Many hands make light work
Even four hands can make a real dent in things. Shoot, I even have a blister to prove it. Yes, this soft girl worked hard enough raking to take the skin off her right thumb..
Howie and I worked in the yard from about noon until three this afternoon, cleaning up more perennial debris and mulching more of the leftover leaves while we mowed. We salvaged one compost bin out of the two stacking ones which were given to us last year; the timbers in half the pieces were rotten so we consolidated them into one bin. It's not pretty, but it sure looks better than the pile of bin sections we had back there before. There's still a lot of cement and pipe to haul away from when we redid the back steps last summer.
The pond still needs to be pumped empty and cleaned, but that's going to wait until two weekends from now. When Everdry worked at the back of the house, they unplugged the pond pump while digging the trench in that area; it didn't get plugged back in and, considering it was about nine degrees farenheit, everything froze over solid in short order. We couldn't turn the pump back on until everything had thawed, like around mid-March.
Everything, all the fish and all the water plants, died because of there being no way for the gasses to escape from the water. If I'd have thought about it, I would have put a piece of styrofoam in the thawed circle the circulating water had left; that would have allowed the gasses a way out. So, we have a big, stinky, leaf-filled pond until we can clean it out and refill it. Live and learn!
When we compare our back lawn to our neighbor's, it makes us green with jealousy. Theirs is green and beautiful, a carpet of lush grass. Ours has green patches, but it has far more brown patches, and a lot of dead grass. Then again, they don't have three dogs. Oh, and they raked their leaves up last fall. And when our Emma's greyhound genes kick in and she goes crazy-dog dashing around, her claws just rip the grass to pieces. Such is life with three dogs. I think we'll probably end up fencing in a section in back with picket fence, a place for them to run and play. The fence will hide the poor, grassless ground at least.
I sound like I'm complaining, but I'm not. I guess I'm still doing a mental inventory of what all we still need to get done. All in all, it was a great day. It was nice getting outside and sweating alongside my hubby. Work goes so much easier when you share it with someone else and can share in the feeling of accomplishment. If I can drag myself back out there, I'll take some pictures...I don't know though, because a nap is sounding really good now that I've had a hot shower and some lunch.
