Tag Archives: saturday

fall cleanup

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the day before ross and i left for florida, we set up shop and got a bunch of stuff done around the house.  with all the windshield breaking over with, we got down to the business of tree mulching, garlic planting, and leaf raking.

The garlic got in a month late, but still earlier than I planted it last year, so that’s a victory in my opinion.  I’m growing a Chesnok Red and an Ichelium Red garlic this year and I’m hoping to have enough for green garlic in the spring, mature garlic in the summer, and enough left over to store for the winter and plant again next fall.

Later that morning, J.L. came over to help.  While Ross got started on the leaves, he and I mulched our newly planted evergreens.

Finally, we joined forces on the leaves and it was mission accomplished.  half the leaves were raked onto a tarp and dumped on our front yard by the street for trash pickup (how suburbanly convenient?)

The rest ross mowed and bagged and we dumped them in with our compost.

The dogs were no help whatsoever.  But they looked adorable.

The final product.  before:and after:

and all in time for the virginia tech – nc state game that afternoon.  not too shabby.

the pros and cons of mowing your driveway

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two weekends ago ross and i had a blissful day of getting stuff checked off our to-do list.

it was saturday.  it was sunny.  and we were motivated.

we divided up the yard like a custody hearing:  i would take the back yard and ross would take the front.  i tackled flower beds way past their prime, and ross was mowing the front yard.  of course i have no pictures to show for this, but it’s only because we were so hard at work.  until ross comes running up to me, looking slightly frantic.  “Come look.  It’s bad.”

“What?”

“Just come.”

I follow him around to the front yard and couldn’t tell at first what I was supposed to be looking for.  And then I see it.  A big, massive hole in the back windshield of his car.  And about a trillion spidery cracks everywhere else.

yikes.

“How on earth did you do that?!”

It turns out that instead of just mowing the yard, Ross had had the bright idea to also mow the driveway.  That way he could collect the chopped leaves in the mower bag and dump them into trash bags for easy cleanup.

he was almost done when a rock shot out the back of the mower, and well, instantly charged our credit cards $260.  ugh.

the moral of the story is, if you think about mowing your driveway, carefully weigh the pros and cons first.

all in a day’s work

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as the chance of rain today is 100%, i’m thankful that last weekend was beautiful and sunny, because it was the only weekend in the month of november that ross and i were going to be home.  and we got so much done.

with life being pretty busy lately, it’s seemed like we’ve been neglecting the house – which we have.  or at least the outside of it.  so we deferred a planned hiking trip to sunday afternoon and dedicated saturday to work around the house.  grass cutting, weeding, cleaning up of dead garden beds, and pruning took us until nearly till dusk to complete.  along with the time it took for ross to put a rock through his back windshield and completely shatter it into a million pieces.  great.

the highlight of the day (if you’ve met our neighbors, you’ll know why it was the highlight) was finally using anniversary money from my parents to purchase 12 Green Giant arborvitae trees to plant along the fenceline on the east side of our property.  These bad boys grow up to 5 FEET a year!  (read:  they will become an impenetrable living fence very very soon! score!)

we ended the evening with some sore muscles, the first woodburning fire in our house ever (we just had our gas logs removed), some college football, and a tasty dinner.  not too shabby.