Living Well: April 2006 Archives

What have I been doing that I could not post or come visit much this past week? Well, it has been spring break here and I have had kids home from school and a lot of spring cleaning going on. Most of the work has been outside the house. That is not a ghost on my porch. It is Colby sitting with the baby. This is what my house looks like with spring all here bright and shining. The boxwoods in front of the house that we took a couple feet off the height last spring have recovered and the inside that was bare is now filling in with nice green limbs and tender leaves. But they are still much too high and block a lot of the front of the house. So we decided it was as good a time as any to pull out the chainsaw and set to work around the house and yards. I told Steve to cut down anything that crossed the fence or cause the fence to break. There was little to nothing to be seen of this fence. Last spring we cut back about 7 feet of brush and undergrowth. Then I found out I was pregnant and the heat and the all day long morning sickness put a very quick stop to the cleanup. This week we cut everything down and completely exposed the fence so we can repair and replace it as needed. This pile is really bigger than it looks. I don't have anything to give perspective on it except to say it was about 7 feet long and over three feet tall. The porch is just over breat high on me and I stand 5'11". After cutting down everything along the fence we started on the boxwoods in front of the house. After Steven took down about a foot and a half I went back with the trimmers and clippers and took off almost another foot of their height. We also cut down some voluntary things that had been growing that blocked the front of the house. What to do with piles and piles of limbs and debris? What any red blooded male would do. Go out and buy a new toy peice of equipment. Yes, a chipper shredder has joined our vast array of tools and motorized equipment that can leave you lame. But is sure made quick work of all those limbs and leaves and stumps and roots! What took a couple hours to cut down took less than an hour to grind up into beautiful smelling mulch that is now around my plots of peonies. The boxwoods are as old as the house (97 years) and the only way to repair the past neglect is to plant new boxwoods in the gaps and let them grow in as fillers. So we bought 4 nice sized plants for this purpose. He has fussed and worked in this pond for several weekends now. He can be like a pissy old wiman aboutit some days. I won't complain too much there are worse things in the world. Steven also gave the pond its spring cleaning. He has pulled out buckets upon buckets of muck and vegetation. Now it is nice and clean and the koi fish love their spring cleaned home. Why do weeds grow like wildfire and you have to beg and plead with everything else to grow? While Steve worked on the pond I worked in the garden plots around the pond. I weeded the areas and made them all tidy and ready for the flowers to grow and bloom. This is the view from standing at the top of my fruit orchard. This is the view from standing at the bottom of the orchard loking toward the koi pond. The lightening strike last summer killed one of our 85 - 90 year old damson trees. Through the Arbor Day Foundation we have been able to replace the tree with a new tree. Steve planted this little tree last November. It and 3 others are thriving well. These wild violets cover the front yard and the orchard. The grass has a purple sheen to it there are so many. I cut grass this morning and they are so low they missed the mower blades and are still pretty. This is what the front of the house looks like after all the butchering, pruning, hacking and sawing. I don't have a photo of this morning of the new Boston ferns hanging on the porch. It has been raining all day and I haven't dared to go out and get the camera wet. A white house. A wide front porch. Rocking chairs. Boston ferns. It all just screams old fashioned goodness! This is what my baby boy did most of the days while we worked around the yard. I could totally eat him up. Doesn't this make you want to have another baby? *Sigh*