Dress May

It’s May already! That basically means its smooth sailing to summer…seriously.

Mr. Gaunt and I went for a lovely 2 hour alley walk (where we walk the alleys of our neighborhood, its awesome, people are slobs) and then tonight we went and got Menchies, which resulted in the owner recognizing me from this post, which NEVER happens to me, so I’m all sorts of blogger giddy.

Anyway, all around the states its warming up. In Colorado it’s been in the 70s and 80s, in Missouri its in the 90s, on the East Coast people are having high 70s. Here in little old Bellingham Washington we are looking at the next 10 days under 65 degrees. THAT my friends is a little something I like to call SPRING!

Spring is this great season full of rain and bursts of sunshine…hope. Its the light at the end of long wet winter, it’s the tip toe into summer. Spring is prepping the gardens and growing the tress. I feel bad for all the states that miss out on Spring. Yes sometimes I think I too would like some 80 degree weather, but I know there is a time and place for 80 degree weather, and its in July, not in May. I know to appreciate 80 degrees you need 2 months, not 5 month of it. To prep your lawns and vegetables, and rivers for those hot summer days, you NEED spring.  Spring I welcome you with open arms, and I accept all the rain you want to give us. My Succulents are lush and happy and my car is clean. (:

Another great thing about Spring is that it gives you time to window shop for Summer! And window shopping I am. (click photos for source)

Of course I can’t afford any of these clothes or accessories. Which is fine. It’s fun to see what prints and styles I’m interested in, and to obviously keep my eye out for similar styles that are more budget friendly.

HAPPY MAY DAY!

When Spring Comes

I love spring.

Mostly I just love the light at the end of the tunnel. The mud drying up, the trees budding, all of it. It makes me motivated and happy, and ready for NEW and CLEAN!

Sad thing is, it’s only February 11th, it’s still like a month and a half until winter is over, but I see the signs! There are most definitely Crocus sprouting up in my yard, and the sun has been showing its beautiful self more often these days (even though everyone says it’s not gonna stay) and I am taking full advantage of it!

On Friday my mom, Mr. Gaunt and I went to the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle. It’s a huge yearly convention for gardening, I’ll blog about it probably tomorrow. Anyway we bought a few awesome new gardening tools, and today I decided to use the morning sun and put those new tools to work.

I wont lie, the summer burned me out on gardening, and we have hardly touched the yard since we got married. Needles to say, it looked like crap. So today we did the following:

-Raked all the pine needles and weird pine cones off the front lawn.

-Weeded the front beds.

-Dug up the 3 gross rose bushes from the front beds.

-Hacked back the big nasty corner bush (we need to rent a chainsaw to get the stump out)

-Edged the sidewalk

-Cleaned up the porch

-Pruned to side roses and cleaned up the brush

-Pruned our big evergreen tree.

On top of the front yard we also did a ton of work to the NASTY back yard. It was kind of a disaster. There was like old dead plants, wedding milk glass succulents everywhere, rotting pumpkins, garbage, oh lordy, embarrassing!

Things we did:

-Weeded all the beds, and completely cleared out the larger center bed. We actually have plans to lay grass over this bed this spring (more on this later)

-Cleaned up the mess of wood my brother left when he moved out.

-Transplanted all the Succulents from their Milk glass into their barrels, and drilled drainage holes in said barrels.

-Pruned the grapes.

-Pruned and tied up our prim rose-bush on the fence.

-Cleared out old dead Morning Glory vines from the fence.

-Threw away garbage, leftover pots, and other such nastyness.

-Hosed down the patio

-Hacked back the old dead blueberries (this will also be removed when we rent the chainsaw)

So yeah, the yard is looking way better. I mean, November-May everyone’s yard looks like muddy crap, but at least it’s cleaned up now, and we have a good start for Spring. We have some smaller scale plans for the back yard this year, but what we really want is to focus on the front lawn. I’m planning on re-shaping the front beds, edging, mulching, and planting some new shrubs. Also replacing the stepping-stones to new non broken ones. I would also loooove to dump some gravel on the driveway, as it’s a slip and slide mud fest right now, but we can’t afford that.

I also have two big blisters on my thumb, which is the only way you know you worked hard in your yard…duh. (:

 

Green Thumbs Over Here!

My brother Forrest came over today and put us to work. I’ll keep the text to a minimum and let the pictures show the work. Overall we got a ton done! My project is the Patio which only got half done, but hopefully if next weekend’s weather is nice we can do more.

The above photos are all where the patio will go. I dug up the earth so we can level it and pour sand and later lay the stones. I used most of the grass to transplant into some unwanted garden beds (we wanted a bit more yard). The walk was also edged, which makes everything look better. We need to get a wheelbarrow so we can haul out all the extra dirt before leveling happens.

Here you can see the three beds we got rid of. Two oddly shaped round beds smack dab in the middle of the yard, and one large rectangular one off to the side. We used the extra grass we pulled out of the patio area to fill these holes. Later we are gonna add a bit of grass patch fixer and some seed to help it all fill in. Our grass is really uneven to begin with, so this worked fine. After a good water and mowing, it should look ok.

Forrest and Mr. Gaunt rototilled our beds, and then Forrest used his master gardening skills to plant all of our starts. We went with Starts instead of Seeds per Forrests recommendation, I’m sure there are pros and cons to both ways. We will be growing way more plants later on in the summer, these are just what will grown now in the “still cold” early spring.

Lastly the Blueberries were pruned. The Grapes and roses were trimmed up and tied up, and the Raspberries were caned over. Mr. Gaunt built the BBQ too! A huge dinner was prepared afterward by my mom and sister for the hungry workers. It was so nice to actually get out there and be productive, I’m excited for whats next.

Oh and a HUGE THANK YOU goes out to Forrest for helping us get this going! We couldn’t have done it without you!

There is Nothing Better…

…than laying in the park in 70 degree weather with your love….

Today there is 10 inches of snow on the ground. Two days ago this was happening. Spring can not come soon enough.