honey bees. It looked like someone had covered up the place with black netting. My first reaction was "Wow!"..then I slammed the door. Then I went to the window and there were still millions of em. I wanted so bad to run to the truck and get my camera to get video but my better judgement got the best of me. I knew that if i did that there was a possibility I could die, then the coyotes would eat me and the ugly buzzards would poke at me, so I stayed put. Then just as fast as they were there they flew away! I went outside and looked around fer a while, went back inside and locked up shop. It was getting late. Have any of ya'll ever seen this? It really was a sight!

Well, I know this has been a long-winded post but I just wanted to take you through my events fer the day/weekend. I hope everyone's spring projects are coming along alright. Thanks fer stoppin' by to visit. Until next time, see you on the backroads.