Run With The Fishes

Nathan doesn’t really like for me to take his picture.

Lately he’s been a pretty good sport about it.

I’m glad because he has such a great personality.

Day two of our side yard project. Rebuilding the flower beds. Greg did most of the work here while I replanted the bulbs I took out yesterday and did some work on the front flower bed. I should have taken before and after pictures of it also.

In an attempt to keep the dogs from digging up all of the hard work we did, we laid a roll of chicken wire on top of the dirt before putting the mulch down. We know they like to lay in the cool dirt during the summer, but they have other places besides the flower beds to use.

After from the back corner. You can really see the difference here. It doesn’t look like a wild jungle anymore. I need to put some kind of trellis fencing between the white posts so that the blackberries have something to climb.

This is the after from the front corner. So much simpler. Now I just need to pick out some plants. I’m thinking flowering bushes like roses, gardenias, or azaleas. Something that can be spaced apart and will be easy to maintain, but still look pretty.

This weekend we decided to tackle a big project. A side of our house is just a huge jungle. Even if we try to keep it weeded every year, it is just difficult to maintain. The old wood for the flower beds was rotting so this year we decided to just take everything out and rebuild.

This is from the back corner before we started working. A few trees had started to grow. We are all for nature taking its course, but these were just too close to the foundation of the house, and our septic tank. No roots in the pipes, please.

Here’s a shot of the front corner of our house.

Here’s where we were at the end of day one. Greg dug up all 3 of those bushes, we removed all of these huge, ugly lilies and lots of weeds. There were some other bulbs, I think just different types of lilies, that I transplanted to the flower bed in our very front yard. I hope they live.

Here’s the view from the back corner. You can see the trees removed (we left one) and most of the weeds and whatever was growing except for our blackberry plants. So much better already.

I was successful at not killing this rose bush again this year. There are so many tiny buds on here. I’m excited to see the bush start blooming.

A couple of years ago, a huge swarm of bees came to this tree, swarmed on it for a few days and left. I think they were life sucking bees because it never recovered. We were going to cut the tree down, but Greg gave a push on one of the bottom branches and decided to just pull it out with the truck.

Tree removal, complete.

The replacements. Eight in all, hopefully we can raise some of these to adulthood and not all of them are roosters.

When Zoey’s team wins, after the game they all stand in a circle around the pitcher’s mound and do a chant. One person gets in the middle and jumps up during a part of it. Guess today, Zoey was that person.

Another of the adorable kids. This one is the youngest of four girls. She is surrounded by love and you can tell it in the way she interacts with others. When we see her, she always has a big smile and such a happy-go-lucky attitude.

She’s cheering her girls on to victory!

Our friends have some adorable kids that were all born around the same time. This little guy takes turns between Alli and Zoey being his girlfriend. He is the youngest of his family. His two older sisters are Zoey and Alli’s ages and are some of their bff’s. For the longest time, he called Greg, “The Tall Man” and would plop himself right next to Greg and tag along with him wherever he went. He still does, but he also likes to play with the big kids.

Bad news. When I went to check on the chicks Thursday after work, they were all gone. We thought after last year when we lost so many chicks, we had figured out how to keep them safe. It’s always something. Sometime between when we let the hens out and when I got home, they made a grand escape out of the bottom of their box. Greg is adding a bottom to the box and we’ll pick up more chicks on Wednesday when Tractor Supply gets them in.