Once I made my way outdoors, I decided it was time to do some yard clean-up, dig-up, pick-up in preparation for spring planting. Let me tell you now, this was much more work than I expected. I'm still sore as of today - 3 days later. Boo.
A few days ago, I showed you a picture of what our flower beds were looking like now that the snow had finally melted and some green-plants were sprouting up. They looked like this...
...a mess of leaves and junk. This is the west side of the house. It gets the nice afternoon sun and has some yard space next to it.
The east side of the house (which we rarely see/use), probably hasn't been raked in 2 years. There's a very narrow flower bed and then our neighbor's driveway right next to it. It was the worst with layer after layer of leaves...
So, I decided I would rake all the leaves, pick up the sticks that had fallen from the trees during the blizzard and many windy days, and dig up most of our plants that I knew we didn't want (we're going for a brand new landscaping scene). And once I had raked and raked, I found all kinds of little plants poking they're way out of the soil (I think they were hostas, of which we have a million, and from what I saw of them last summer, I don't like them very much, no offense to hosta-lovers).
So, I decided to dig everything out since we're starting from scratch. I got a tall, sharp shovel and dug and dug and dug - pulling at the large root-systems buried underground. I dug through all of the soil, making sure to uncover anything that might be hidden beneath the surface. The dirt needed a good turn-over anyway.
The last thing I did was rake the dirt back in place to make it look decent until we can get some planting done.
We also have 2 trees on the west side of the house. The base of the trees had some kind of stone hedge around them with more hostas planted inside the hedge (it was home to bunny rabbits in the summer). I wanted all of this to go.
I started by raking out all the leaves to get to the dirt underneath.
Then I pulled out the stones, which had been buried in the dirt for who-knows-how-long and were very heavy.
Unfortunately, I ran out of time to dig out these plants. So, that's one item that will have to wait for next time.
Once all the raking, digging, picking-up was completed, we had multiple piles in the yard that looked like this...
All of it had to be bagged up. I filled 6 large bags, and the stone hedges were dumped into a wheel barrow you can kind of see in the back of this picture.
So, after about 6 hours of (non-stop) work on this yard - while Joey worked on the garage door - I only got about a third of the way done! Like I've been saying, we have so much yard-work to do. This poor yard was neglected for so long. But I have to look at the positives of all that's been accomplished so far! And it makes me smile.
Speaking of smiling, during the course of the day on Saturday, we had a certain kitty who was begging to come outdoors with us. Spike is definitely an indoor cat, but I figured he'd only learn that he is such by being outdoors for a little a while. So, I opened the back porch door and let him out.
He started by laying on the cement stoop in the warm sunshine...
...then he got a bit more brave (in a scared sort of way) and wandered into the yard. And into the dirt...
Spike began taking laps around the house to get familiar with the area. He went 'round and 'round. Over and over again. Look at that pudgy belly hanging down. Apparently, he needs the exercise...
Oh, and he was sure to check out everything. My nosey-posey kitty. The littlest noise made him jump. Too funny.
Spike was a very good kitty and did not wander away from the house. If we called his name, he came to us (yes, cats do come when called....when they feel like it).
He got a very good paw cleaning upon his return indoors.
And on a more random and sentimental note, I saw that our sidewalk was stamped with the year 1983 - the year both of us were born. Awww...
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Anyone else started working on your yard yet? How's it coming?
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