Meg vs. Tree Removal: Some Friendly Advice

If you are getting a tree removed that is right in front of your gas meter, you should probably check to make sure they didn't hit your gas meter a couple of times, leaving a gas leak outside your house all weekend.

Or maybe that just happens to me. Did you know that if you tell PG&E there is has been gas leaking at you house all weekend, they will send someone out within an hour? Their response was very quick and thorough, and they made sure there was no more gas in the house before they left. Thank goodness I decided on a whim to go do some work on that side of the house. What a blessing!

Meg vs. The Backyard: Cleaned up!

A friend of mine does some landscaping/yard cleaning on the side. I knew that with the baby, exams, and the bathroom still out of commission, we weren't going to get to it any time soon, so we contracted it to my friend. We basically told them to clear everything to the ground so we can rototill. Here is the result:

Clearly we need to make a trip to the dump before we can get to tilling.

The yard looks SO much bigger! We have a lot of work to do, but I am excited. I can envision letting my kids play here without wondering what animals are in the bushes (there really was a raccoon one evening, and we have tons of squirrels). Hurrah!

Meg vs. The Back Yard: The usual.

Thursday: Clear more brush, weeds, and trees from the back yard. Re-fill the green waste bin.

Done! And the bonus to this is always that the kiddos spend the afternoon happily playing in the yard. I am excited to make it more kid-friendly.

Meg vs. The Garage & Yard: Cleaning up.

Wednesday: Take at least one box of junk from the garage to the thrift store.

Did not happen. Ended up babysitting and having other stuff going on. But hopefully I can catch up by the end of the week!

Thursday: Fill the green waste bin (weeding, de-tree-ing, raking leaves, etc.)

John took care of this; pulled out the chainsaw and cut up all the branches we had sitting around, took down most of the dead tree, pulled weeds, etc. etc. I went out and raked leaves after the boys headed to bed, and we babysat and got a bit of cleaning done, too. Go us.

Meg vs. The Front Yard: Thorn control

Wednesday: Hack away at the crazy rose tree and ivy in the front side yard. Re-fill that lovely green waste bin!

I realize I am a day behind. It has been one of those weeks, and I am attempting to not beat myself up over it (and the miserable state in which the rest of my house is prone to wallow) and just go to sleep, trusting that taking care of myself will make things better in the long run.

P.S. I don't recommend letting your rose bushes go unattended for several years. They may go through a fence, climb a yucca tree, and entrap a nest of twigs, ivy, and trash within their thorny grasp. Just sayin'.

Meg vs. The Back Yard: Garden #4

Monday: Finish mixing soil in the side yard planter and plant the rest of the melon plants. Put away/cover new fire wood.

I have got to do something more visually stimulating so it will be worth posting a picture on the blog! For now, here is a picture of our first strawberries of the season. In blurry, chubby toddler hands no less!

Meg vs. The Back Yard: More of the same, to infinity!

Tuesday: Weed, cut branches, and re-fill the yard waste bin. Get another planter ready for planting.

I did this as far as I could; I realized I was out of soil for the last above-ground planter, and all I had was Amend for the in-ground planters that aren't really close to ready yet. So I cleared a spot and set up the planter, and it's ready for dumping and planting. I'll add the mix to my shopping list for tomorrow.

The rest of my time was spent battling a gnarly rose tree at the end of the side yard. I think it is a normal rose bush that was left to itself for 30 years; it is crazy! Lots of dead growth and ivy, both living and dead, wrapped up with it. But the side yard is almost clear! Now to decide what to fill it back up with...

Meg vs. The Backyard: Someday I will be done clearing, but not today.

Tuesday: Clear more of the back yard, re-fill the green waste bin.

Check! I could pack down the foliage and add in some more during the week if I'm up to it. Weeding days to not make for very exciting reading material.

Meg vs. The Front Yard: Weeding (of course)

Monday: Weed front planters, clear more in the back if there's room in the bin/time in the day.

I have lots of excuses for today. Mostly I got sick when I was part-way through weeding the main planter, and that is as far as I got. We spent the afternoon with me curled up on the couch while the boys played and watched Cars, and I recovered enough to pick up John and make a pre-birthday dinner (I am trying to be a good cook during birthday week at least!).

