Busy weekend

We had quite a busy weekend. Friday night I started cleaning out this big closet that is basically my "throw it in there" place where I put things I don't think about. I also put tons of boxes and packing supplies in there whenever we get a package. I had to clean it out because at some point right before Christmas last year, my mom sent us our present early: a Roomba! We loved it. And it worked great for about 9 months. Since our 1 year warranty is hitting the endpoint, we need to get it fixed. That meant I needed to pull out a year's worth of junk thrown in the closet to find the original box and packing slip with proof of purchase. Fortunately it was still there and it gave me a chance to organize the closet.

I am also taking this opportunity to get rid of some packing popcorn and various bubble wrap. A lot of this is leftover from when we moved to this house 2 years ago and some we acquired from various packages. I have a hard time getting rid of boxes and packing supplies. I think it has to with how much I moved around throughout my life. I never want to get rid of boxes because before I know it, I'm moving again. But we definitely plan to stay in this house for a while, so I guess I can let go of some of these moving supplies.

Saturday my nephew had this robotics competition and we saw him use the robot and tried to watch him do the oral presentation, but that was closed to the audience. But we were there to give moral support. Even my IL's came, even though my nephew is from my side of the family. His team did well, although they didn't make it to the next round. But considering they were mostly 6th graders and the competition went up to 12th grade, they did pretty well.

We also went with my ILs to a home tour in the area. DH and I love home tours and open houses. Basically we love getting inside other people's homes and snooping around. This particular tour had a bunch of homes in our neighborhood that had always intrigued me. But then we went inside and found out there wasn't much there to be jealous of. This one house had this historic entry way with an elaborate staircase. But then you move into the living room and see a bed in the next room on the way to the kitchen. There were no doors separating the room, just a bed right in the middle of the room. And the house got weirder from there.

Today after church we went to an art show and then I spent the day working in the yard. I planted some more flowers and trimmed the front lawn. Then I tried out our new blower/vaccuum and love it! Our yard looks so much neater and I was able to pick up a whole bunch of leaves. But I still can't wait until our fall yardwork is done. I enjoyed doing our front yard, but now the leaves is just work. We were even talking about it and the type of leaves we have are not even the pretty leaves like maple leaves. They are small and just shrivel up and make the yard look ugly rather than something you want to pile up and jump in.

Yard

So I spent this weekend working in our front yard. Shortly after we moved into this house, everything in the yard died. (Well, except for the weeds on the side of the house. We'll get to that later.) This past spring I decided to address our pitiful yard. Having never done anything outside before, I was at a bit of a loss. I saw some other houses in the neighborhood that had flowers lining the walk and thought I'd give that a try. I found some bulbs to plant that said plant in the spring and bloom in the summer. Well, they did bloom. Boy did they ever bloom. From just one little bulb a rootmass of about a foot in diameter grew and the flowers grew four feet tall. The whole thing took over the whole walkway.

I was very happy that something I planted actually grew, but had to pull it up because it just didn't work in that area. We planted some new bushes by our porch and some tulips and daffodils. I'm optimistic those will do well where I planted them. It already looks much better by getting rid of the overgrown flowers and planting the bushes.

The other task I accomplished was getting rid of some overgrown weeds/shrubs/trees. I'm not even sure what to call them. They got so big they really were trees (some were reaching our roof. But I think they start out small and just grow quickly like weeds. These particular weeds formed the border between our house and our neighbor's house. At one point there might have been some decent shrubs there, but the weed trees took over. I spent a good bit of time on Sunday cutting them down and clearing them out. Not all the way, so there is still some divide between our houses, but this looks so much better. The funny part is that two other neighbors actually stopped as we were doing it and said how they had really grown way too much.

I learned that I actually do like working in the yard. It is good meditation time and you accomplish something. Now if only I can get the lawn to actually have grass in it.