Weekend Warriors

Our house is always a work in progress, especially the yard.  For the most part, the yard is in order, but there was one side of the house that was just yucky.  We started our quest to fix that about 3 weeks ago.

I created this bed last summer when friends and family gave me starts of flowers to add to my garden.  Unfortunately it never got mulched and the rain this spring was fantastic for the weeds.  I forgot to take a before picture, but this is what it looked like after I dug Nick dug up all the plants I wanted to keep.  You can get an idea of what it looked like....

We've had problems with "stuff" coming up voluntarily.  My dad cut it off with a chainsaw...I cut the shoots with loppers...Nick tried to kill them with brush killer...they refused to die.  Nick finally decided  to get to the root of the problem, literally.

There were 3 of these!  Getting rid of them involved our shovel breaking, and the use of an axe.  I had to go raid my parents barn for another shovel and an axe.  If people saw me leaving the barn, they probably thought I was going off to murder someone.  Once everything was dug out, Nick tilled it all up again, and we replanted the plants we saved.

It was already a huge improvement.  Meanwhile, I put together THE coolest decoration to ever grace my front door.  Wallitsch's Nursery is my favorite place to get flowers, and the first time I went there this spring, I saw this and had to have it.

In addition to the 2 rose bushes I got on the second trip to Wallitsch's when I got my front door decor, Nick brought me home 2 more for my birthday, bringing the grand total to 12.  This weekend all the flower beds got a fresh layer of mulch, well, expect for the small section that has to wait until tomorrow because we ran out.

Some of us worked harder than others....

After the mulching, I put the copper ID tags into the rose bed, which also came from Wallitsch's.  I think this weekend(s) project is in the bag.