I promise I will try to post something slightly more exciting here soon; I feel like the blog is getting a little pathetic!

Meg vs. The Back Yard: The never ending task.

Friday: Re-fill the green waste bin! Clear as much in the side yard as possible.
 
Someday I will get the side yard cleared out completely. And then I will have about ten times more than than to do around the rest of the yard. The work itself is good for me, right?

Saturday: Plant more seeds with the boys. Work on decorations for the living room.

We didn't get to planting seeds. It is 9pm and still 80 degrees in our house, so we only were outside for an hour or so after dinner, and that's when I worked on weeding. However, if I can count "Think of ideas for the living room" as "Work on decorations for the living room," then that goal was done.

Meg vs. The Yard: More weeding!

Thursday: Finish clearing out the side yard. Re-fill the green waste bin.

This is the project that never ends, since we need to clear about 1/2 of our entire yard. It was a crazy morning and we all fell asleep for the afternoon, so we got a late start, but we definitely re-filled the bin and made good progress on the side yard. John meticulously removed the ivy intertwined in most of the chain-link fence, so now I just have a small section at the end of the side yard to finish so that we can get to cleaning and planting. I also worked on clearing a spot for a second raised bed, since our boys were being whiny and wouldn't tolerate both John and I being secluded on the side of the yard.

We are having guests for lunch tomorrow, so tonight's post-bedtime schedule includes cleaning the whole house and starting to get our room ready for painting. Yikes!

Meg vs. The Back Yard: Weeding and more weeding

Tuesday: Clear a place to plant sunflowers and put a planter in the side yard. Re-fill the green waste bin!

Clear part of the side-yard. Check!

Fill up the bin. Check plus!

Un-cover an existing planter that sits exactly in the sunny area. Check Check! There are actually pavers and rocks surrounding the planter, but you wouldn't know it by looking.

Verify that someone actually grew something here aside from weeds once. Checkity-check!  (It was rosemary - only a step above a weed, but I'll take it.)

Clean up the milk spills, dish pile, and crushed animal cookies under the furniture because my awesome mother-in-law will be here in 2 days, followed by my wonderful father-in-law 2 days after that: I suppose I had better get to that.

Meg vs. The Yard: Massive branch clean-up

Monday: Re-fill up the green waste bin.  (Read Mockingjay. Heehee.)

Even though I spent the entire morning reading my very addictive book (fun to read, glad it's over), I managed to meet my goal, and even exceed my expectations! When our can was nearly stuffed, our neighbor came over to introduce herself, then offered her green waste bin, which was even bigger than ours! The boys and I spent the entire afternoon in the front yard, and I managed to clean up the ENTIRE giant pile of debris in our driveway. I did leave the bigger branches in the side yard for John to tackle later with the chainsaw, but I was definitely not expecting to get that far.

Aaaaand of course I neglected to take a picture. You win some, you lose some.

Meg vs. The Yard: Pruning, planting, catching up.

Tuesday: Re-fill yard waste bin! Prune roses in the front and plant Dahlias.

As I mentioned yesterday, the first goal wasn't too tough because our green waste bin was not emptied yesterday as it should have been. Ah, life.

With no place to put my spiny rose cuttings, I thought the better of trying to prune my bushes with the boys around. Instead I pulled a whole bunch more sourgrass that was matting my planters, uncovered some new plants that sprung up during the rain (get ready for a new game of name that plant!), tried to un-ensnare the rose bushes in our side yard from the ivy that was attacking it, and did, in fact, plant the Dahlias.

With the rest of the day I decided to play a little bit of catch-up; cleaning, laundry, etc. etc. I even managed a shower during daylight hours =).

And the best part of all is that John's hardest exam of the semester is over and now he has three days off, so we went out to eat and I didn't even have to make dinner! Some days are just awesome, even if I can't prune my roses.

Meg vs. The Backyard: Name that plant!

Okay everyone, time for a game. It's called Name That Plant, a.k.a. Keep It, Transplant It, Trim It, or Kill It?

Mom, I'm counting on you for this one.

