Yard Labor

Yeah, so I'm not sure I can use the word "work" here. It's definitely labor. On Friday morning I went out to knock the cobwebs from our front door way and sweep the entry. I some how ended up borrowing rakes from the neighbor and raking for about 7 hours. Just the front yard. I cleaned out all the flower beds and raked the yard free of old leaves and dead grass. I filled up 6 huge yard bags with debris and filled my kitchen trash bag up as well. I had forgotten how hard that kind of work is. Wow. I went to bed at about 8 Friday night and slept until 7 Saturday morning. We had talked with our neighbors about renting an aerator for a day and splitting the cost with whomever wanted to get in on it. They called me Saturday and said that they had one - at no cost! David ran it (gas - super nice) over the lawn and then spread a bit of sand on top. We left it alone until today when I went out and watered it all really well. We're hoping our dormant grass will green up nicely. I have a bag of Weed n Feed to use in a few days as well but we're letting the lawn "rest" from all of the work of late.

Classes are keeping me pretty busy. So far I'm pulling high B's and A's in all 6 classes. I'm still shooting for a 4.0 but we'll see. ;-) There's a lot of course work involved with my classes. I set my alarm to go off each hour and when it beeps, I switch subjects. I do this from about 6am until David gets home about 4pm. I typically take short breaks to load laundry and things like that and then a 30 min lunch or so to rest my eyes. By about 3pm I have to really dig in because I'm ready to be done!

David's taking a short trip tomorrow. His first since just before Christmas. The doggies and I are going to miss him but he should be home Wednesday.

We (well David mostly) are (is) in the process of tearing down our pool and deck. While we enjoyed it some the first year, we just can't keep up with the maintenance of the pool and the expense of fixing everything that breaks plus chemicals and so on. The set up (pool - including liner and steps, filter, pump and so on) is about 10 years old and every month or so something needed to be fixed or replaced. David is hoping to put a garden in and is composting in anticipation of enriching our soil. He keeps a cut gallon milk container beside the sink so I don't forget to keep things like tea bags and coffee grounds. He's been pretty good about carrying it out every night but it reminds me of when Dad kept the rinds of melons and things for his compost in Seattle. (Yea Ma, I think it's gross too but I'm following instructions to keep all things compost-able so that I don't find them being removed from the trash later. I remember how this went all those years ago.)

Ah well the books are still here, lying beneath the key board as I type and I should get back to them post-haste!