Our sunny weekends are becoming more frequent.  Since times are tough everywhere a family vacation to somewhere exotic is pretty much out of the question.  Much to my husband’s chagrin this means weekends are spent doing yard work.  From now until eternity it gets really hot and dry we will work in the garden.  We could spend all of the time weeding, but where’s the fun in that.  Besides, weeding fills up the yard waste bin too fast.

This past weekend we tackled a few little projects and started on one giant one.

First, I picked up a few flowers for my front window box.  I had yet to gather the plant material for our bedroom window box.  I like a pretty box and “basket stuffers” are a bit on the spendy side.  Derek had the grand idea to plant to box with herbs instead.  Cheaper and useful.  Both boxes were planted.

Then we had to make room for my ever growing tomato collection.  I am out of room in my vegetable bed for more boxes so we had to expand.  We built 2 new raised beds on the east lawn and will fill them with tomatoes this weekend.

The big project is the “heirloom garden” I want to install.  As I mentioned the area was overgrown with weeds and we needed to reclaim it.  We spent 2 days pulling with weeds off of the landscape fabric in 1/3 of the bed and reclaiming the bark that was under it.  The remaining 2/3 of the bed either did not have fabric, the fabric was horrible or the weeds were too thick to pull.  So we just pulled up the fabric, weeds and bark and hauled it all to the landfill.  I’m admitting that this wasn’t the most environmentally friendly way of taking care of this situation, but it was the easiest.

I would share photos of the ordeal with you, but I was so covered in dirt that I didn’t dare touch my camera.  Instead, I’ll give huge props to my wonderful husband who did a majority of the back breaking work and drove all that junk to the landfill.  I will also have it noted that we both walked away with injuries.  He hurt his elbow unloading the stuff at the landfill and I somehow bruised my ring finger on my left hand.  Not sure how that happened, but it is seriously hampering my ability to wield a shovel.