 This one is spreading across the ground.

This one is an overgrown tree.

Meg vs. The Backyard: Clearing and planting

Monday:  Clear a place and plant the boysenberries.

Well, I technically did this one, but not exactly how I originally intended. After an hour in the backyard, the "place" we had decided on for the boysenberries looked like this:

After an hour or so more, it looked like this:

And the waste bin looked like this:

So much for my other goal this week to get rid of more of the tree!

I decided that with all the roots and trash in ground, I should probably do more to clean it out before planting anything. And then I second-guessed our decision to plant the berries next to the house (I am nothing if not indecisive). So finally I just did this:

I both cleared a place and planted the boysenberries. I love buying time for more indecisiveness =).

Aren't you jealous of how splendid our back yard looks already?

Overgrown side yard, complete with decomposing cardboard

The trees my hubby wants me to leave alone (yeah right)

 Ivy everywhere! I am thisclose to convincing John that it is a noxious weed and shouldn't be his favorite landscaping feature.

 One of two dead trees.

 Dirty deck, shaky trellis.

 Junk.

p.s. That bit about our splendid yard was a joke.

Meg vs. The Roof: Cleaning gutters

Friday:  Clean gutters, sweep the driveway.

You know your gutters need cleaning when plants start growing inside.

Luckily, the only ones that needed cleaning were under the nasty tree over the garage; all the rest were clear. Hooray!

But, true to form this week, I realized I am going to have to change tomorrow's goal. I need John's help with the shelves, and he has exams starting next week, so will be gone all day studying. Boo! So here's a new goal for tomorrow:

Saturday:  Go to nursery, get advice, and buy plants/supplies for square-foot gardens and fertilizer for fruit trees. Start putting planters out.

Meg vs. The Yard: trimming the hedge

Thursday:  Trim hedge along driveway, cut up more of the tree branch.

It was nice to have a more manageable goal that I could actually complete during nap-time. It was a little bit arduous since all I have is a pair of loppers, but not awful. The quality of my trimming will have to suffice until we get a real hedge trimmer. And I cut up as much of the giant branch as would fit in the green waste bin, but you really can't tell that I did anything there.

Before:

 After (sorry, I forgot to take a picture until dinner time):

Meg vs. The Roof: Clearing the Debris

Saturday:  Sweep off the roof, clean gutters, look at potentially leaky spots.  [Trim tree over garage, install oven, get shelves put together]

Sorry, I neglected to take any pictures today; it has been pretty busy. As soon as John was available to watch the boys this morning, he helped me climb up on the roof and I got to sweeping. I decided that trimming the tree back was a higher priority right now than cleaning the gutters, since it is the tree that is clogging the gutters in the first place. So I cut back all of the branches within reach, some of which were sitting right on the roof and holding piles of poo-berry tree junk in place. There was already visible deterioration on the roof, so I'm glad I didn't wait too much longer.

Also, a friend of ours came over and helped us install our new (used) oven, which I had slated on my goals for next week. Then when I showed him what I was thinking for the shelves he took the materials home and whipped them up in an hour or so and then brought them back. We have awesome friends! So installing my awesome shelves will be added to next week. Even though I didn't do what I originally intended, I think it was a successful day!

Meg vs. The Yard: Potting Trees

Thursday:  Re-pot fruit trees left by the previous owners.

We noticed three baby citrus trees--a meyer lemon, a naval orange, and a mexican lime--in our yard when we were doing our walk-through of this house, and assumed the owners would take them. But apparently they came with the house! We have always wanted fruit trees, but weren't sure if we were going to bother with this house since there are so many other things needing our attention. But since we had them, we decided to pot them for now to give us time and flexibility to move them around as we do the rest of the yard. I bought the pots and soil months ago but haven't taken the 30 minutes to go out and put them in. The guy at Home Depot said that a pot twice the size of the original container should be sufficient for a couple of years' growth. And these trees are barely twigs, so I think they have plenty of room for now.

Before:  Can you tell a little one was playing with my camera?

After:

Definitely worth 1/2 an hour during nap time. Who knows if they'll get big enough to fruit before we leave this place, but at least they have room to try!