Yard work is hard work.

It is no secret to my family and neighbors that I am in charge of the yard work. Truthfully, I enjoy it. And if I had the choice of doing yard work or folding the whites, you better believe I'll choose the yard every time. 

Consequently, as I was perusing the pictures on my phone, there are a great deal that are of my yard and whatnot. Because what else would a 27 year old girl be taking pictures of? Anyway, I'm posting a few just to show that there really is never ending yard work, and it means there is no end to the satisfaction I get from cutting everything back and making it look great.

This first picture is to remind me to NEVER EVER EVER again let my lawn go un-mowed for 3-4 weeks during the spring. I think this is when we got back from Hawaii, and since we were gone two weekends in a row and I think I worked the one before we left, it had seriously been ages. Why is it worse in the spring? Because I still had thick rye, mixed with the clovers. It was terrible. I had to empty the grass catcher after every row, and then the mower would need to rest and stopped working after every 3ish rows. It seriously took me like 6 hours that day. 

We have this big lavender (?) bush in our back yard that was getting impossible to trim easily because it was becoming massive, and then when we would trim it, it would look bad because it would just show all the old dead stuff underneath, you know? So one Thursday afternoon, I stopped by Home Depot and spent the best $34 ever on a trusty pair of loppers. And then I came home and went nuts with them. Behold, the lavender bush.

There is almost nothing that brings me more joy than cutting things back to nubs and then seeing how well they grow back in just a few weeks!

It's pretty safe to say that I was rather pleased with myself. And on a side note, I found about 30 tennis balls and a soccer ball wedged in the heart of the bush. Fun finds, huh?

 

And look how well it grew back and can be trimmed up so nicely now!

 

And that same day, because I had so much fun in the back yard, I took the loppers to the hedges in the front also. They were also becoming too tall, so poor things got chopped big time. I took about a foot off the top and then thinned the inside of all the dead stuff, so they looked really bad for a while, but I'm happy to report that they are filling in nicely.

And did I ever mention that my awesome parents gave us a hedge trimmer for Christmas? Happy happy day! So I use that one for the hedges on the side yard, but only when I start before Philip goes to work so he can get the trimmer started for me. Because despite what you may see in the picture below, I don't have a ton of upper body strength, and therefore, have a hard time starting power tools.

I must also mention that that is my yard work shirt. The reason for it is that I once was wearing an over sized t-shirt with my dude shorts and when Philip was driving up to our house he saw me in the driveway and thought, "What guy is doing my yard?" It was me. I was the guy. So now I wear a shirt where you can see my waistline so my husband can tell I'm a girl. :)
 

One time I loaded my dad's extension ladder in the back of Philip's truck with tie downs and a towel all by my self. And then I went to Sara's and got the lawnmower and loaded that too. I was pretty dang impressed with myself that day.

And sometimes when you have girl muscles and have to do manly work, you have to get resourceful. Hence me skateboarding around with the citrus fertilizer, because it's too dang heavy to carry to all the trees.

My green thumb hard at work. Fail.

Did I mention that we have a lot of hedges? That was actually one of the things that I loved about our house when we were looking at it, was the mature trees and landscape and the beautifully manicured yard. Little did I know at the time, or even think to ask, previous owners had a yard crew. I'm too cheap for a yard crew. Therefore, at least one group of hedges is overgrown at any given time.

But when I cut them back, I CUT THEM BACK.

And these are from just yesterday. These bad boys needed hair cuts.

 

 

And boy did they get them. And while I am always so proud of my lantanas for thriving, they always look so much better when they get a buzz.

And all the palm trees got little mohawks too.

And last but certainly not least, I am so excited for the weather to get a little cooler so I can plant pretty flowers again! The past two springs I have been so happy with my Gerbers and Impatients, but have yet to find a flower to thrive in this weird little spot in the fall. Aren't flowers just so happy? I love them.

Unfortunately, this is what they looked like 3 months later. Poor things, didn't stand a chance in 115 degrees.

Hooray for plants! I'm especially excited to get our citrus trees trimmed back this fall and to have all the dead cut out of them and then repaint the trunks, and to plant rye grass again and use waaaay more seed this time so it is super thick and pretty. In the mean time though, I'll continue to hack away at everything else in hopes that I don't kill it or damage it permanently. :)