Cut the grass finally

After some unexpected but much needed rain interrupted grass cutting plans other days, today I finally got the back yard cut. The grass in the areas I am trying to reseed seems to be slowing sprouting, but I think I may end up needed to seed it in again to get it to look like much. I still need to get the string trimmer out for the edges, but on the whole the back yard looks better. Now I'll just have to try to cut the front yard later this week. The forcast is calling for rain tomorrow morning, which will interrupt any yard work plans if it is true.

Yesterday on my lunch hour I found a neglected 'Oregon Pride' hydrangea at Lowes and was able to get it for 1/2 price. I made several visits outside to water it for the rest of my work day and by the end up the day it had perked up quite a bit. Last night we had rain and cooler temps, which helped a lot. I did trim a few branches where the leaves were already looking crunchy back to healthy looking leaves. Might as well get the soon to be dead parts off so the plant can expend its energy on the healthy limbs.

Below is a before and after picture of the hydrangea. Top photo is about 20 minutes after purchase and below is 4 hours later.

Trying to pick this back up again

I'm going to try to start doing the blog again... I think sometimes I try to document everything, then it becomes work, not fun. I have to remind myself that not everything needs a photo, etc. Other times there hasn't been anything worth writing about going on at the house.

Since I last wrote a few major things have happened:

- In June 2009 I had the falling down shack in the back burned down. The workers never came back to finish carting away the debris like they were supposed to, so this left me with a bunch of cinder blocks stacked where the shack used to be and a fire ring. We have used the fire ring several times since to burn limbs. Handy, but not attractive. This area of the yard remains essentially unimproved.

- In Novmeber 2009 I hired two workers from Craigslist to do some of the unfinished projects. I finally got an outside outlet and was able to put up real outdoor lights, but no animatronic deer this year. We also finally got the new light fixtures hung in my mom's room, my room and on the porch. The old porch fixture could not really be removed, so we took off the shade part and disconnected it. We then had to make a new hole in the ceiling of the porch and put the fixture up slightly away from where the old fixture was.

- The county came and dug the ditch in front of the house MUCH deeper, making the front yard look not so great. Amazingly, they didn't get all my daylilies or daffodils. Then, the county came back to redo water pipes and dug up another part of my front yard and installed a big ugly concrete circle in my front yard. Now the front yard really looks bad.

- We had a much colder winter (2009-10)than we usually do with several snowstorms and low temps in the teens for over a week. I lost a lot of my herbs and almost all my terra cotta pots over the winter. I am now (spring 2010) trying to rebuild my herb garden.

- Over the winter my external hard drive crashed so I lost almost all the original photos of my house and my yard. No, I didn't back them up in unreduced form. Yes, that was stupid. I am very upset about this and have IT guys working on my hard drive. I get depressed just thinking about it.

- Spring 2010 came fast with a very early last frost, in March. The weeds came even faster and my whole back yard was covered. I had to resort to using a chemical weed killer on the "grass" part but that didn't even kill all the weeds. I had pulled at least 40 30 gallon bags of weeds out of my yard this spring. I am once again attempting to grow more grass.

- I finally broke down and bought a lawn mower so I can mow my own grass.