This time, a real post

HELLO everyone!

It's 6:30 am and I'm up, drinking a smoothie, and blogging. Usually I'm still asleep, trying to catch a few more winks before the alarm BLARES in my face. I was up before 6 today. I haven't had any coffee yet. I have a load of laundry in the washer. This is too weird.

I think, after being so helpless for about 6 weeks, because of the cast and pins, my body and my spirit are thinking "LETS GO!!!!" Over the long weekend, I accomplished so much around the house--a little bit of cleaning, a little bit of yard work. It was really nice.

So what's been going on with me lately? Or, should I say, since I broke my hand? Haha. That's about 6 weeks worth of stuff...and it wasn't all too exciting.

I can talk about gardening, since it is spring and a lot has been going on...

At first, there was a feeble attempt at weeding the eastern side of the house. I had to sit on my butt to pull the weeds, since I couldn't put pressure on my left hand. That was interesting. Turtle helped, but he's really not into weeding. So by last weekend, the weeds had returned and looked terrible. We'd planted two hydrangeas on that side of the house just after Easter, but you'd never know it since the weeds were encroaching....and fast. Last weekend, I weeded a bit, then Turtle and I laid down some black plastic/paper stuff that is supposed to help keep weeds at bay. Then we put down mulch on that side of the house, over the black stuff. Let's see how this goes. There's nothing else planted over there right now, besides the hydrangeas, but I like the minimalist look. Plus, the mulch makes that side of the house look SO much cleaner/neater than it did prior to us doing ANYTHING. Have I mentioned that the previous owners (POs) didn't do much landscaping??

In the front of the house (north side), there were a bunch of shrubs and bushes, such as azaleas and rhododendrons. There were also these two barberry bushes. I don't know if you've seen one, but they aren't really that nice. Also, they have PRICKERS. Not fun. I don't know why someone would plant these--they must have been cheap. The front porch needs to be painted and we wouldn't have been able to do so, because of these nasty guys. Turtle and his dad pulled them out a few weeks ago, and now the front of the house doesn't look so...choked? We also discovered that one of the bushes is indeed a smaller lilac variety. I LOVE LILACS and was so excited to find out what that deliciously smelling plant was! Over this weekend, I weeded the two beds (there's one on either side of the walkway up to our house) and pulled out all of the rocks that the POs had used as a border. Not really my style (they were just random rocks they found in the yard), plus they hadn't done a good job of maintaining the border, so the earth was starting to shift and go OVER the rocks. We plan on extending the bed that's on the north east side, so that the two beds are even. I like symmetry :-) Not sure about what we'll plant...we need something that's lower to the ground, since there are bushes already there... But it'll be a fun challenge to figure out what to plant.

In the backyard (south side), there's not much, but along the garage wall, I noticed that there were some green things popping up. Two weeks ago, they blossomed into IRISES! Very pretty deep purple ones. Turtle's dad gave us two tomato plans, and we stuck those a few yards down from the irises. Last night, I noticed that they already have flowers!!! There's not a real garden there...but the grass didn't really grow, and it looks as if the POs had tried to start some kind of bed? I don't know...we plan on turning it into a bed of sorts. Probably for vegetables. We wanted to do a HUGE veggie garden this year, but there's just so much to do when you have a new house that we decided to wait until next year. Probably a wise decision. There's also something popping up around the basement door...it's thick and really green. I think it might be echinacea, just looking at the dead stuff from last year, but we'll see. This is the best part of being a new homeowner, looking to see what surprises unfold in the garden! We also have a deck in the back, and I'm not going to plant anything around or near that since Turtle and his dad have some work to do on that, first.

The west side of the house is mostly the side of the garage, which faces the main road. It is desperately in need of a power washing. Very green. (Our house is beige) I don't think we'll be planting much/anything there...it's very shady and damp.

The grass is getting greener. When we first moved in, it was mid-fall and things looked pretty bleak. We had many comments from the neighbors! Well, I don't know if Turtle has a green thumb, or we just care more than the POs or what, but we've actually gotten COMPLIMENTS on how the lawn is looking! We do have a lawn service that comes every few weeks to put down lime or some fertilizer, but everything else is on us. I'm not 100% keen on having a service...but the pesticides are at a minimum and things lawn-wise were pretty bad. Maybe next year we won't need it?

ACK! Time to go get ready and get off to physical therapy before work. Yes, they have hand PT. My hand is still pretty stiff and I can't extend my pinky all the way, but there's hope. And exercises. Lots of them.

I wrote a ton about gardening and there's so much more to talk about that's been going on around here. Hopefully I'll have more time soon to hop back over...work is busy and the fact that a lot of stuff is now blocked doesn't help.