A Long Weekend

I know, I know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But I really did have good intentions for the weekend. CJ worked on Saturday and his brother was in town this weekend, so I thought I could get a bunch done and be well on our way to a normal home again. The plan was to do yard work on Saturday and painting inside on Sunday and Monday. I failed.

On Saturday I did yard work. 5 hours of yard work. I thought I could get the front hill's grass ripped out, planted with plants and shrubs plus weed the flower bed and get mulch there and on the hill and have time to plant some containers too. I got about an eighth of the yard ripped out.

On Sunday, I resumed. In the end, nothing was planted, but the whole yard was ripped out. That was about three or four hours of work.

On Monday, I finally got some help from CJ. We put in an edging to act as a retaining wall. We put down manure and compost and hoed it in with the existing dirt. We planted four shrubs, two purple perennials, four Hostas (which I swore said full sun at the store, but are probably going to die because they are for the part shade or shade), and a bunch of ground cover. We also transplanted another Hosta. We watered and laid down a ton of mulch. It looks nice, but it now accents how crappy the grass is above.

Here's a view from above:
Here's one from street level:

I think after a strong rain it will look a bit nicer.

It was a lot of work. I can't believe how long it took. Unfortunately, none of our inside projects got done, which is very, very bad. Especially since I actually had motivation to do them.

One thing did get done inside, we got the flooring that had to be replaced between the two rooms (entry and living room) stained. It looks a bit goofy, but we think once everything is put together, it will look nice.
All and all a productive weekend, and no one was shot.

Whew

Excitement tonight in the hood. Let's just say CJ, Jeff, and I ran down a block tonight away from gun shots that were fired 40 feet from us. I don't want to recap the whole thing again, so read about it here.

we didn't do it, but we like it

Today as we got home from Art-a-Whirl, Kassie noticed that our fence got finished!

Most of what you see here was an open gap between our property and the neighbor's property. It's where the driveway used to be. Another neighbor's father works with metal and finished it off for us (the association). Sweet.

Gabe

Our neighbor, Gabe, is having heart surgery next week. He's not even a year old yet, and this isn't his first surgery. His mom is asking that we all take a second to think about Gabe and his surgery.

Take a second to think about Gabe:



(clicky clicky)

Cute isn't he?

pretty decent deal

Clearly, the length of our lawn was killing our neighbor Brent. Mowing was on my list of things to do today, but he was out with the lawnmower yesterday.


We paid him with cocktails. He didn't seem to mind.