Spring Time

(Sorry to those of you that have been experiencing gobs and gobs of snow, cold, or yuck…. )

WOW!!! I completely forgot just how beautiful spring time in certain places can BE.

Normally I enjoy taking care of the yard of the home we are living in, and try to keep up with regular maintenance and making it look better then I started with. We rented this house immediately upon our arrival, and -- well -- we’ll just say that the home and yard haven’t exactly made me feel motivated to take good care of them. The agency that handles the rental for the owner never trimmed up the bushes or cleaned up around them before our taking over the place. We didn’t have our tools and such because our stuff had not yet arrived from Okinawa OR long-term storage (that took over 3 months to all slowly trickle in.) I certainly wasn’t going to go out and buy a bunch of stuff I knew would be coming, so I got ONE rake and pair of hand clipper trimmer things and tidied up just a bit. But Now, we have our tools, the weather has changed, and it is time to put them to use.

(okay, as I've been working on this I keep laughing because all that keeps going thru my head is that part in Willy Wonka where they're all in the Invention Room, and Mr. Wonka hops on the bike to 'stir' what ever the concoction is...and he sings "Spring time, the only pretty ring time....birds sing, hey ding -- a ding a ding. Sweet lovers, love -- the spring".)

--- back to what I was saying

The weather here last week got up into the 80’s, and it was perfect because I actually got two day’s off IN A ROW! That’s big for me because it means when I have to stop mid-project, no one’s going to mess with it before I can get back to it, so I this 2 days together lets me tackle the bigger projects on my list. Anyhow, so I really wanted the kids OUTSIDE and soaking in ALL the fresh air and sunshine we possibly could when they got home from school. I also wanted to get on with getting the yard cleaned up. I may not LOVE the house we're currently in, but it IS our home for now and I love my family and want us all to enjoy being here together in anyway we can work to improve things.

We pulled out the rakes and got to work. I had every intention of getting out the hedge clippers, but time slipped by SO fast. I even took some before pictures of the bushes to show how desperately they need a ‘haircut’.

Man are they in need of a buzz. I just laughed because I’d been out the week before trimming the huge hedges on the side of the house (now not nearly as huge) …and I now know that those are basically the ONLY bushes in the whole dang yard that do NOT flower. Sheesh. Oh how nice things would have looked had they been neatly pruned before blossoms took over everything? *shrug* Oh well, how the heck was I to know the yard would fill with so much color?

The kids and I started with the BACK yard for 2 very important reasons:

1.) Since it is fully fenced in, I can toss them out there to burn off some energy. The cleaner it is, the less risk of injury. VERY important to continue to enjoy ones day.

2.) We HAD to give it a good raking. There are these Spikey Balls that fell from the trees all fall/winter that HURT to step on. I have an awesome neighbor that told me what they are called, but I couldn’t tell you. ( the aliens did a mind swap and the brain they left me with doesn't remember names well. ?did I tell that in a blog or just an email to someone??)

In all Honesty - We've agreed that knowing the actual name of such a pain inflicting item will NOT change it’s effect on our feet. We just need to get'em gone.

As we were cleaning up that lovely Friday evening, it started to rain. It’s been doing so on and off ever since. Just enough that there’s no way I can pull out the step ladder to follow thru with the hedgecuts Sooooo necessary to perform. I can live with that though….because of all the rain, the lovely Yellow Blanket that has been coating the local area has been washing away. And check out ALL the color that has bloomed in the yard. . . .


… I used one of my shots to change my computer desktop, and the kids were in awe (I'm not usually so talanted and cool...not where they notice anyway.) – they thought I’d gotten it off the Internet or something. Nice flattery. Jason is a Photographer as his sort of second Job in the Marine Corps, so to have his compliment was even better. All I was trying to do was have some pictures to remember the day and the beauty that bloomed - showing me that this house isn’t a total pit of frustration to live in. Everything has an UPside. Right?