Yard work

We have made a lot of improvements outside lately!  One of the biggest one came while my mom was in town. There is this area by our mailbox that has been empty ever since we created it.  Every year I intend to do something with it, but the furthest I ever got was putting down fabric to prevent the weeds and dumping 15 rocks we found and some mulch on top.  And the mulch just slid down the hill on the fabric, so it was really, really bad looking.

Thank heavens my mother is really good at landscaping and plants.  I have no idea how I ever would have done it without her, because the entire trip to the "flower store" (as Kaitlyn called it) she walked down the aisles telling me "oh, I had one of those, we don't want that" or "this one is really pretty, but tricky to maintain" etc.  I would have just been looking at the tiny tags in bewilderment.

I don't have a true before shot, but this is after we (mostly my mom) dug the dirt up, got the soil ready, and picked out "Daphne" the bush.  She might not look like much now, but Summer Ice Daphne is going to be pretty one day.  In the meantime, she looked really funny all on her own.

So Kaitlyn, my mom, and I all picked out some more flowers and planted them.

Ta-Da!

But the biggest miracle of all is . . . they have all survived!  I have a real talent for killing plants, so the fact that every single marigold is still growing out there is just amazing to me.

My mom even got Kaitlyn a little Veggie Tales bucket with seeds and helped her plant some sunflowers.  Kaitlyn has been quite diligent about making sure they get all the water they need, and low and behold, they are shooting up too!

Over the weekend, we had a couple of trees taken out.  I hate how many trees we have taken out in our yard, but we have had a lot that were in the middle of fences, 30 feet tall right next to houses, attracting box elder bugs, or in some cases died on their own.  We are going to plant more in their places soon, I hope.  Especially since this latest tree was blocking our view of the hoarder that lives next door.

And of course, when school let out and we headed to the cabin, I found that I had another yard that needed spring cleaning.  We took out some deep posts that bordered an old garden, a couple of zip line things that were digging into the trees, and I am still trying to get the lower "yard" mowed down.  Since it is so rocky, I have to use a weed whacker and pretend it is a lawn mower.

But there have been fun improvements there too!  Christopher was very excited to get a new, gigantic sail shade hung up.  These things really are great.  They stay up all summer, and aren't bothered by wind or rain. The lawn loves the shade too!

Thank goodness all of my gardening there is just about killing weeds.  The flowers are all perennial wildflowers.

And yesterday, we got another new addition to the yard: a climbing dome.

It will cope with the snow a lot better than a swingset would, but we think it will be great for the kids to climb on.

And of course, we broke out the hammock too.  My kids can get on that by themselves now, so it quickly became a swing that they declared either a submarine or pirate ship as the day went by.

We have to take advantage of this week, since it is the only week Tyler has off from school until August!