Going Yard

Yard part two!  Woohoo!

Ok ok... I have been running a bit behind on the blog. With the house being in a livable and comfortable condition thing just seem to, well ya know.. Nothing better than a soft couch, endless snacks, and the O's playing every night on your beautiful TV.  Combine that with work and the weather warming up outside, and it leads to a very lazy man doing just what he wants. Drinking, having fun and living it up! 

Well somewhere in the middle of that castle-esk life-style we did find some time to finish bringing our yard up to neighborhood standards.  Still left on the to-do list was mowing, edging, cleaning up more weeds, disposing of several bags of yard waste, and some man decorating. 

The previous owners were nice enough to leave a working electric mower, several old shovels, and a seriously beat up weed whacker.  As you can tell from previous pictures our lawn is in three tiers. Thus in order to mow the lawn you must run up and down hills as you push the mower.  Its a sad admission, but I look at this as my exercise. Lol no wonder I'm getting fat! After running up and down my hilled yard things immediately started to take shape. Mowing your lawn is like getting a hair cut after you let it grow out for a long time. It immediately makes things look better. 

After the mow was a quick run around with the weed whacker.  This is a special weed-whacker though. The safety guard that holds the blade to cut the cord has been broken completely off for what looks like a long time. After wrestling with getting the wire though the little hole for 15 minutes I was finally off the races. It only took about five minutes for me to accidently give the cord a bit too much slack and realize that there is a reason that they place a blade on the safety guard.  The purpose of this invention is to cut the cord down to the appropriate size.  My shins were not happy with me. It looked like they got beat by a tiny little man whip. Don't cry for me Argentina; just a minor flesh wound!

After what really only amount to a couple of hours of work Katy and I just had to get our Lowes on!  I mean damn they give you this plastic card and all you have to do it swipe it through this machine and they let you walk out of the store with whatever you want!!!!

An hour of exploring later and we were all set! Flowers, tomato plants, miracle grown, weed killer, crab grass killer, a trowel, and some other odds and ins.  Katy got right to work planting our flowers and plants and I laid down the first round of weed killer.  The lawn just wasn't ready for seed so I'm going hopefully kill all the ugly green stuff over the summer, plant my seed in the fall, and have a lush beautiful lawn next spring. I'm starting to think I'm going to be that guy who is going to have like a competition in my head with my neighbors on whose lawn looks better. 

With all the work done, and the yard looking right it was time to sit back and... wait.. sit back where! All I got is a big long lawn with a bunch a grass! Well heck this must be remedied immediately!  It didn't take much convincing for Katy and we were off again to Lowes! This time we were going to show them who was boss! I mean I need somewhere to sit in my lawn this is just inhumane!  Now of course you didn't think I was going to buy lawn chairs did you? Oh and we bought a grill too! Who wants to come over and party! /me begins to chant "Party! party! party! party!"

 

And the video walkthrough!

And the sun shines again

Although I'm still many articles behind on current events I couldn't help but sneak in a quick real-time article.  For the first time in what seems like forever it was actually warm outside Saturday and I couldn't resist putting off inside boring chores for a little fun in the sun.  The backyard was in need of some dire tlc, and who better to give it them me! I mean come on love is my middle name. Just ask Katy.  Anywho thats a story for a different blog..  I went to work about 10ish in the morning thinking this would all be over in the early afternoon, but ended up going till close to sunset. Weeding several flower beds that have not been touched in over a year sucks.  It takes a lot of time to pull everything up and then shaking out the dirt. Especially when every square inch is covered by grass or weeds. Here is what the beginning of my day looked like...

As you can see it's a mess. I'm not looking for a reno out here just a thorough cleaning. Well eight hours later with a half hour lunch, three big trash bags of lawn junk and extreme tightness in my hammies I had a respectable looking back yard. Of course nowhere from finished.. Like anything ever is... What I did get done was pull out all the dead plants, weeds, grass, and trash.  I also had the joy of discovery by finding out what was growing in this mess.  It was a pleasure to find that we have a very small strawberry patch growing in the top level garden bed. On each level there are some plants that the neighbor said grows into a massive shrub with big green leaves and one white flower that comes up the middle. Mom also came over and knew the name of it, but I have selected memory so I don't remember.  I plan on seeing what it looks like and then decide if it lives or not.  On the middle level I discovered a rose tree, or vine or whatever it's called. I am quite excited about that. What wife wont enjoy fresh roses from the garden. I also have a couple dozen green leaf plants that I think will grow a flower on top. They were pretty entrenched in the slopes.
After digging out a few of those gross vine trees who roots go like 2 feet down I trimmed back the overgrown grass on the sidewalk.  It only took about 30 minutes with a small flat head shovel to get a nice strait line. It made the sidewalk look much better. Another 40 minutes spent on cleaning up and finally I could go watch the O's(of course they lost in the 9th inning).  

 

Yeah me!

You better use it

So when you buy 13 gallons of paint you better use most of it. When you have the sun of mustard walls and the green monster kitchen it's not very hard.  Putty the walls, sand, fix anything that looks weird. You may need to do this more than once.  During the nonstop painting though we still needed to find time and pack. So we shifted our focus to getting moved out of the apartment we have been calling home the last few years.  

Lucky for me the well planning of Katy has allowed us to already have packed half of our apartment.  She has the inside connection when it comes to moving supplies since she works in a dept store.   Boxes of all shapes and sizes, wrapping paper in binds of 100's, a huge box of Styrofoam with various  cardboard shapes and squares. This makes packing tight boxes with all your stuff a sort of fun puzzle.  After a few days a large mountain of boxes begins to grow in the corner of our living room. The book boxes are my favorite to pack because they are simple and you get good satisfaction knowing you have packed a box with 0" square inches to spare and weighs 60 pounds.  It is more interesting though when your cutting up Styrofoam and card board to securely lock all of your large glass serving dishes, and other weird shape kitchen things. There seems to be at least 7 kitchen boxes not including all the cups. Kitchen items seem to be gathered at an alarming rate;  of course target doesn't hurt this process as I have keenly discovered in my few years of marriage.  I was hoping to find that one item that you exclaim aloud, "oh my god I totally forgot about this!", but alas no dice.  Then again I didn't really have time to get into the memory boxes, they just pretty much went into box mountain.

The taping, sanding, and fixing weird stuff, this is the fun part. You get to use your various tools you purchased from the hardware store, and apply your man skills. It ends right about there. Then lay down plastic all over the floor, and prepare for the next 20 hours of painting.  Don't worry it's just a minor thing called physical labor.   As you find out after several days painting takes pretty much all of your muscle groups to complete.  It is a great jump-start to your "I need to get in shape spring is coming" mindset.  There is an upside to all this painting though... it ENDS! :) (at least in its mass quantity). You will not be able to doubt that the results of this multi-day and night affair will make your place look anything but comfortable. It pretty much transforms the place, and you really have that sense of pride set right in.