Yard work

The past few Mondays we have been meeting up with a friend from Jared's class at school out in our woods.  He and his family happen to live on Chris Greene Lake Road so we essentially share the same "back yard" as it's just open woods behind all the houses on our street and theirs.  We were really excited when we found out last Fall that Marcus lived so close to us.  Our neighborhood is not exactly full of houses or kids to play with which is admittedly one of the things that attracted us to this house. Growing up I never had a best friend on my street. It seemed like something you saw in movies or read about in books.  There was one family with some kids close in age but we just didn't really hang out much.  So while we didn't expect Jared or Lydia to have a close friend their age at this house it has been fun to think of the fun he and Marcus could have over the years.  For 2 weeks or so Jared would come home from school and tell me that he and Marcus were going to meet in the woods at 4:00.  Jared would go to the creek on our property and yell "Marcus" a few times but there was never an answer.  Then one day when I checked Jared's take home folder there was a note from Marcus's parents.  They talked about meeting up and left their phone number.  I was happy to see that they were interested in pursuing this idea of letting Jared and Marcus meet in the woods. I talked to his mom Annelle on the phone and thus Marcus Monday was born.  They are a really nice family and it's been nice to get to know them.  Jared is really happy to get to play in the woods and hang out with a friend from school.

Our next door neighbors happen to have a really awesome tree fort that they built for their kids when they were young.  We also have one left behind by the previous owners but it is not nearly as stable or impressive as our neighbors, the Balckman's.  When we introduced ourselves to them they said they didn't mind if we let Jared and Lydia play on their tree fort.  On one of the first Marcus Mondays we walked over to the fort and noticed that Mark (Blackman) had cleared a really nice, wide trail all around the tree fort and on the back side of his property. Long ago he and my Mark had talked about making a trail connecting our properties but we had not gotten around to it. I was so impressed by their trail that I told Mark about it and committed to helping make one even though I truly hate yard work.  Truly.  The idea of a garden has never appealed to me and I never want to go "work in the yard".  But I was so impressed by his trail we spent one Saturday morning clearing one of our own to meet up to his.  It took a good while but we got it done and it looks great. It makes me feel more comfortable about letting Jared and Lydia go into the woods or off to the cool tree fort.  Like, they could find our path and know how to get home.  They were doing fine before but it is nice to have one. It makes for a pleasant place to walk back there too.  We also needed to build a better bridge to cross the creek. Its not that deep or wide but it is wide enough you need something. The previous owners had a half bridge but it didn't quite work for Lydia or Jared.  They had left some cinderblocks back there so I suggested that we move them over and they worked great.  This was after Lydia and I spent some good time "raking" the creek.  There were so many leaves in it it really didn't seem to have much flow to the water and now its much more exciting, since you can actually see water moving.

 

While we were working on the path I got to thinking about how I was happy to have this path yet at the same time no one was really going to see the results of our hard work.  So that got me to thinking about our front "yard" and how we have no curb appeal at our house at all.  The fact that our property is literally on the downward slope of a hill does not lend itself to a beautiful lawn.  So I got to thinking about what we could do to spruce up the front and even though I hate yard work, committed this past Saturday to cleaning up the front section.  I thought about how other houses without front lawns made their yards look nice and decided we could do it too. We borrowed a friend/coworker of Mark's/neighbor's strong leaf blower and got to work.  We trimmed excess branches that were hanging low on trees, raked and blew probably 3-5 years worth of leaves, picked up who knows how many buckets filled of sticks and pulled vines, brambles and little sprouting trees up and. It was quite the process.  As Mark blew the leaves off to the other side of the driveway (because that was a big consideration too, where are we going to move all the leaves?) I would rake behind him and try to rake up the stuff left behind.  We were pretty sure the vines were poision ivy that had not sprouted leaves yet and just hoped for the best that we would be okay. I seem to have escaped but Mark did not.  He was actually wearing gloves but I was just pulling them up with my hands and didn't break out at all.  Mark on the other hand grabbed some gloves but still got some yucky poison ivy spots. I apparently do not have much of a reaction to poison ivy. (Such good news, its really nice to know this. Not that I am about to go walk through patches of poison ivy, but still it's a relief only now I may be in charge or removing any poison ivy in the future)  The vines had no leaves at all.  As we pulled them out of the ground it was interesting to watch them get longer and guess where they would pop out of the ground at.  We got some that were over 4 feet long!  It is a crazy system of vines/roots underground.  I feel so bad for Mark.  It's going to be a rough few days for him. After a few hours of work, during which Lydia and Jared put together some fun "stores" to sell stuff at and played so well outside, we took Jared and Lydia to an elementary school that has the best playground to play.  It was a nice break. We have a few trees that aren't too big for us to cut down with a chainsaw and a bit more trimming to do of little tree sprouts but the bulk of that section is cleared out and it looks awesome.  We haven't quite decided yet but we may spring for some much to cover this area.  This coming week we are going to attempt to do the same thing with the space by our fire pit.  I don't think it will take as long since Mark already cleared out a lot of the leaves. Since we do not have the budget to do work in our house (like redo our bathrooms) I guess I am stuck doing yard work.  Much we can do new bathrooms we cannot. It will be nice to have some curb appeal as well.

The amount of leaves easily went up to Mark's knees

I have never liked this tree/bush.  It was right at the top of our driveway and so ugly! It sort of looked like  a weird cross palm tree. I asked Mark if he thought we could dig it out and he got it! There was also this dead ugly tree stump left over from when the previous ones had cut down a tree (or the wind knocked it over).  Jared and Lydia had spent many a day whacking it trying to get it to fall over with no luck. Yesterday Jared went over and pushed it from the opposite side he normally pushed from and it fell right over. It was about 4 feet tall and I was so happy to see it go!

Cute little helper. 

Checking out the local businesses.  Lots of glass pieces and rocks for sale.  I had 21 cents in my wallet and Jared and Lydia were so thrilled when I bought something from their stores.  Side story: While were were working Jared came over and gave me some of his own change and asked me to come shop in his store because he really wanted more customers.  After I had spent some of the money I said something to the effect, "what else can I buy with this money?" and he said, "You can go spend it at Lydia's store." I was so happy that he suggested it.  Jared is a great kid but he doesn't always have the first instinct to think what would make other people happy and I was so touched that he thought of Lydia.  

They were both so patient while we worked for hours out there.  They both tried to help too which was nice of them. 

The end result.  It doesn't look like much in this picture but man it looks way more appealing now.