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Saturday, June 15, 2013

Yard Work

The weather has been beautiful this week, not too hot, and perfect for working on the jungle that has been our yard this spring.  In fact, the kids and I even did some of our lessons outside, soaking up some of the rays.

We've had our garden in for a while.  It is a very small garden.  We just have tomatoes, onions, leeks, and some herbs planted in there.  Then  my husband has planted an herb garden in the big farm bucket that is covered with blue tarp and sits on the remains of our big tree.  It is the perfect height for him to work in.  My little patch is the flower garden in the side yard.  It has bulbs that come up in the spring, and then I like to plant petunias in it for summer colour.  It looks a wee bit messy at the moment, as the tulips are still partly green and brown, and the petunias haven't spread yet.  I also have a couple of carnation plants in there, and they are full of buds.

At the back of the yard, by the fence, the gout weed had taken over.  While it was a mass of not an ugly colour of green, it was taking over everything.  I haven't been able to completely get rid of it, but we pull lots out every year.  The kids and I pulled three yard debris bags of the stuff the other day.  We uncovered the compost bin (we had still been able to get to the lid),  and eight plant pots that had completely disappeared under the green.  We also found two tennis balls (Boo bats and throws them around instead of baseballs--LOTS easier on the windows).

Belle took all the pots and dumped the dirt into the wheelbarrow, where she worked it over and took out all the weeds.  Then she mixed in compost and refilled the pots.  Off we went to the store to get more flowers.  The pots are now planted  with petunias in a mix of different colours.  I am hoping to eventually put them by the back fence so I can see the colour from the house, but they may go out in front of the house for a little while.

Yesterday we all started work on the patch at the front of the house.  There used to be three rose bushes and two shrubs in there.  But the grass got in and the rose bushes were no longer doing well.   One of them had a tree (we think maybe it is some kind of sumac) growing just behind it and overwhelming it ( I had thought it was the plant the rose was grafted into).  Also an invasive vine was growing over everything.  The shrubs were overgrown and getting increasingly difficult to handle.  It has been a source of frustration for me for the past two years.  And I always thought the front looked like a rental property...don't ask me why because I couldn't tell you.  It was just something about the look--or lack of care.  At any rate, we cut and chopped for hours yesterday.  My dear husband did most of the hard work.  I worked at bagging all the debris, and the kids helped where they were needed.  The shrubs are gone now, and two of the three rose bushes.  We ran out of steam before we got to the third one.  Now we want to clean out the dirt and plant something else in there.  We are not sure what yet.  The front of the house faces south so gets a lot of sun in the summer.

The other big project is the weeds in the driveway.  Dear husband is working on those.  Belle had already worked to pull the weeds out of the gaps in our walkway.  And with the grass mowed, the yard is looking improved.  There is still lots of work to do though.

Sorry, no pictures.  I never even thought of getting the camera out--I was just too busy working.  But when it is done, I'll post photos of the new look.

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