The Yard...

Ty told me the other day that he was reading our last blog post and it sounded like a disaster and we needed to do an update. We haven't had any plumbing or other major issues since then, cross our fingers, knock on wood, etc., etc.

We have been working on the yard when we get time and when the weather cooperates. Last weekend we got one really nice day and we worked for almost 6 hours weed eating, trimming trees and pulling weeds. We managed to make two huge burn piles and I told Ty to set them off when I wasn't around. I don't particularly like fire and am always worried about it setting something else on fire. A portion of our yard is weeds and grass that was not taken care of and therefore is about 2-3 feet high in places. Some of the grass is laying down and is not easy to clean up. We did some research and bought a nice gas weed eater and we bought a brush clearing attachment that is three metal serrated blades. We jokingly call it the "blades of death," mainly because if that attachment comes off somehow while the weed eater is running, it wouldn't be a pretty sight. Ty took to weed eating and I was in charge of raking all the grass and weeds into piles. Here are a couple of pictures of another part of the yard so you can get a feeling of what it looked like before:


And here is the after picture:


It looks so much better now and you can actually tell that there is grass there.

We have also been working on our garden. On one of our walks through the weeds we found an area the previous owners had already set up as a garden. All we had to do was clear the weeds and grass. They had started to put up a chicken wire fence and had posts and the fencing right there. We started to dig up the dirt and realized that about a shovel length down, they put down landscape fabric. I guess to keep out weeds, but your plants won't grow too good. So we are digging the dirt out down to the fabric and taking it out. The soil looks good and I planted strawberries in one of the beds already. We put up the chicken wire fence because Winnie ran right through the middle of my strawberries. Plus she eats anything and we have rabbits around the yard.


Winnie, our 8 month old Brittany, loves the yard. She runs all around the yard and loves to chase the birds, and cats (if they are dumb enough to leave the deck). She has found many treasures in the yard already. We have found her chewing on dead animals, mostly mice, probably ones the cats caught and left on the ground. She has also found old dog toys and she loves to find sticks and chew on them. She isn't too happy about us cleaning up the weeds and grass though. She loves to go into them and roll around and hide. Here she is looking for some birds in a tree: