Today turned out to be a perfect day for working outside.  A bit on the cool side, and not too sunny.  It would have been nice of those clouds brought some rain, but it did mean we got a lot done outside.  Best of all, my husband was actually up to going outside with his walker, and walk up and down the driveway a few times, then just sit outside and enjoy the day.  There used to be a bench under the kitchen window that my late brother had built for my dad to sit and enjoy some time outside, but it is among those things that disappeared after my dad died.  At some point, we’ll replace it with another bench.  It’s a perfect spot to sit and relax.

The biggest accomplishment in the yardwork today is YAY! we finally got that pile of wood in the garden cleaned up.  It is DONE.

While taking loads of broken down wood to the fire pit area with the wheelbarrow, I paused to get some photos of the blooming plum trees.

On the one hand, it was really cool to see them starting to bloom.

On the other, it was a bit disheartening to see how few blossoms there were.  Just a few sparse branches spread over several trees.

After we finished with the wood pile in the garden, we went back to clearing up around the yard.  Soon, I hope to start going into these trees, and the maple grove behind them, clearing up the fallen branches, cutting away the dead wood that hasn’t fallen yet, and taking down some dead trees.

The girls worked their way around to the three big maple trees by the fire pit.  These are the ones where I finally wrested away an old awning that had been left under them for some 20 years.  Plus the remains of a chair.  As they raked around the bases of the trees, they found three old license plates (one of them had stickers for 1981 and 1982 on it!) and a flat plastic thing that looked a bit like the bases in baseball, except for the hole and part of a pipe still attached, and the big MAC logo.  They were buried under several inches of soil; composted leaves, really.

I finally got around to working on the flower garden by the old kitchen.  The girls had started to rake around the outside of the fence line, and I took the opportunity to start cutting away some of the things that have started to grow on the outside of the fence.  I got the dead asparagus foliage cleared away, but there is no sign of new asparagus growing under it.

I forgot to get a picture of my find under the leaves inside the flower garden.  A wooden toy rocking horse, completely buried.  I’m guessing it was on the bench on the platform for the clothes line and fell, and no one noticed.  I ended up having to prune quite a few low hanging branches on the big cherry tree, just to be able to get under it.  I could see that it had been pruned back to where I was cutting already, but not recently.

Cleaning that garden up is going to be a huge job.  It hasn’t been tending in so many years, making it hard to rake.  Plus, there’s some sort of vine that seems to be spreading, and I’m finding it as the rake gets caught on it.  The ground is rock hard.  Getting out that invasive plant my mom asked me to get rid of is not going to be easy.

It was good to get so much work done today, but my goodness, there is so much more to do.

Well, that’s what my mom asked us to live her to take care of for her! :-)

Now to go pick the burrs out of my clothes before putting them in the laundry… :-D

The Re-Farmer