Week 25 ~ The Yard

Just in case you're wondering... yes, we are on the home stretch in this 34 weeks of cleaning and decluttering our homes and lives. Michele just posted week 28 on Friday, but we're still a bit behind. Here is our brief report on what we did last week in the yard (week 25.)

Rain, rain, and more rain!

I informed Emily and Arlene that we were getting up early on July 4th and cleaning up the yard and garden. I told them it would be at least an hour... and it ended up being more like 2 hours for each of them, and almost 3 hours for me. Not too bad considering it has rained almost every day since Memorial Day weekend, and we were woefully behind on yard work.

While I mowed the yard, I set the girls to task on the main garden. It's not very big, but it had a LOT of weeds. It was nice to actually be able to see the tomatoes, peppers plants, and green beans when they were finished!

The actual weeding probably only took them about an hour, but before they could begin I had them help me pick up sticks and trash from the yard (also not very big,) and cut the volunteer trees out of the bushes around the front porch. Someday I'd love to remove the bushes and plant more roses, but for now, I just wanted bushes and not volunteer mulberry and crabapple trees. After they were done weeding I just kept yelling out jobs that still needed accomplished so they wouldn't think they were done already.

Since that weekend we've picked several tomatoes, and have many more ripening on the vines. There is nothing quite like a fresh-picked tomato from your own garden!

After I finished mowing, I pulled out some poison ivy, trimmed out some other volunteer (bird-pooped) trees around the house, and helped Arlene fill in a hole in the driveway. 

Is the yard perfect? Far from it. Is the yard better? Definitely! Maybe we'll get a day this week when its finally not raining so the girls can go out and weed the back garden. It's been neglected too long & needs some love. At least the things growing in it can hold their own: our strawberry patch, spearmint, and mullein.

How is your yard looking today? With all this rain I'm going to need to mow again soon!