Last week was quite a week, and not really in a good way. Fortunately, I had a great weekend and am now able to put a positive spin on last week’s crap, which is: I was reminded of a valuable lesson and I am now the wiser for it.
So yes, it was a lovely weekend, made even better by the fact that the weather was relatively cool and non-humid. It was also completely gray and overcast, but hey — now that it’s May and will only be getting warmer and warmer, I take what I can get!
On Saturday morning, I got up to run the Summer Kick-off 5K here in League City. I had a fantastic run and I will write an entry about that tomorrow. I followed that up with a BAM board meeting, some time at home working on a design project, and an evening at the ballpark! It was the first Astros game I’d been to all season, and it was fun — even though the Astros are really, really NOT playing well. Their pitcher had a great game, but they lost 2-1. Sigh. The roof was open and we got seats down on the lower level, row 12, out in right field thanks to a 50% off Groupon deal from a few weeks ago. We sit up in the upper deck so often that it was really fun to see the game from a different perspective.
Yesterday Jose was going to take me flying, but the weather was a little iffy and the cloud ceiling was fairly low, so we didn’t end up going. Instead, I decided to work in the yard for a while. We bought bags of mulch a few weeks ago and hadn’t had a chance to put them in the flowers beds yet, so that was the task du jour. It took a while to weed the beds first — hopefully the new mulch will cut down on the pesky weeds!
I never had to do much yardwork as a kid, because my mom always took care of it. Sure, we’d pick up pods from the magnolia tree once in a while — and got paid a penny a pod, woohoo, big money! — but I can count the number of times I mowed a lawn before last year on one hand. Mom always liked doing the yardwork. (And she wanted to see photos of what I did yesterday).
I also picked up all the stones bordering the beds so I could weed around and between them. The entire border of the bed looks much neater now.
Unfortunately, we underestimated the amount of mulch we needed for our beds. We bought 4 big bags; we needed at least 7, maybe 8. Not buying enough of whatever we’re doing has been a constant problem this spring, since it’s still our first year in the house and we’ve never had to take care of a yard before. Next year we’ll know!
Can you tell where I ran out of mulch??
I got this plant at Lowe’s two weeks ago. It’s starting to bloom and the flowers are cool!
Our yard is starting to look pretty good now that everything has greened up. The azaleas have bloomed and are now done for the year, but everything else is looking nice. It’ll be interesting to look back on this photo in a few years and see how things have grown. Someday we’ll have a nice hedge along the front of the house, but it’s still a ways away.
I was talking to my mom yesterday and told her about all my yardwork. “Do you like doing yardwork?” she asked. I thought about it for a second and realized that I really DO like yardwork right now. I mean, it’s not easy, and all the bending and squatting leaves me pretty sore the next day, but it’s really satisfying to stand back after an hour or two of work and be able to see the difference. Jose went to the grocery store while I was starting the mulch, and came home after I’d finished. He walked in the house and immediately said “the new mulch looks great!” And it does. Maybe it will get less exciting after a few years, but for now, it feels really nice to make our home look pretty.
Mulching is awesome, because its not super hard and it instantaneously makes everything look better.
When I first bought my house, I spent hours weeding the cracks in the driveway and between edging and whatever. For about a week, the muscle in my wrist hurt like I had been rockclimbing or something. THEN I discovered roundup. You spray it on the weeds and it kills them and they kind of disolve away. Great for hard to weed places (like between those stones). I highly recommend. As long as you don’t mind poisoning the groundwater and all..
Oh, I used Roundup. I pulled the big ones out by the root and sprayed where they had been, and just sprayed the tiny ones.
Ah, yes, the big ones 🙂 I remember once I walked around the the side of my backyard in the spring, to a section I rarealy go, and I swear tehre was a 5 ft tall weed (one of those with the yellow flowers). I mean as tall as me!!!
Looks good!
I love the way new mulch makes the yard look. We have been in our house for ten years now and it never gets old to see the effect after mulching.
Ah, yes, the big ones 🙂 I remember once I walked around the the side of my backyard in the spring, to a section I rarealy go, and I swear tehre was a 5 ft tall weed (one of those with the yellow flowers). I mean as tall as me!!!