Xiaoniu 小妞

There has been a lot of work going on around our house lately. Hence the lack of posts. Since we got the trees taken out we’ve been out every day (including last Friday) trying to clean up and get the place looking spiffy.

I’ve been focusing on two things: get rid of the stump grindings and get the front garden finished. The grindings are heavy and there are a lot. A number of truck loads have been taken to the transfer station and the rest is filling in low spots near the back corner of the yard. I’m almost done moving out the crap so that I can move in some top soil to fill the void where the stumps used to be.

We’ve also been attacking the front garden like never before. When we refinished the porch we trimmed up the bushes a lot. Well, Sue with clippers in hand is taking off years of overgrowth so that we can actually put down weed fabric and mulch. We’re tired of trying to weed (usually weed whacking (a.k.a. mowing)) the garden and it just looked awful.

We’re 2/3 of the way done. Two yards of mulch down and room for another yard. We just need to finish planting a few plants and summer bulbs then the mulch goes down. The people that owned the house before never took care of the plants so they are all overgrown. And they never put down mulch. I can’t wait to see the finished product.

Besides these two projects we also spent some time over the weekend taking down vines (yes, again) and taking out brush from the side yard. 30 years of unattended growth has made for a great mess. We’re almost done with the clean up part of that too. Next up is figuring out how to finish it off. Maybe garden, maybe shrubs or just grass.

With all the work we’ve been doing both Sue and I have been exhausted and sore, but in a good way. We have bigger appetites (or maybe that is just me) and sleep great. I think this is the year we’ll finally get the yard to a state that we can call maintenance. That is plenty of work on its own, but it’ll look great.