Yardwork

It seems as though I've spent as much time on the yard in these past couple of months as I've spent on the entire house interior in the past year! One of the reasons I decided on a house over a condo was so I could have a yard - for growing vegetables, raising chickens (!!), maybe having a backyard bbq or two - but man, it is a TON of work to keep up with! I think it's especially hard for me, since I didn't grow up having any sort of yard to speak of...we had a slab of concrete in front of the apartment I grew up in, and dad was the gardener in the family. I remember having tomatoes, basil, and cactus fruit (yum!). There was also a time where we grew some HUGE sunflowers and eating the seeds was fun although not as tasty as the salty ones you buy at the store :P. Oh and we had grapes growing over an arbor, which was very cool in my opinion :)

But no lawn to speak of. And the few bushes that were street adjacent were taken care of by the landlord. Point is, I'm not used to any of this stuff, but it's something I've always (kind of) wanted. Enter my very own lawn...by estimations, I have 3000 sq feet of the stuff. Most of it is grass, but in the back yard there are a couple of small, funky looking trees, some bushes (some pretty, some not so much), and tons of invasive bamboo and blackberry bushes. I think I've got the front lawn mowing down...I go in a square spiral from the edges inward...not sure if it's the most efficient but it works for me! As I mentioned in this post, the back yard was left untouched for far too long, so long in fact that I had to hire someone to just get it down to manageable for me. I've since been keeping up with the mowing, but the ground is uneven in many places, and my mower inevitably ends up grinding down mounds of dirt, which go all up in my nostrils and I end up with black boogers (sorry, tmi!). I've also purchased a string trimmer for the places the mower can't get to, and it doubles as an edger (although I'm not too steady with it yet so I've made some janky looking edges, woops). And my newest yard related purchase is an electric hedge trimmer, which is actually really fun to use! I've pared down quite a few overgrown bushes with that puppy.

The only trouble I'm running into is that I basically fill up my compost/yard wast bin super quick, so I can really only do so much each week. I know there are those big paper bags you can buy for extra yard waste, but you have to pay the disposal company extra per each bag they pick up too. Well anyways, I know that I'm going to need help removing the bamboo and blackberry bushes...those suckers are apparently impossible to get rid of. I've actually contacted a couple of brush clearing companies to get quotes on how much it will cost to just level the back yard. And I mean get rid of everything...all I want is dirt back there so I can start with a clean slate. Of course though once that happens, the next thing I'll need to do is put in a fence. It's almost completely obscured now, but I know there's a chain link fence on 2 sides of the yard (the other side is just a hedge), which I definitely want to replace with wood for privacy. But how many thousands of dollars will that all cost?? Oof. Definitely a project for another time. So for now, I'll continue to mow and trim and compost one week at a time!

My pretty yard tools

Wooo tomato plant! You can see some green ones in there if you search carefully!

I trimmed down the bushes at the front of the house - you can
sort of see how overgrown these were in  the picture below

See? Off to the left? So bushy!

I have also been enjoying cooking more and more on my sexy range. Below is a one-pot creamy sausage pasta that I've made at least a hundred times lately :P

Nom nom!

Well, busy weekend ahead (Wendy and Adam *finally* getting hitched!), but hopefully I'll have the gumption to do more interior work in the coming weeks. I NEED to paint! Somebody kick my butt into gear so I don't put it off any longer!

-Megan