The Great Weed Take Down of 2011

The commune is getting herself all prettied up! Seth and I are diligently working on trying to get the house as ready as we can for June. It’s going to be a BUSY month. Back to back parties over three weekends…it’s going to be insane, but it’s actually been good because it’s giving us an excuse to get some stuff done around the house that’s needed it…badly. We’ve decide to chronicle this journey of fix-it-ing and thought it might be fun for you to see what we’ve been up to! The first place that we needed to work on was the backyard. But the Rouggly’s are proof that work can be fun! For instance – before we mowed the back yard weeds…not lawn…weeds – we played a game of “Spot the Seth”. Can you find him? (hint – try clicking on the picture to blow it up…maybe it’ll help? :/ )

Did you find him? Try this one!

Well – in case you can’t tell….we’d let the weeds get a bit out of control. Seth is about 5’11 and they came up to his waist. See?

So come Saturday, we decided it was time to hit the yard. And just for clarification, in this job – “we” means Seth. I was inside doing homework…although I am not sure which was more fun. After about an hour and half, here’s what it looked like:

And this:

This was NOT an easy job. In fact – our poor electric mower was doing it’s best – as was Seth, but it just couldn’t push through. There were many times that Seth had to push the mower up a mountain of weeds, like this:

It was not without adventure though!! We found MANY things in the forest we had back there…trash that was thrown over the house (our yards are a magnet for trash – especially the front), chickens and the rooster (and some baby chicks that went running as soon as I tried to snap a photo of them), and this guy:

Once we had gotten all the weeds cut – the trimming had to commence. See, in the picture below, there’s actually a cement walkway that Seth is standing on, but you’d never know!

It ended up looking quite nice!!

Not too shabby, huh? Well – here’s the man of the hour after this 4.5 hour job….seriously….four. and. a. half. hours. Wow…I <3 him!

And the best part is – we get to compost it all!!! And this job gave us PLENTY of compost:

So thanks for allowing me to take you along for the journey of the great weed take down of 2011. Hopefully it’s the last time for a while! Since then – we’ve actually decided that the grass on the right side of the yard is much better than the left and so we’re going to maintain about half of it as grass. The stuff on the left side will be eventually tilled and covered with raised garden beds…but that is another story for another time! Stay tuned for next time’s installment of the never-ending saga of fixing up the commune! The joys of homeowner-ship: There’s ALWAYS more to be done! But I’m soaking up every minute of it!