Weekend Update

This weekend was our first serious yardwork session. My mother & sister were out visiting and we ripped into the backyard Saturday.

• First off, I mowed what little grass we do have for the first time this year. Yes, it's a little late. I finally found a place to get my ancient bent-reel mower sharpened, and they did an amazing job. Last year, the mower clogged & stopped regularly, and cut very unevenly. Now, it's smooth sailing. No clogs, just a smooth, even cut. It's beautiful. The folks at Titus Ave. Mower Service did a terrific job with the mower. Given the amount of lawn we'll have when everything is finished, I won't need to get it sharpened more than once every 3-4 years. For $65 for the sharpening, lube & adjustment, it's a bargain. 20 minutes, plus some time with the weed whacker and the lawn looks infinitely better.
• The majority of the rock pile next to she shed has been relocated to behind the shed.
• The "island" where the lilac tree lives near the shed has been completed. My wife finished the rock border/wall that I had started last fall, planted her one of her two new May Night Salvia (happy Mother's Day) plants in it, and covered with mulch. It looks finished. It looks beautiful. It looks exactly the way I had imagined it. I need to take some pictures I guess.
• The big chore was weeding, specifically clearing out everything that had started making the backyard look overgrown. 5+ 30-gallon bags later, we've pushed the "cleared" line about 8 feet further back, so we've got about 16 feet from the back of the house relatively clear. We also cleared a path past the dogwood tree to get to the area behind the shed, so we could put the rock pile back there.
• During a break, my mother started looking at some of the smaller trees (3-4 years old) that had sprouted up in the yard. We decided they needed to come down, so the big shears came out and we lopped the trees off about 4 feet above ground level. I still need to dig out the stumps, but it opened things up some for more light to come in. We identified some other small trees that can come down too, but that'll be a chainsaw job.
• My sister, needing to stay close to the baby, started digging around the brick patio behind our bedroom. She started scraping at some of the bricks, and discovered that they extended much farther out from the house than we had thought. They still need to get cleaned up, and it's not a very smooth patio, but it looks nice so far. I'll have to stay on top of the weeds with a chemical treatment (RoundUp maybe) that are sure to sprout up from between the bricks.
• While we were working in the backyard, my wife was hard at work in the area between the kitchen, family room and bedroom. A couple weeks ago she'd weeded a good portion of the side by the kitchen, and she finished that off. She also moved some of the plants that were there (Elephant Ear Hosta, Bleeding Hearts) to other garden locations.

We made some terrific progress this weekend. We need to keep pushing though, we can't let things sit idle and start falling apart like last year.